Make Sintra Your Family’s Homebase for a Lisbon Trip

As Portugal jumps to the top of everyone’s must-see list, the once tranquil city of Lisbon has become more crowded. Hotels and restaurants are often at capacity and lines are long at main attractions. This is not to suggest family travelers shouldn’t include Lisbon in their travel itineraries, but they might consider making their base in nearby Sintra.

Especially in summer, when Sintra’s fresh breezes offer relief from the heat, taking the short train ride from the city is a refreshing break after a day seeing Lisbon’s highlights. The greenery of its parks is punctuated by quirky (and often fantastic) architecture, and Sintra’s palaces and gardens will keep families engaged for at least two days.

You wouldn’t be the first to seek repose in Sintra: Portugal’s royalty decamped to Sintra and neighboring Queluz to escape Lisbon summers. The palaces, which reflect some of the excesses of the Victorian era, will delight kids.

Pena Palace, which sits on a garden-covered height, looks like a giant, pastel-frosted cake. True to its period, it has a bit of every architectural style since Medieval, including parapets, Gothic towers, cupolas, Moorish arches and onion-shaped domes, all topped off with stone carving. At the top of Pena Park, a garden of camellias and rare plants, are the stone ramparts of a Medieval castle to explore.

Monserrat is a neo-Moorish villa surrounded by gardens, but kids are even more excited by the palace and gardens of Quinta da Regaleira. This fanciful group of buildings is set in landscaped gardens with dark grottos and a warren of underground passages you can explore via a spiral staircase that descends into a 200-foot-deep dry well. Everything is deep in symbolism; mysteries abound here.

Having once catered to royalty, Sintra still offers luxury in its hotels and shops, but several budget-friendly hotels welcome families. NH Central Sintra is centrally located, while Lawrences Hotel and charming Chalet Saudade offer a more traditional style with family-sized rooms and suites.

For an afternoon pick-me-up, stop at Sapa Bakery for Sintra’s famous pastry, queijadas da sapa. These ultra-sweet tarts have been made here since 1756. The bakery is handy to the railway station, where trains from Lisbon’s central Rossio station arrive multiple times daily.