Sintra or Sintra - Cascais Private Tour

We had an excellent day with Maria as our tour guide. We traveled with our toddler and she even arrived with a car seat. She was knowledgeable but not too pushy. There was so much to see and she was so flexible to go at our pace. It started raining at our visit to the Pena Palace and she was so accommodating as we decided to leave early. It was easily our best day during our stay in Lisbon. I would highly recommend this tour to anyone staying in Lisbon! I can’t imagine it could get much better!!!

Firstly we want to say that Sintra is beautiful and definitely worth a visit. We saw both the Pena palace and the Quinta da Regaleira. Both were absolutely gorgeous and situated on beautiful grounds for exploring and trekking. The negative review is for the tour company. Our guide, Pepa (Filipa), was very friendly and drove well. Aside from that, nothing else was right. We were expecting a guided tour with explanations of the history/ background of the sites but instead we were dropped off at the entrances and had to enter and explore on our own. The parks are very big and many times we were unable to find points of interest therefore losing a lot of time wandering around. In between the two parks we were driven to the beach for lunch at a very nice establishment. For a casual relaxing day we’d enjoy this beautiful restaurant but it took us more than two hours because the service was very slow. On top of that Pepa made reservations for us as she comes there a lot with all her customers yet when we’re arrived at 1:30 we were given a table in the hot scorching sun. We asked for an umbrella in which there were two unused ones about 25 yards away. The waiter told us no we couldn’t use them. Thinking that maybe they were broken we try to make do with our situation - asking if we could shift our table a bit to make use of a nearby umbrella. When Pepa arrived (after parking the vehicle) she saw our situation and went to ask the waiter to get us an umbrella. Again she was told no. Ten minutes later some other guests came sat down at a table with no umbrella and we saw the waiter brought the umbrella over to this new group. We then complained to the waiter, he finally grudgingly brought the second umbrella to us. Why weren’t we given it in the first place, specially since Pepa comes here almost everyday with customers? The food was very good but we ended up paying more than €200 for our group of 6! Did we need to spend so much on lunch for a day of sightseeing? The “tour” itself already cost us €330 for nothing more than a glorified Uber service. The drive home was passed through Cascais - just that - driving through what was explained as a Beverly Hills of Lisbon - rich area of beautiful homes. No further explanation of who lived where or any celebrity in particular was mentioned. So over all it was beautiful to visit but we could’ve done the trip on a bus/train or even Uber for a lot less money on our own. Bottom line is stay away from Viator in Lisbon!!!

Our guide Danilo was very friendly, informative, and punctual. We were traveling with our 2-year old son, and before the trip we weren't sure whether our son would be fussy during the day trip. However Danilo was very friendly and patient with kids, and our son liked him immediately. We really enjoyed our day trip! My only suggestion for improvement is the child car seat should be installed in the car prior to picking up the guests, instead of trying to figure out how to install the seat after meeting the guests.

This private tour was everything we expected and then some. The added bonus was our guide Tomas. He was genuine, knowledgeable, and personable.