To Sintra, Coimbra and back again!

Wow, all I can say is wow. I am exhausted and can barely function right now. This weekend has been packed full of travel and sightseeing. Starting on thursday we went to Sintra. We actually got there early so we could explore this place called Quinta da Regaleira. It is basically just a huge palace and the grounds of that palace. The palace itself is just ok compared to others I have seen but the grounds are like nothing I have ever explored. First of all it is huge and there is so much to explore but there are these tunnels underground that follow this natural spring that is just amazing. Something I have noticed with all these old places is the ability to channel natural water. They were masters at this and it is so cool to see how they were able to do so. But these almost caves went on forever and you could just keep exploring. It was just a lot of fun to see these well kept grounds and just explore. There were also these very extravagant wells that must have had other purposes but just looked stunning and went deep into the ground. This was probably my favorite place of everywhere I have been in Portugal.

After that we met up with Joao and from there he took us to the famous Pena Palace, which also had some amazing grounds to explore and an amazing palace. As well as the Castle of the Moors. Both places were very cool and would highly recommend. It was very cool to see how the Castle of the Moors changed hands from empire to empire through time and to see the different cultural influences there. Overall, Sintra is a beautiful city with so much to do. I would highly recommend spending at least two days there to just explore and hike the amazing and beautiful places there.

Friday we had shadowing again because we didn't go thursday but nothing too special happened. I just watched some more echograms and most of the doctors left early on friday anyways. But after shadowing we all (Josh, Parker, Trip and I) took the train to Coimbra, a very old (started around 1290) university town. The train took a good 3 hours to get there because it is pretty far north from where we are staying. But after the long train ride we explored the night life there and actually went to a cool free concert that was there because of the holiday (Children's Day). It was a lot of fun and we got some good food. The next day we woke up early and went to the famous library, and science museums of the university. Both were very cool but I would highly recommend the life sciences museum at the university. I feel like it was very underrated but had some incredible things and actually takes up a good bit of time. One mistake we did make was waking up early because our train didn't leave till 8 that night so we found ourselves looking for more things to do. Coimbra is a very small city and you do not need more than a day to explore it all.

Today, we woke up early for a cool European multi stake conference that the church held. Elder Uchtdorf spoke and honestly all four talks were very inspirational and made me want to change some things in my day to day life in order to be a true follower of christ. I really enjoyed conference. But after that I came home and crashed for about three hours and than prepared for the week. Overall a very exciting a fun week full of awesome food and great adventures. If there is one thing I have learned it is to budget your time more wisely and make sure you have every hour accounted for or else you will find you wasted more time than you wanted to.