Early morning walk round to the lighthouse – it’s the moon setting, by the way.

Repeat of yesterday – beautiful.

Then a combination of Ryanair, delays and Stansted make for a memorable journey back.  And Terminal 2 at Lisbon airport isn’t the best place to wait – we were told there is a McDonald’s and another restaurant and it’s true.  That’s it!

But the hundreds and hundreds of unclaimed suitcases at Stansted made us realise it could have been a whole lot worse.

It was still looking ok in the early afternoon, so headed off into the hills towards Sintra.  First stopping place was Peninha with great views to the north:

… and south.

More of a chapel than a palace.

We had been noting earlier in the week that the weather forecast was not great for today, so wondered what we might do.  However, it started off pretty well as you can see, so had a nice walk and coffee by the beach.

But normal service was thankfully restored.  View from dinner, followed by a sort of rainy sunset.

Just been hearing about Stansted being closed today.  Looking forward to the return trip tomorrow…

Pena – one of the palaces around the Royal Palace, but this one is bonkers, and would be better suited to being in Vegas.  It’s also quite high up.

But we did get our come uppance on the way down.  The heavens opened for about 20 minutes and we got drenched.  

Back to the restaurant on our beach for dinner and a final wander.

After lots of blue skies, which always cheer us up, the forecast today wasn’t great.  So we headed 45 minutes north to Ericeira.  Lovely little fishing town – actually not so small but the old centre is.

And the forecast turned out to be overly pessimistic!

Very pessimistic, in fact.  Wonderful Altlantic coast (designated a World Surfing Centre) was the backdrop to walking, reading, coffee and cakes etc.

Decided this was to be a serious day out, exploring Lisbon.  Got the train in, and first stopping off place was a suburb called Belem.  It’s meant to be famous for its monastery and museums, but the real draw is:

Which really does do the best custard tarts in Portugal, and the coffee was pretty good as well.

And here’s the monastery, although note the length of the queue to get in ( so we didn’t).