Sintra Pena Palace - beware

Why I don’t go to Sintra anymore😢.

I visited the Pena Palace yesterday. The owner of the guest house where I am staying had recommended that I either book the very first time slot or the last time slot for Pena. I booked at 4:30 pm. 5pm would have been better. I agree that walking through the palace was not a pleasant experience. My queue was nowhere near as bad as you described, but it was still jammed pack and took just under an hour to get in and through the palace portion. I moved through the palace at a snail’s pace. Once you are in the palace it is virtually impossible to move any faster than the people ahead of you. While I had bought the audioguide and downloaded the cloudguide software, I gave up on it after listening to two of the descriptions.

I very much enjoyed the walk after I got out of the palace down through the gardens and past the “Valley of the Lakes”. I took a tuktuk to and from the palace and this was a far more enjoyable experience than riding the bus would have been.

I had gone to the Quinta da Regaleira in the morning and really enjoyed the gardens there. It was nowhere near as crowded as the Pena Palace.

You did it better than we did for sure…I really wanted to do the Quinta da Regaleira but we were wiped out.

We were planning to go to Sintra the last week of Oct prior to the start of a guided tour/river cruise. Would it be doable then or should we just stay in Lisbon? Not sure what would be alternative sites as most of the biggies are already included in the tour plus we were planning to visit the Tile Museum and St George Castle on our own.

Thanx Gail.

I was just on a food tour here in Lisbon with a couple who arrived at Pena Palace about 30 minutes before it opened. They said they were among the first people into the palace and were through in 15 minutes.

Hi everyone I’m currently on week 2 of my Portugal trip. My friend and I spent 2 days and 2 nights in Sintra and we’re so happy we had that time. The Pena Palace was definitely the most crowded and tourist site we encountered on our trip. We had 1 pm time slot tickets and were actually running running late since we just got in from Lisbon and needed to drop our things off at our hotel first. We actually got to the Palace past 2 pm and were told to keep going up since they were just getting around to the 1 pm slot. I agree the inside of the palace was ok but it was hard to appreciate the outside grounds since there were so many people. I knew I wanted to go since it was my first time in Sintra and it is a destination for a reason. You wouldn’t go to Rome and not see the Colosseum

After Pena, we went to the Moor Castle and had a great time hiking along the walls. We ended up hiking all the way down to our hotel afterwards. Our second day in Sintra was so much better. We spent the morning at Quinta de Regaleira, lunch in the historical center and then Monserrat Palace in the afternoon. We spent most of our time exploring the gardens (probably 2-3 hours at each garden) and probably 30 min in the actual palaces haha. Both palace grounds were magical and felt like we were in a fairy tale. We really loved our stay in Sintra. I understand the need to try to fit in as many things one can in a trip but if possible, I’d recommend spending more time in this great town.

I went to Pena Palace yesterday with Lisbon Riders. Due to an emergency with one of the tour group members, we missed our 330-4pm window, arriving at the end of the line about 415pm instead. Our guide managed to get us in anyway, skipping the still-present line.

Once inside the royal apartments, it took me 25 shuffling-in-the-line minutes to get through, and that was with some shimmying past the line in places because I just could not take it. I really needed to get out of there. (I dislike crowds and crowded spaces.)

The kitchen, at the end, was cool and is really my only memory of the inside.

The outside of the palace was far more memorable. If I were to go on my own, I might wander the grounds for a couple of hours.

My friends, who went in July, warned me not to bother going inside. I should have listened.

If you go with a tour group as opposed to on your own, will it be the same experience?
I feel like its obligatory to go to Sintra while in Lisbon , but this does not sound fun( very similar to my experience at the Vatican when in Rome) . Very much like a cattle car.

Our Lisbon Riders guide did not enter the palace with us. She got us to the entrance and then we shuffled along inside with everyone. She told us the guides are not allowed to guide their groups through the inside as that would slow things down even more. She met us outside the kitchen - the last interior room - and we continued with her from there.

Just did Pena with opening tickets. Glad I did

Probably worst tourist attraction I've ever been too because of the crowds and the size

Does anyone think that Sintra might have less tourists in November, when we are traveling?!

We did the interior of Peña with our Lisbon riders group also, and I agree it’s very skippable. There wasn’t much of a line to get in late in the afternoon, but I really disliked the slow shuffle thru the rooms once we got inside. The aisles aren’t wide enough to pass people, so you go thru at the speed of the people in front of you. The exterior though is great.

I greatly appreciate your insight on this Sintra visiting. We are heading to the area in mid November and now will definitely skip the into palace option . Instead I will look at the rooms on the Internet and enjoy my day outside enjoying the structure and garden beauties

As an option for a lovely palace interior, I really enjoyed Fronteira Palace and its gardens. The tranquility was lovely after Pena Palace.

I arrived at opening time on a weekday in October and had the gardens to myself until my English tour 30 minutes later. There were 4 of us on the tour.

It's most easily reached by Uber. I took the metro and then walked the 15 or 20 minutes to the palace.

It was too bad about the unpleasant experiences that the original poster (I think that's the term) described, but frankly I don't have a lot of sympathy. I think his main problem is revealed in his opening words, "Did the obligatory Sintra day trip...." I made the delightful discovery, many years ago, that once you get over the idea that any destination is "obligatory," you're a lot less likely to have problems like these.

Thank you for the huge advice as leaving for Lisbon next week. Any thoughts from anyone for Convent of the Capuchos?

Ooh a bike ride. That sounds great!

This is good information! I will be in Lisbon next week and doing a one day side trip to Sintra. Definitely will not do the Pena Palace interior tour. Thanks!

We were just in Sintra today.

We bought our tickets online last night. We were going to just purchase the park only option to Pena Palace, but couldn't find that as an option, so we purchased the ticket that gave us admission to the Palace. The 9:30 time slot was sold out, so we purchased 10:00 entry tickets. We arrived via UBER from our hotel (cheaper and a lot easier than the bus, and this way we could arrive earlier). That ride was perfect. My husband and I are not great at hiking, so we were happy to have time waiting on line to enter the palace to rest from the hike up to the palace. By the time we left, there were barely any lines of people waiting to come into the palace. We were told that the lines seemed shorter than usual. Today is a National Holiday, so if anything I expected it to be more crowded.

One thing someone posted that I found to be incorrect - you cannot walk the terraces of the palace unless you purchase the ticket to go inside. And wait on the lines. Of course, you don't have to go inside, but we found the interior very pretty. And the views from the terraces were great, so we lucked out that we had purchased the park and palace ticket. We ended up not walking the rest of the park - distances and hills were just too great. The palace inside was perfect.

Afterwards we went to Quinta da Regaleira. Again, the grounds are beautiful, but very taxing to do all that walking uphill and downhill. I expected the hiking at Pena Palace, I didn't expect so much at Quinta da Regaleira. Same with Montserrate Palace which we did afterwards. What little of the park grounds I could see were beautiful, but the walk back and forth to the Palace was about all we could manage.

Considering everyone's posts, I guess my expectations were skewed. I definitely enjoyed Pena Palace a lot more than expected. I expected Monserrate Palace to be beautiful, and while the structure was very nice, there were hardly any furnishings which I expected in a palace that I had heard such high praise for.

We tried using Uber for our other transport, but was not very successful. The prices quoted for the uber was reasonable, but they were unreliable. The driver who was supposed to pick us up at Quinta da Regaleira drove right past us, even though we were standing in the street and waving to him. He went to the further entrance, but since it's a one way street, it would have taken him 25 minutes to get back to us, so we took a tuk-tuk. Probably one of our more frightening experiences in our life.