Fatima

We went to Fatima for a few hours on our Rick Steves Portugal tour in fall 2017. I'm not religious - and my husband and kids are Jewish. While I did find it interesting to watch people crawl on their knees down a very long aisle to the altar (since this was totally foreign to me), the town itself was very touristy, the restaurants were not interesting, and we ended up buying fruit and yogurt at a market and sitting on a bench for most of our short stay there.

Define worth. What are your interests? What do you expect to find/see in Fátima?

I grew up in a parish dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima, so felt fairly obligated to go when I was "in the neighborhood." In my experience, enjoyment is almost entirely predicated on your own faith in the local history. (Also, Catholics from different parts of the world can have different attitudes towards crawling on knees; it's a pretty foreign concept in Seattle.) Otherwise, you just see big churches, one from the 20th Century and one finished in 2007 (after I was there). If you're driving, it's probably an easy stop. If you're making a special bus trip, it may not be "worth it."

Thanks for everyone's input - we are driving so will probably swing by Fatima

We visited Fatima. I am not religious and my sense was that it wasn't worth the stop unless you are Catholic.

We did a couple of daytrip bus tours from Lisbon that covered three to five attractions. We found them convenient (this is before GPS) and avoided renting a car until our departure for Coimbra and Porto, where we returned the car. Anyway, one of the trips included Fatima, and we saw Bom Jesu with the car, as well as a Knights Templar castle (in Tomar), which counts as a Catholic sight.

I don't think personal faith need enter into the choice at all. I'm (very) distantly half-Catholic, but my interest was purely World History and so on. (Would I have skipped the Vatican while in Rome?) I will say that Fatima and Bom Jesu are both rather "modern-looking", so I had no vision of tired pilgrims in rags. But I'm not sorry we went. And visiting Fatima "at bus tour speed", usually disdained here, was a plus. (I don't really remember, but I'm sure we had at least 40 minutes "free time" after the guide gave us the spiel.)

Thanks - good to know about Knights Templar castle