Portugal: The Hotels

Looking for hotels can be a really fun or really frustrating part of a trip. For our Portugal trip, it was fun! There were a ton of options, so it took a bit of time and research to make sure we were ending up somewhere decent, but within budget. Our budgets were low for Portugal (we were shooting for $800 for the 8 nights), and we had no trouble sticking to our budget! We spent more in Lisbon, but were able to make up for the pricier Lisbon hotels with cheaper Lagos, Sintra and Porto hotels. Here's where we stayed and what we thought of each place!

Our room with a balcony at the Hotel Florida in Lisbon!

Porto, Portugal

Capping off our trip to Portugal was a visit to Porto, in the north of the country. We arrived to Porto in the early evening and checked into our hotel, then went exploring for snacks. We stumbled on an amazing little spot for a glass of wine and tapas style appetizers on Rua das Flores called Cantina 32, and spent a lovely hour sitting out on the pedestrian street with glasses of wine and beer and an amazing cheese platter. They also had amazing lemonade and lupini beans! Highly recommended! 

Cheese platter and sausage croquettes - make sure to get extra pumpkin jam!

Visiting the Incredible Quinta Da Regaleira in Sintra, Portugal

While researching Portugal and Sintra, there was one image that popped out to me as something I had to see in person - the Masonic initiation well at Quinta Da Regaleira.

Image from Flickr

I was immediately thrilled and enchanted by the idea of this spot - a winding staircase with moss covered stone walls and hidden passageways... and was determined to find it when we were visiting Sintra.

The Quinta Da Regaleira is beautiful and magical. The entire property is gorgeous - with outstanding park grounds full of paths and tunnels, lakes and grottoes, fountains and structures, including a chapel.

Magical Sintra, Portugal

We decided to stay in Sintra for two nights of our Portugal trip almost on a whim. We wanted to stay somewhere close to Lisbon, but not *in* Lisbon, which made Sintra and Cascais very appealing choices. After I researched the area a bit, we decided on Sintra, since there were a handful of things we wanted to see there: Pena Palace, the Castle of the Moors, the Quinta Da Regaleira, Sintra National Palace, Monserrate Palace and Park... there are some amazing things to check out in Sintra!

 Castle of the Moors, Sintra

I, of course, had way too many things I wanted to see in the one full day that we had in Sintra - especially considering we arrived later in the evening on our first night, and were driving RW to the Lisbon airport halfway through the day. It's ok, though, because we still got an amazing sampling of Sintra, and a return trip is definitely in our future.

Renting A Car & Driving In Portugal

Renting a car in Portugal was easy, and totally worth it. Ok, slight correction - DRIVING in Portugal was easy - the car rental part was a bit of a hassle, but still worth it.

RENTING THE CAR
We started our driving adventure of Portugal in Lisbon. I had researched a few different car rental companies, and had finally settled on a booking with Budget Rental Car, through Expedia's website. Since we were planning on driving pretty extensively throughout the trip, and since RW was going to be traveling with us for half the trip, we ended up with a slightly larger car than we normally would rent in Europe.

Cabo da Roca & Óbidos, Portugal

Cabo da Roca and the little town of Óbidos were two spots in Portugal that I absolutely loved. We visited both spots on the day of our trip dedicated to driving from Sintra up to Porto.

 

Cabo da Roca

TRAVEL TIP: Road travel in Portugal often takes longer than estimated when you're using smaller roads instead of highways. Along our trip from Sintra to Cabo da Roca, we got stuck on a small, winding road behind a large (especially for European standards) RV from Germany. The drive ended up being an adventure in itself, as the couple in the RV actually needed our (and other motorist's) help in a couple of tight spots! Make sure you give yourself plenty of drive time, especially if you're going on a tour or have a reservation somewhere!

Off The Beaten Path in Portugal

One of the things we like the most about exploring a new place is checking out places that are along our journey from one place to another.

Hitting the road - and using an actual map rather than GPS!

Knowing we like to do this, we planned basically an entire day each for the drives between the Algarve and Sintra, and from Sintra to Porto, even though we'd spaced out our overnights so we never had more than about 200 miles to drive each day.

Taruga Tours: Benagil Cave Tours in the Algarve, Portugal

As I started to write about the Algarve, Portugal, I realized there was really an entire post's worth of what I wanted to write about the awesome tour we took to see the sea caves off the coast. At least, there's an entire post worth's of photos to share!

I actually learned about this tour originally from Pinterest - I found this amazing pin of a gorgeous sea cave in the Algarve that I immediately wanted to visit.

The cave photo that made me want to do a tour!

Algarve, Portugal

Next up on our Portugal itinerary was part of the southern coast of Portugal know as the Algarve region. It's the most popular tourist destination in Portugal, so, of course, we debated long and hard on if we should go, as we tend to like off-the-beaten path places a bit more. But, we were going slightly off season, and there's also a very Moroccan/African/Arabic influence in the Algarve, which we wanted to see. Plus, it boasts gorgeous beaches and coastlines, along with the first ever navigational school, Prince Henry's School of Navigation, in Sagres (established in 1418), so we ended up deciding to spend a few nights in the region.

Panoramic view of the Sagres coastline.

Lisbon, Portugal

Lisbon was both the first and last stop on our tour of Portugal in October 2015. (Itinerary HERE!) 

We didn't spend a ton of time in Lisbon, as we wanted to check out as much of the country as possible... so we had a half day in Lisbon the day we landed, and another half day when we returned from Porto. We will definitely return to Lisbon to check out more of the city, as what we did see of the city was fantastic.

Panorama of Lisbon from one of the many view points.

8 Nights in Portugal: An Overview

When hubby and I started planning our trip to Portugal last October, we changed our itinerary about a half dozen times. We knew we had 8 nights, but there was so much we wanted to see!

 Landing in Lisbon

We went back and forth - should we do four nights each in Lisbon and Porto, with accompanying day trips and exploring from each base? Should we work our way around the country with a night in each location? How hard would it be to incorporate a quick overnight to Gibraltar and Morocco? In the end, we decided this hopefully wouldn't be our only trip to Portugal, but we wanted to get a small taste of different parts. We settled on two nights each in Lisbon, Lagos, Sintra and Porto, with the nights in Lisbon book-ending the rest.

Someday, I'll catch up.

Wow. So things have been absolutely insane over the last few years. We've been doing our fair share of traveling, and I've been very neglectful of writing about it!

What have we been up to the last couple years?

2013:
I made a New Year's resolution to do at minimum a small trip every month, and I did pretty well! Not only did we do some really fun weekend trips, including a road trip to Arizona, and a quick overnight trip to Savannah while I was in Atlanta for work, but we also snuck Europe in there in October when I went to a business conference in Cannes. Hubby and I tacked on London, Bruges, and Paris to Cannes, and it was really fun.

Bruges, Belguim, October 2013