Cascais and Sintra

This afternoon we drove west down the coast to the charming town of Cascais. It was just a fishing village until 1870, since when it has become a fashionable town for the rich and royalty. Cascais and Estoril were also a place of escape for those fleeing the Nazis during WW2 and the place of exile for several European kings. Margaret and I had a superb fish kebab lunch and the waiter chatted us up and shouted us a port after our meal! Ian Fleming based his Casino Royale on the casino in Estoril.
Then we went inland to Sintra where we visited the National Palace, dating from the late Middle Ages as one of two summer palaces for royalty and we had to climb up and down 100 steps! The palace had beautiful imported Moorish and blue Portuguese tiles. In 1992 the Sintra palace was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO. Sintra was a very pretty hill town, which inspired Byron and Hans Christian Anderson.I had hoped to go to the Gulbenkian Museum but were we're too late getting back to Lisbon after a very busy day. To Seville tomorrow.