Sintra, Portugal

 Sintra, Portugal

 

We flew from Rome to Lisbon and had one night in the Lisbon area. I had one thing in mind based on travel photos I’d seen over the years: the initiation well at Pena Palace in the nearby city of Sintra, Portugal. 

We landed at 2pm, got a shuttle to pick up our rental car (which took quite a while), and then we drove West out of the city. We were lucky enough to drive straight there, find parking (kind of a miracle because there isn’t much), and get tickets without much of a line up at the ticket booth (another stroke of luck – in the high season there aren’t any hopes of getting in without pre-purchasing tickets).

What is the “initiation well” and what is Pena palace? The palace and huge gardens / grounds (also called the Quinta da Regaleira) are just outside the town of Sintra, and just inside the “Parque Natural de Sintra-Cascais”. Although other sources on the internet can give you more details, the land was owned at one point by “Monteiro the Millionaire”. He hired an architect to build a fancy palace and develop an amazing 4 hectares that include a chapel, gardens, grottoes, hidden staircases / passageways, water features, and gazebos / towers. The symbols and activities that occur in the estate may have historical relations to alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar and more. So it is rumored that the ‘initiation well’ was used during ceremony, perhaps to bring a new recruit down into the darkness and then up through 9 pillars toward the light, becoming a member of the group.

These days it’s become a very popular tourist destination, particularly for people like me who want to snap a photo of the beautiful and intriguing well.

It cost our family 28 euro to enter and the whole place was gorgeous. Perhaps we were also encouraged by the Spring weather and warmth in Portugal that we haven’t had too much of in a while. The green gardens felt lovely and fresh. We were able to walk to the well, walk down the stairs to the bottom taking photos, enjoy the waterfall and caves underground before coming back up. I liked it so much we did it a second time! We also really enjoyed the little paths and passageways through the gardens.

We didn’t go into the palace and instead decided to leave after about 90 min and find our lodging and some dinner.

I can see that some folks might think it’s a bit far out of the way to come here from Lisbon. I can also see that some people might think we were silly to miss other lovely experiences in Lisbon and see this attraction instead. But I wanted to see this place with my own eyes. I would have been happy to walk in, walk down the well steps, and leave without anything else. But instead we got much more than that and I’d highly recommend coming here if you can do it.

We also stayed at a fantastic booking.com lodging for the night in Sintra – one of our better lodgings on the whole trip. The next morning we drove South to find friends and time poolside in the sunshine.