Sintra, Cabo da Roca, and Cascais
Hiking in Sintra | Exploring Cabo da Roca | Visiting Cascais | Last Day in Portugal | June 2026
On our last day in Portugal, we packed the day completely full with a long day trip featuring multiple stops. Most travel blogs we saw for this area claimed these places were must-see, but insisted that they couldn’t be done in a day. Well, a day was all we had and we wanted to make the most of it, so we were determined to make it all happen. We could rest all we wanted the next day while on our long trans-Atlantic flight! After one last good European hotel breakfast (because we had to leave too early the next day for our flight) we packed a day bag, walked across the street to the train station, then hopped on the 8am train to Sintra.
My little brother has traveled all across Europe, and he had told me multiple times that out of everywhere he’s been, he thought we would enjoy Sintra the most because of the combination of nature, cute town, and history all packed into one small area. That sounded great to us — especially since we could reach it by public transit. It turned out that taking the earliest train we could was a great idea, because it seemed as though this place, far enough removed from Lisbon, hadn’t woken up quite yet, or at least most of the tourists hadn’t arrived. We exited the train and made our way into the town. It didn’t take long before we were seeing some of the colorful and unique architecture, and making out the walls of a castle up on the hillside. We were already so glad we decided to come here instead of trying to see more of Lisbon. It was just so much easier to see all the beauty and attractions in a more condensed space, and much less overwhelming in the early morning with hardly anyone around.
We started making our way up the hillside, first through tight and winding streets lined with shops, and eventually making it through the town and onto the trail. Besides this area having two very different castles, there was also a peak that met Curtis’ prominence goal not far from the second palace, so he found a trail listing on AllTrails that would get us to the peak while seeing the most we could along the way. We had a lot of elevation to gain, but in the cool morning air we were pretty comfortable, and much of the trail going up was in the shade. Our first big attraction that we came to was the Moorish Castle. This one is more of what we think of when we picture castles — grey stones, a large wall going around the entire perimeter. We had decided in advance that we wouldn’t tour this one though, if we were to pay entrance fees for every attraction in this area we could easily spend over 100 Euros. Since we knew we were going to pack as much as we could into a day, we decided that the one place we would pay to see were the grounds of the Peña Palace. We did however have to walk into the gates of the Moorish castle to continue with our hike, and were a little nervous that this constituted needing to pay a fine, but we never ran into anyone saying we needed to and didn’t see anything besides the walls, so I think we were fine.
After passing by the Moorish castle, we continued going up, up, up switchbacks, up towards the Peña Palace. We found that the higher up we got, the better the views are of the Moorish Castle, and we didn’t regret our decision to skip touring it. When we made it to the gates of the Peña Palace, we found there to be a long line of people waiting to get in, which turned out to be because a tour bus had just arrived and the palace had only just opened for tours for the day. We sat down on a bench and purchased tickets, just for the grounds, no inside palace tour. We had to do this regardless of whether we wanted to see the palace because the trail we were taking to the peak went through the grounds. We waited until most of the line had entered the park before joining at the end, right before another tour bus showed up.
Once we were inside, we opted to walk around the gardens before starting the last stretch of the trail switchbacking up to the palace. Most people were getting rides up to the palace, with the tour guides continually reminding them “the palace is your priority, meet back here in an hour”. Again the trail up to the palace was steep, but we pushed through with growing excitement as we started to see the colorful palace peeking through the trees.
Honestly, we had no idea how much we could actually see with only having passes to the grounds. When we made it to the base of the palace, I wondered if that was it, but we kept walking up and every time we came to a worker, they continued to wave us on. It turned out that most of the people here were here for the guided palace tour, which meant they were standing in a long line waiting to get in. Meanwhile, our grounds passes granted us access to the entire area around the palace and the terraces, no lines or waiting required! We were able to walk around the entire thing and take in the beauty and uniqueness of all the details that went into this structure. It is certainly unique as far as castles go, painted with bright primary colors, fun asymmetrical design, and so much detail into the stone carvings and ceramic tiles on the walls. And of course the view from the walls was fantastic, overlooking the hills to the North and West, and we could barely make out the ocean. We took our time walking around and seeing all we could, and once we were ready to go, we exited the palace to continue on our way. It had grown significantly busier in the time we were there, and we were just glad for our early start once again!
