Portugal part 2 - Sintra to Lagos

Sintra

This place is home to the Pena Castle and gardens, a cute village and a Moorish Castle. It was only 40 mins by train from Lisbon. The highlight of Sintra was their extravagant palace and gardens, previously home to King Ferdinand II and his wife Amelia. This King was an artist, and decided he wanted his gardens to be a mixture of home (Germany) and other exotic places - even had a section dedicated to Australian/New Zealand rainforest ferns. The result was magical - and then you hit the palace - talk about a fairytale. We spent hours here just wandering. This is one of my most favourite places so far.

Pena Palace

The gardens

Lagos

Well known as a party and beach town, Lagos held up to its reputation. Again we ran into our Sydney mates and hung out on the main beach with them, bodysurfing some pretty aggressive waves, and Nick enjoying watching old people and kids get dumped by the surf - he reckons it was like watching funniest home video show. (I hate that show).

the boys body surfing

We finally ate Piri Piri Chicken - not as hot as we expected - but you could just ask for more sauce and that spiced it up plenty! The party scene was impressive - so many bars with so many cheap drink specials... There was one bar that is famous for tallying beer bongs consumed per country (Australia was winning, surprise surprise, and all the boys added one to the tally - but were very very very sorry for it later...) They also had a ¨9 deadly sins¨competition, where one had to shot 9 shots as fast as possible - if you beat the record (8.5 sec for men, 11 sec for the ladies) you didn´t have to pay the 30 Euro they cost. But you got a tshirt. Wisely we did not attempt this. The 2 for one cocktails at 5 Euros, and the free shot on arrival at Red Eye bar were enough to keep us in bed most of the next day as it was...

The highlight of Lagos was the kayaking adventure, where we paddled 3 hours along the coast exploring secret caves and grottoes that you could paddle right into. Glorious!

Kayaking