Helena Duarte

I am a botanist. For nine years I worked in the gardens of Parques de Sintra, mainly at Monserrate and in Pena Park, restoring plant collections that had been abandoned for most of the twentieth century. Sintra is known for its palaces, and rightly so, but the reason the Romantics came here was the climate and the forest: fog from the Atlantic, ferns from New Zealand, camellias from Japan, cork oaks older than any building on the hill. My tours are for people who want to walk and look closely. I also offer an afternoon in Colares, where the vines grow in sand and the wine is unlike anything else in Portugal. I speak Portuguese, English and German. I guide live on video now, walking Sintra with my phone and answering your questions in real time.