Sintra - A True Delight of Culture and History
Sintra is an old hilly town filled with numerous castles and palaces (we even got to stay in a hotel converted from an old palace!). We spent our first day in Sintra exploring the exuberant and whimsical playground at Quinta da Regaleira. The website doesn't quite do this place justice but Tripadvisor surely gives it two thumbs up. We were also lucky to see a temporary exhibition on site of its designer, Luigi Manini, a talented Portuguese architect/artist.
Luigi Manini, is not a well-known artist outside Portugal so we couldn't find much info about him on the internet. The exhibition we saw showcased many of his meticulous design drawings of Quinta da Regaleira. The most fun part was to match up his design drawings with the actual buildings and objects still present today. For example, here is a design drawing of the intricate door knob. Those drawings were so good that we wanted to buy them (but of course couldn't afford to). Instead, we got this Luigi Manini book from the exhibition which included many beautiful photos of his works. We wish they had an English version of the book though!