Tuesday morning broke sunny. Monday was the last of the rainy, cloud-covered skies for the trip. Original forecasts had us not getting any sun till Thursday, so we took the two extra days of the bright yellow thing in the sky as a weather bonus.
I had pre-bought tickets to three landmarks, Pena Palace, the Castle of the Moors, and Monserrate Palace. So, on our way out of town, we drove the back roads to Monserrate. In 2019 on our Barcelona trip, (oh, you didn't know we spent a month in Barcelona? Let me tell you all about it! Editor: No, Glen, no!) we spent most of a day at the famous Benedictine monastery high in the mountains outside of Barcelona, named, of course, Monserrat.
Monserrate Palace is the lesser known of the three Monserrats that I know of in the world, but it was still pretty amazing. Only a handful of tourists were there -- early November post-COVID turned out to be a great time to travel. Called a "masterpiece of Romanticism" by the people who market it (to be fair, it is best if they are enthusiastic about the place), it is in the lower hills outside of Sintra.
We had a GPS fail on our way there, as my iPhone took us to the service entrance. We were able to find our way to the main entrance via GPS, but the two entrances are two miles apart, two miles of windy, narrow roads.
A small chapel on the sight was built circa 1093. A bigger chapel was then built on the ruins starting in 1540. A farmhouse was also built but, as you guessed, it was abandoned after the earthquake of 1755. A new house was built by an Englishman starting in 1789. Lord Byron visited in 1809, and gave the place a shoutout in his book, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."
An English merchant bought the property in the mid-1800s and had work begun on the palace. The building layout is very cool -- it is linear, with both end of the house built up high. The middle is the widest part of the house, and has a series of rooms like spokes of a wheel off the circular middle. There are rooms tucked off the lower hallways.
The Cook family lived here through World War Two, when it was bought in 1949 by the Portuguese government. There is a short film from 2015 featuring an older gentleman who grew up in the house as the son of the manager of the Palace. That was really interesting. . .a window into a different time and a different way of life.
The park and gardens surrounding Monserrat are stunning their natural beauty. The long walk downhill to it (and a different route back up) afforded us many beautiful trees, plants, and flowers. It's not as stunning as Pena Palace, nor as bludgeon-y as National Palace, but there is a quiet fascination that stems from the place.
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