Winter, Sintra & Lord Byron…

Scarcely has winter arrived, yet its influence is to be felt all over the country as if it were mid January already. Freezing temperatures everywhere, a beautiful clear blue sky, and the sun shining so brightly one should really wear sunglasses are to be expected until after Christmas.

This is a welcome invitation for us (me and you, blogger friends and readers) to leave Lisbon and go for a stroll in Portugal's capital of Romanticism – Sintra. And who else could be our international perfect guide but Lord Byron?

"Lo! Sintra's glorious Eden intervenes
In variegated maze of mount and glen.
Ah me! what hand can pencil guide, or pen,
To follow half on which the eye dilates
Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken
Than those whereof such things the bard relates,
Who to the awe-struck world unlocked Elysium's gates?"

in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

In a letter to Francis Hodgson dated July 16.th, 1809, Lord Byron also says:

"I must just observe that the village of Sintra in Estremadura [Portugal's province] is the most beautiful, perhaps in the world. I am very happy here, because I loves oranges and talk bad Latin to the monks, who understand it, as it is like their own [language], and I goes into society (with my pocket pistols)…"

National Palace (former Royal residence)

Pena Palace (19.th century)

Pena Palace (air view)

Moorish Castle

These photos may not do entire justice to all of the beauties of this piece of Paradise, but some romantic imagination is here best in place – locus amœnus as a romantic state of mind, as a condition of the romantic soul…

Enjoy it lavishly! This is my Christmas present for all of you.

RIC