retreat into nature

This friday i went on a tour thru Sintra with Ana, a nice portuguese girl from my school here. And she really proved herself as a wordy guide i must say. I felt like time had come to leave the city behind and retreat into a color pallet of greens for a few hours. So she took me on a tour thru this amazing, yet seemingly undiscovered part of Portugal. It's really, really different from everything else i saw here, it's so quiet, so calm and peacefull. Never thought that a bunch of threes and leaves could still impress me this much, but it did. The area was once the residence of the kings of Portugal and of the Moorish lords of Lisbon before them. Now this magical place is dominated by steep mountains and lush forests which creates a micro- climate, always several degrees cooler than in Lisbon. And ofcourse i took some pictures again, but i couldn't really make a selection , so i'm just putting nearly everything online.