Ok, if you photoshopped away the tourist buses and backpackers who were commendably walking their way to the top (who probably saw more lilyponds, gingerbread houses and real fairies along the way), you could probably understand why this particular corner of the European continent was eulogized by poets:
I can't quite figure what it was that lent to this sense of unreality. Maybe it was the spruce and fir vegetation (lush, but not the Kota Tinggi kind of lush, as I was telling my travel buddy), or the strange mountaintop Pena castle with its colorful assemblage of minarets and sentry boxes (on entering the front gate of the castle, it looked exactly like the place where a wicked king might have locked up Rapunzel!), or because you could just imagine yourself spending a whole summer here sitting on a moldy bench at the edge of pretty Monteserrat town writing a book while little rabbits and frogs skipped past you into the forest.One wished there was more time to explore the Park (the castle's private forest) with its lakes, trees and walking trails. Or to explore the other palace, a little way below that had an intriguing name like Sete Ais ("Seven Sighs") and attractions like the Magpie Room.
We spent most of our time in the curious Pena castle, which was an absorbing blend of Hispanic-Moorish architecture on the outside and Italian renaissance drawing rooms and toilets on the inside. It had an amazing balcony looking out to the Sintra borough, with the ocean in the distance, and clouds rolling over the hills dotted with clusters of Portugese red steep roofs at your feet. That particular scenary from that vantage point had a deep impact on me, because I had always pictured that when God set on Judgement Day on His great high throne, this would be the picture before His eyes, his beautiful natural creation before Him, and his people coming out of their houses to meet Him.
I think it was at that moment during my trip when I was looking out of the glass-less windows of the stone balcony that my mind started to really rest from the stresses of pre-holiday deadlines, and to let the cool mist take away mundane cares...