Serra de Sintra

Four days earlier I had been in Porto: tiles, steep streets, the river below the city. Then Sintra, and the thing I end up doing in every new country — looking for the highest point.

In the hills of Sintra that is Cruz Alta, 528 metres, a stone cross on a granite outcrop above the woods of Pena Park. Turn around and Pena Palace sits just below in red and yellow, the romantic fantasy a nineteenth-century king built on a mountaintop. Byron called Sintra a “glorious Eden”. From up there, it’s hard to argue.

It is the oldest entry in this log, and maybe the first time I noticed that I travel by summits.