We visited the best museum in Lisbon, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian. This is a private museum and very well run. Unfortunately, in Portugal, it seems the best tourist facilities or attractions are private run. The museum exhibits the private collection of a wealthy oil baron. It's now a foundation who is also forefront in promoting modern art in Portugal. The key pieces of the collection include the painting "An Old Man" by Rembrandt, mosque lamps, and old Indian books. We are sorry to say that we couldn't appreciate much of the modern art collections.
We drove to Sintra and spent one day exploring the town and two palaces, Palacio da Pena and Palácio de Moserrate. The town itself didn't impress us much, just the usual tourist traps. We were wise to skip the Palácio Nacional de Sintra and went to the Pena Palace! It was quite a drive to get up the steep and narrow (and luckily one way) road to reach the palace. After paying the admission, it's another 15 mins hike up steep paths before we got a glimpse of the fairytale castle! And what a sight! The castle is painted in such vibrant colors (yellow, blue, red,...) that it is almost surreal that it existed! You can almost imagine a dragon may jump out in front of you anytime!
The palace started as usual as a monastery but it was severely damaged and laid abandoned by the great 1755 earthquake. King Ferdinand II acquired and turned it into a summer palace in the 18th century, building it in romanticist style. Interestingly, there were many Moorish features incorporated into the palace. It's so picturesque and scenic that we spent way too much time there, cutting my ambitious itinerary for the day short!
On the advice of one of the woman attendants there, we changed our next destination to Palácio de Moserrate instead of driving to Mafra. We weren't disappointed. This is a villa style of palace built by a British textile tycoon Francis Cook in the 1860s. This guy must be super rich because the inside is gorgeous, built in Sintra Romanticist plus Moorish revival styles. At its height, his huge art collections there included "Salvator Mundi", the recently rediscovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci sold at an auction for US $450 MM dollars (the most expensive painting ever sold) to Abu Dhabi! So this guy has taste! Too bad the whole collection was auctioned off due to hard time by his descendants in the 1930s after the economic crisis. The whole place then fell into disrepair and only recent got refurbished by the government.
We also drive by another attraction, Quinta da Regaleira but without parking facilities, we chose to skip going inside.
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