Down the Initiation Well
Today we went on a tour of Sintra with a company called "We Hate Tourism Tours" - apparently famous in Russia for some exploits with a russian television programme. There was a young lady from Moscow on the tour who was really excited and had booked it on the strength of that. I think Heather just booked it because of the name, or possibly because someone recommended it to her. It was a great tour though, and one of the really great things was it took us to Quinta da Regaleira, a palace in Sintra with amazing landscape gardens with caves and towers and so forth.
The photo is looking down an "Initiation Well" - basically an inverted tower, about six stories deep, which had exits to caves at two points on the way down. One of the caves at the bottom came out behind a waterfall and then there were stepping stones across a large pond to get back onto the paths. A truly fantastical place, and it's great that it is now owned and operated by the local government in Sintra so that it won't full further into ruin as so many mansions in the area do seem to be doing.