Private tours in Lisbon & surroundings
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Program
Pick up at your Hotel and proceed to one of the coziest gardens in Portugal: the cold green house in Eduardo VII park. This
is a real green museum where plants and flowers from the five continents grow harmoniously together under a huge planked
roof that beautifully regulates the air temperature and the intensity of light. It has an area of about 16000 square meters and
includes a Hot greenhouse for tropical plants, a sweet Greenhouse for fat plants.
Not far we have the biggest botanical garden of Lisbon. Covering 10 acres and laid out between 1858 and 1873, it was once
considered the best botanical garden in Southern Europe. Today it still has one of the largest collections of subtropical
vegetation in Europe. Its dense vegetation and exotic plants make it one of the most calming spots in the city, with over
18,000 species from all over the world (each one is neatly labeled). They include a large number of cycads, weird Australian
trees with twisting colossal trunks, and ancient palm-ferns that have been around since the time of the dinosaurs.
Close by is the Port wine Institute where you can try one of the 1000 different Port wine brands!
Let’s go to Sintra to have lunch in one of the many good and typical restaurants and visit Pena park. The Pena Park is a
vast forested area completely surrounding the Pena Palace, spreading for over 200 hectares of uneven terrain. The exotic
taste of the Romanticism was applied to the park as it was to the palace. The king ordered trees from diverse, distant lands
to be planted there. Those included North American Sequoia, Lawson's Cypress, Magnolia and Western Redcedar, Chinese
Ginkgo, Japanese Cryptomeria, and a wide variety of ferns and tree ferns from Australia and New Zealand, concentrated in
the Queen's Fern Garden (Feteira da Rainha). The park has a labyrinthic system of paths and narrow roads, connecting the
palace to the many points of interest throughout the park, as well as to its two gated exits.
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Still in Sintra we’ll visit Monserrate gardens. Marvellous, rambling, partly wild, Monserrate Park is a romantic 30-hectare garden. The wooded hillsides
feature a vast range of exotic flora, from roses and conifers to Chinese weeping cypress, dragon trees, eucalyptus, Himalayan rhododendrons and more than
24 species of palm. The gardens were created in the 18th century. In the 1850s, they were enlarged by the painter William Stockdale (with help from
London's Kew Gardens), who imported many plants from Australasia and Mexico. At the heart of the gardens is a Moorish-inspired Monserrate Palace.
Sintra mountain is itself a natural park with hundreds of different species covering the narrow and twisted roads that your guide will be glad to show you.
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...Lisbon’s history dates back to 300,000 years ago and ranks as one of the world's longest founded cities. As the
legend tells, it is a city founded and named by Ulysses, which has its origins in the Phoenician words "Allis
Ubbo", meaning "enchanting port". Lisbon was a battlefield for Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians,
however it was Romans who started their two-century reign in Lisbon in 205 BC. In 714, the Moors arrived and
stayed till the 12th century. In the 13th century, Lisbon became the capital of Portugal. The 15th century was the
point of departure for the Portuguese Discoveries, an era during which Portugal enjoyed abundant wealth and
prosperity through its newly discovered off shore colonies in Africa, the Americas and Asia. Today, Lisbon still
maintaining the marks of its early history, is one of the most beautiful capitals of Europe...
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... Described by Lord Byron as “Glorious Eden,” Sintra’s charms have long been celebrated. Once the summer residence
of the kings and Moorish lords, today Sintra is a romantic getaway for people from all around the world. Inhabited since the
pre-history period and by Celts and the Romans who called this area “The Mountain of the Moon”. In the 8th to 9th
century, Muslims built a castle here. During Medieval times, the Portuguese royal family, overflowing with the pomp and
riches from their colonial triumphs abroad, first came here to escape the heat (and stench) of the summer in Lisbon.
Beginning in the 14th century, the Portuguese aristocrats followed the royals to Sintra, a dwelling place for hunting and
relaxing. Stormy and mysterious, the mountain is covered by more than 1000 different species of plants. Several artists from
different countries came here to work, inspired in the beauty of this place, extolling its beauty: “The Garden of Paradise”,
“Garden of Europe”, “Glorious Eden”…
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