Lisbon Porto:Fewest accommodation moves

Hi,
Lisbon is a good base location for day trips to Evora,Obidos & Tomar. Buses would get you closer to the city center, trains are good too but Evoras train station in about 20 minutes to the center of town. Bus is best to Obidos. I would check Get Your Guide for small bus tours. BTW - Sintra has the Obidos Ginjinja with the chocolate cups all over town.

Sintra for three nights is great. A helpful TI (tourists information)in town, you can buy tickets for sights there. I would taxi to the Pena Palace with tickets in hand arriving by 9am, also you need a shuttle ticket once in, buy at the gift shop. Local buses good for the rest of Sintra.
Porto is easy by train to Coimbra as a day trip. In Porto I took the tram (2) , funicular(4) & bus 500 (1), otherwise I walked.
Warning:mosaic sidewalks beautiful but slippery like ice when wet, good traction shoes a must.
Self-catering = AirBNB May be good choice for you. Also “hostels” have suites with private bathrooms, usually shared kitchens & sometimes private apartments. Some also have day trips for their guests with transportation too.
I love Portugal, Enjoy

Three nights in Sintra are a bit much. You can do the two main site in a full day.

To vist Evora, take a day trip from Lisbon.
On your way to Porto, stop at Batalia Cathedral, Obidos and Navarre.

Porto is special, we spent two nights there at a great B&B, the InPatio Guesthouse, it was wonderful. We did a week long Douro river cruise. If you don't want to do that, take the train that runs right next to the river or at least a short day cruise from Porto.

We did a great day trip to Santiago de Compostela in Spain from Porto. We used Viator to book the tour.

Thank you Pab for the great tips & connections to the towns & cities we are interested in seeing. I looked at ‘Get Your Guide’ and there are some interesting bus tours. A trip to Portugal seems easy to manage without a car.
We will check out AirBNB for the self-catering apartments & hostels. We sixty-year olds have never stayed in a hostel before but having a private apartment may be fine. That could be a new adventure!

Thanks geovagriffith for the tips. I like the idea of stopping along the way to Porto to see the sites but we would have our luggage but I suppose each train station would have lockers we could use while we tour.
The cruise or train ride along the Douro sounds like a beautiful way to enjoy the river. We have used B & B’s in the past but are hoping for self-catering as one of the travellers has some food intolerances so cooking many of our meals works well. I will check out the tour to Spain!

Sintra is a beautiful place, and spending nights there will definitely facilitate being at one or more of the palaces early, but since you mentioned wanting to reduce the number of lodging changes, I want to be sure you're aware that Lisbon and Sintra are only about 20 miles apart. I wouldn't burn one of my preferred three lodgings at a place so very close to Lisbon.

By comparison, you are considering these much more distant day-trips:

Lisbon-Evora: 80 miles one-way
Porto-Obidos: 140 miles one-way (Lisbon-Obidos is just over 50 miles)
Porto-Tomar: 120 miles one-way (Lisbon-Tomar is 80 miles)
Porto-Coimbra: 70 miles one-way

Decades ago I was able to find a one-day bus tour that took me to Obidos, Nazare (I think) and Batalha. There may have been a fourth town. I usually prefer to make my way around by bus and train, but a bus tour like that can allow you to hit several smaller places in one day, which is usually not possible by public bus and train. Obidos is quite small; you can zoom in on Google Maps and use the map key to see the size of the historic district, which is roughly 0.4 miles by 0.2 miles. The town also gets blasted by bus tours, so it is likely to be very crowded. A short visit may be sufficient for you. Alternatively, seeing it on the way north would work well from a timing perspective if you can finesse the luggage situation.

You can check distances and approximate driving times between your target destinations (allowing for no stops, no getting lost, etc.) on ViaMichelin.com.

I find the Deutsche Bahn website the easiest to use when I am checking train schedules, but it will not show you fares for Portuguese trains.

One addition to the hostels. The Portuguese Camino to Santiago de Compostela has a beginning point from Lisbon & goes through Porto which a lot of Pilgrims also use as a starting point. Hostels are not what you may think of say Amsterdam or Berlin, not youth hostels. They are very age friendly with shared kitchen. I am 60+ and have stayed in them on various Camino walks in Spain & Portugal but only in private rooms, I also prefer to have my own bathroom too. Check out in Lisbon Good Morning Hostel- they have an apartment & the Passenger Hostel in Porto has a suite with a private bathroom. Just two for you to look at, there are many more. Still check out AirBNB too, I’ve had good luck with them too.

We will take the distances you have charted into consideration when planning our route & stays, acraven. We may need to consider being further north rather than Sintra.

We hope to take in a bus tour to combine some of the towns as you had done. Thank you also for the links especially the google map showing Obidos. A brief visit may be best with busy tour buses around.
I had forgotten about viamichelin.com as I have used it in the past. I have been checking out Rome2rio.com for some of the distances & public transit info.

Thanks, Pab for the info on the hostels. Both look clean, modern & you are right, not what I would have thought would be the typical hostel. They are in wonderful locations too.