The Pena Palace Gardens and Sintra's Pastries

Sintra is 40 kilometres west of Lisbon, on a ridge of the Serra de Sintra where the Atlantic clouds bank and create a microclimate so lush that the Romantic poets who visited in the 19th century described it as a landscape out of time. Lord Byron, who came in 1809, called it 'the most beautiful village in the world.' The Pena Palace, commissioned by King Ferdinand II in 1842 and completed in 1854, is the architectural expression of this Romanticism: a riot of neo-Moorish, neo-Gothic, and neo-Manueline elements in yellow and red, perched at 530 metres above sea level, often in cloud.

The palace gardens (the Pena Park) occupy 200 hectares of woodland arranged with romantic grottos, lakes, and follies. The park can be visited without entering the palace, and the park alone rewards a full morning of slow walking. The valley below holds the Quinta da Regaleira, a private estate built by a Freemason eccentric in 1910 with initiation wells that descend 27 metres into the earth on spiral staircases, underground tunnels, and symbolic gardens that encode esoteric references throughout.

Sintra's village centre is small and has excellent pastry shops. Piriquita (open since 1862) makes travesseiros — puff pastry tubes filled with almond and egg cream — that may be the finest pastry made in Portugal that is not a pastel de nata. Piriquita also makes queijadas de Sintra, small tarts of fresh cheese and sugar that have been made here since the 13th century. Eat both standing on the pavement, then walk up to the Moorish Castle above the village for the view.