The first of Sintra's many palaces that you're likely to spot is the one which shares its name. The Palácio Nacional de Sintra is located in the dead center of town, and everything else seems to radiate around and outward from the castle. Actually, that's probably exactly how Sintra developed.
I wouldn't have guessed it before arriving, but a big part of our Lisbon experience has had to do with tiles. They cover the facades of the city's buildings, decorate its churches and palaces, and are even the subject of a popular museum. So it seemed natural to visit a workshop, where they're still being made the old-fashioned way. The family who runs the Cerâmica São Vicente was kind enough to invite us inside and introduce us to their craft.
You probably wouldn't think that Lisbon's Military Museum would be anything special. Nobody ever talks about it, and it hardly appears in travel guides. You'll never find it on a "Best of Lisbon" list. So when we showed up on a lazy day during which we had nothing else to do, our expectations were low. But this turned out to be a major surprise; in fact, it was one of the coolest museums we saw during our time in the city.
One of Lisbon's most popular museums is the Museu Nacional do Azulejo, which introduces visitors to the history of Portuguese tiles within the confines of 16th century convent. Tiles feature in just about every one of our pictures of Lisbon, so we were excited to learn more about them.