Before we finally check out of Cinco, we took another hike up the Moorish Castle, and had breakfast in town. It was a Saturday, many stores were closed.
Our next Airbnb was by the train stop Roma-Aveeiro. Since our flight is early in the morning on Sunday, we decided to stay close to the airport. It was about 1pm when we got there. Our host let us leave our luggage at the place because she was still getting the place ready. We had to decide if we want to explore more in Lisbon or go to Queluz. Our initial plan was to go to Queluz then head to Belem.
I didn’t have an expectation from Queluz. At first glance, from the outside, it was kind of underwhelming. That’s why I didn’t take any pictures from the outside. They mentioned a lot of history in this place. You can find them here. Every time I walk through a palace, I tried to imagine myself living here. How much knitting I could get done!
One thing I remembered the most was one of the bedroom wall art had references of Don Quixote, and one of the king died in that bedroom.
In the garden, there were a lot of statues. As a Chinese immigrant, I’m really not familiar with many gods and goddesses. Luckily my husband was able to tell me a lot about them.
Overall, I was really impressed with Queluz and happy we visited here as our last day. Unfortunately, we were really tired and didn’t make it to Belem.
One thing I liked about all the places we visited in Portugal was that it didn’t seem too busy. Maybe we were there at the right time. Our host, Carol, told us their visitors has doubled in the past five years. She didn’t think the Portuguese government knew how to handle this amount of tourists. I had to say this was my favorite vacation. Sure, Machu Picchu, Patagonia, even China, were exciting and hard working (a lot of hiking). Maybe because I’m getting older, I need vacations that’re more relaxing and just stay in one place for a week instead of spending a couple days here and there. I hope I’ll see you soon Portugal.