Today was to be an easy riding day, 20km around the coast to Cascais and then inland to Estoril before another 20 km to Sintra for a day of sightseeing.

Sintra is a resort town in the foothills of Portugal's Sintra Mountains and is not far from Estoril, or Lisbon for that matter. Accommodation in Sintra and nearby Cascais was hard to find at a reasonable price so we settled on a great hotel in Estoril for the night. To our delight, we have a view out our hotel window of the Autodromo do Estoril or Circuito Estoril where World Superbikes compete and MotoGP used to race until 2012.

Today we dropped our luggage off at the hotel and then set out to explore Sintra at Chris's recommendation. The town is hilly and was very busy - bloody tourists! Sintra is known for its fairytale palaces, beautiful gardens, ancient castles and many Heritage listed buildings and hills. Still in our riding gear, boots and all, we trudged up the cobbled paths to the historic centre to start our visit.

First stop was the tourist bureau hoping to get a bit of information on how to avoid walking up the hills to see the sights - no such luck, everything worth seeing was at the top of a very steep hill. On our first hill was the Sintra National Palace distinguished by two cone-shaped chimneys and beautiful tilework. We decided not visit the interior as we had more hills to climb. We wandered around the narrow streets which were crowded with art and craft shops. Most of them were selling tiles with detailed patterns and cork articles including handbags and jewellery.

While walking down a small hill to have a look at the Town Hall we spied a town bus that would take us on a circuit around Sintra to view two other landmarks at the top of very high hills. After parting with 7 Euro each we boarded the bus which was already crowded. The bus wound its way up the hills on narrow roads, around switchbacks and crowded with Tuk Tuks taking tourists to the same destination - we were really glad that we were on the bus, not the bikes as the traffic was mad!

The Moorish Castle is a military fort built around the 10th century by the Muslim populations that occupied this area and served as an outpost for the city of Lisbon. We paid our entry fee and walked into the forested area to see the remains of the castle. We walked passed the silos which were carved out of the rock to store cereals. We walked through the castle walls and in to Arms Square, the largest area of the castle. Chris walked up to the top of the Royal Tower while Greg and I sat in the shade preserving our energy! The castle is very well preserved and we could easily see why people were keen to explore it.

We walked back to the entrance of the Moorish Castle intending to visit Pena Palace. When we discovered it was another 650m up the hill we decided to hire a Tuk Tuk to drive us up - 2.5 Euro each well spent. The queue to get in to the Pena Palace was quite long so we joined the queue to get the bus back down to Sintra Centre. The photo in the album of Pena Palace is a cheat one taken from one of the postcards in the tourist shops. Once back in town we made our way back to the bikes - luckily it was a downhill walk on cobbled steps.

Greg and I rode back to our hotel while Chris went to visit Cabo da Roca, the most westerly point on the European mainland - not on our list to visit.

Tomorrow we start to ride back towards Spain for the next part of our trip.