From here, we continued on a short trail leading us up to the highest peak with a cross standing tall at the top. We had another great view looking down at the palace from here, but the area wasn’t large and the view in other directions was obscured by trees. When we were finished here, we made our way back down, then chose to take another trail back to the town through the gardens and further West of the one we had come up. We followed the road through beautiful lush gardens and woods, and after a while of easy walking the trail became a more steep and narrow path going downhill quickly over several series of rock steps. We had forgotten how much elevation we had gained to get up the mountain and were surprised by how much we were losing elevation.
When we made it back to the town of Sintra, it was no longer the sleepy town we had arrived at just hours before. It was packed with people and traffic, and we were a little overwhelmed as we tried to find our way to a bus stop. It turned out that the one I had found on Google was rerouted, so we had to walk further into town to find the one we wanted. Our plans unravelled a little more when the bus arrived and we realized our 24 hour passes didn’t work on it. Either we messed up somehow or they weren’t programmed right, but oh well, we paid in cash and boarded the small bus headed to Cabo da Roca.
To be honest, I didn’t remember when or why I starred this one point on the Atlantic coast, when planning for today’s adventure I just decided we should check it out because we could take a bus from Sintra to there, then another to Cascais. When things started to get more complicated, I wondered if it was a mistake to go there and if our struggles would continue. The ride to the coast was 40 minutes long, winding around the foothills that we had just enjoyed seeing, until it finally arrived at that little point on the coast. The bus had been full, and there were plenty of people already here, so we weren’t the only ones with the idea to come here. It wasn’t until we arrived and walked over to the coast, when we stopped to read the monument there and realized that this is the Westernmost point of continental Europe! I had starred this point years ago, so I suppose I knew then, but honestly had no idea until we got here today. I guess it was a good thing we decided to come here, because surely we would have been disappointed had we later learned it was right here and we missed it.
Besides being geographically significant, it is also just a beautiful sight, with tall rugged sea cliffs standing high over the ocean, deep blue waves crashing into them. We wandered down to the Southern view point, then decided to wander around on some paths we had seen to the North when driving in. There were others on the trails, but there were plenty of lookouts and room to spread out, so after wandering around we found a spot to ourselves to sit, admire the view, and have our lunch. This area reminded me of when we were in Ireland and found our way to other cliffs overlooking the sea South of Kinsale, and other places we’d enjoyed such scenery in Nova Scotia, Quebec, Maine. All good memories. We sat for a while and enjoyed the moments that we knew would soon become another memory added to the others.
When we were ready to continue with our adventure, we made our way back to the bus stop, and waited a rather long time for the next bus to Cascais. It finally turned up, and we got on along with plenty of others, all heading down to this beach town. Did I know that it was a beach town before making plans to end our big adventure here? No, I knew it was right on the coast but my mind didn’t translate that as being a beach town. Did I know that there also happened to be a big motorcycle rally taking place here on this day? No, no I did not. As soon as we arrived in Cascais, both of these things soon became clear to us, and again I wondered if maybe it was a mistake to be here. It was hot, we were not prepared for a beach, and we were already tired from our early start, lots of walking, long bus rides, and overwhelmed by crowds. But we pushed through these feelings, because today was our last day in Europe, and if we were going to leave with any regrets, those regrets certainly wouldn’t be over not doing enough while we were here. And so we went on a long walk along the coast, all the way out to some sea caves. We saw a fort and some pretty architecture on the way, and the ocean was an unbelievable shade of blue. When we made it to the caves, we wandered around the different scenic overlooks and once more enjoyed watching the waves crash into the rocks. A trombonist set himself up in the center of it all and started playing along to recorded instrumentals of pop songs.
When we were finished here, we made our way back through the town and to the train station. I can’t say that this is necessarily a spot we’d want to return to, but at least we left knowing that and not wondering what we were missing out on. We took a train back to Lisbon, which followed the coast the whole way, then in Lisbon we walked to a metro station and finally made it back to our hotel. We were exhausted, sweaty, and sunburnt, but we knew that we had truly made the most of our last day here.
The next day started out bright and early with an uber ride to the airport since the metro didn’t operate so early. Our journey home consisted of three flights, with connections in Frankfurt, Germany, and Chicago O’Hare. We had been skeptical it would all work out because of customs and tight connections, and maybe even hoped we’d get stuck in Germany for a night just to see another city/country, but things went about as smoothly as we could expect and we made it back to Iowa only 2 hours later than expected. Jet lag hit me harder this time than it did last year coming back from Ireland, but I guess that’s to be expected when we spent over 3 weeks in Europe this time! And with that, our European vacation for this year had come to an end. We’re so thankful for the chance to see so much and cross a big item off our bucket list — to hike a Camino! We can’t wait for the next time we find ourselves on the other side of the Atlantic!
