Mountain Glory
Following in the footsteps of the great English Romantic poets, few tourists can resist the lush, green setting of Sintra just a few kilometres west of Lisbon.
Following in the footsteps of the great English Romantic poets, few tourists can resist the lush, green setting of Sintra just a few kilometres west of Lisbon.
After the region’s gateway city of Faro, Portimão is the most important commercial centre in the Algarve and the main hub for the region’s thriving sardine-canning, leisure cruising and big-game fishing industries.
With as many as 260 million speakers around the world, the majority of whom are native speakers, Portuguese is by far the most widely spoken Romance language after Spanish.
It seems that Portugal’s much-celebrated port wine was invented by chance. A shortage of French claret at the end of the 17th-century had wealthy wine connoisseurs searching for suitable alternatives.
Lying at the east end of a rocky range of mountains just 26 km west of Lisbon, the fairy-tale setting of Sintra is one of the oldest and most charming places in southern Europe.