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Misc. September 2023 Portugal Tips and Stories.

Posted by (Vancouver, BC, Canada) on

We returned from 2 weeks in Portugal. We were three couples and spent four nights in Porto, five nights in Lisbon and four nights in Lagos. Here are some miscellaneous tips and stories from our trip.

  1. Use Bolt to get around in Portugal. This was my first experience using a ride share app. I have always resisted using Uber because it is a direct competitor to a taxi company client that I do work for. Since Bolt only operates in Europe, I rationalized that there would be no conflict of interest. It was so convenient to go door to door rather than walk up and down hills to get to metro stations, and wait for transfers. For 4 to 6 people, it is usually cheaper and faster to take a bolt than to use public transportation. For example, going from our Lisbon condo to and from the front entrance of the Pena Palace €35 and €25 respectively for a Bolt XL for six people. For comparison, the circuit bus that goes from the Sintra train station and the Pena Palace costs €10 per person. Bolt was consistently cheaper compared to Uber which was used by one of our companions. Tip: Use a credit card instead of Google pay as the form of bolt payment in the app and also enable the email promotions. By doing so, I was getting 40% off each ride up to €10 per ride.

  2. Start your Lisbon Tram 28 ride from Campo de Ourique and end in Martim Moniz. Most tourists do the reverse and the line-up at MM is huge. Buy your Via Viagem card beforehand (otherwise it is a 20 minute walk to the nearest metro, or you pay more than double, €3, by cash or credit card on the tram. It is worth it to wait 10 minutes for next tram in order to get a window seat. By the same token, if you don't mind standing up, you can skip the whole line-up in order to fill up any available standing room on the tram just before it leaves.

  3. Sit on the right side for better views and photo opps, for almost everything. This was true for Tram 28 (if start from Campo de Ourique), the Miradouro train from Porto to Douro valley or the grotto boat cruise in Lagos. For Douro or Lagos, you get the same views on the left on the return trips. However in the case of Douro, you will be so hot and tired (no ac on the train), and you will be bored of looking at the terraced vineyards by the end of the day. And in the case of Lagos, the boat speeds home on the return trip and you'll be bouncing in your seats.

  4. Book a Douro valley winery tour before going to Pinhao. You can't just walk up and get admission, at least not the walkable near by vineyards.

  5. If you book timed tickets for Livaria Lello in Porto on their website, it will keep showing your country of origin as Afghanistan (at least for me and everybody else in the time entry lineup in September). Just push through the ticket buying process and you will eventually get your ticket. PS. If you are an elderly feeble French woman, with no English or Portuguese and are unable to operate a smartphone to buy online tickets, the LL staff will feel sorry for you and let you bypass the whole timed entry line-up.

  6. I could not buy online tickets for the Bolsa Palace in Porto. We just showed up at the door and bought tickets for the next available English guided tour. We then went to the nearby Urban Market to sit on the terrace to enjoy a lemonade and a view of the park in Palace.

  7. ... which brings me to my last story of this post. My wife and I were enjoying our lemonades on the Urban Market terrace while waiting 40 minutes for our timed entry. As our timed entry approached, I went to check on the tickets when I realized that my fanny pack was missing. My fanny pack contained everything: passport, wallet, driver's license, credit cards, all my cash. I had left it hanging on the toilet roll dispenser of the men's toilet when I first went into the Urban Market. I ran back in to the men's washroom. Lucky for me it was still hanging there after 40 minutes and nothing was missing.

Maxed out on post ...

Posted by
14604 posts

Holy cow! I hope you bought some kind of lottery ticket when you found your fanny pack still there! Wow....you were so very lucky!

And laughed about the staff feeling sorry for a very elderly person....

Thanks for the update! It sounds like you had a wonderful time!

Posted by
1289 posts

Wanna talk driving in Portugal?

  1. Try out ZestCarRental.com before you book. They have stellar reviews on Google, TripAdvisor etc. Before booking, I emailed Zest several times and they responded very quickly. They are a UK consolidator and they work with local Portuguese rental companies to get lower prices and features, like free cancellation, no CDW deductible coverage and free second drivers, etc. You pay the car rental fee to Zest, and the local charges like a drop off fee if you are picking up and dropping off in a different city plus a deposit for the toll transponder upon pickup. When I picked up the car in Lisbon, the local car rental company tacked on an extra €15 to drop off at Faro airport on top of the agreed €100 Zest drop off fee. After the trip I emailed Zest and they refunded the €15 to me.

  2. For Canadian and American newbies, it is not necessary to pay for an international driving permit. Your home driver's license is sufficient.

  3. Also for newbies, most rental cars in Europe are manual. Finding an automatic is rare and more expensive.

  4. Wikipedia has a good article on traffic signs in Portugal. It is good idea to familiarize yourself before your trip.

  5. During our longer Bolt rides, I talked up the drivers to get driving tips. However, because of language difficulties I still could not figure out if Portugal has photo radar or timed speeding areas like in Italy. I will just have to wait a few months to see if I get a speeding ticket.

  6. We use Google maps. A bolt driver recommended Waze which has the benefit of showing the speed limit on each road. My navigator used both.

  7. Four of us rented the car from Lisbon and kept it for 3 days before dropping it off in FAO from where we flew home. From a cost point of view it was a wash compared to taking a train from Lisbon to Lagos, renting a car for say two days in the Algarve and then taking a transfer from Lagos to Faro.

  8. The one benefit was that we got to drive over the Vasco da Gama bridge and make a stop in Evora to have lunch and to visit the Chapel of Bones on our way to Lagos. On the other hand, there was a flipped truck on our driving route and the detour added an extra hour of driving.

  9. Unless you go out of your way to get a photo viewpoint of the Vasco da Gama bridge, you only have a few seconds to take a nice picture of the support spans just as you enter the bridge from Lisbon. The rest of the 10 km is a boring long and low bridge. So have your navigator-co-pilot ready with their camera.

  10. In retrospect, it was possible to not have a car while in Lagos for only three nights. We made use of the car by driving to the lighthouse at Sao Vicente, lunch in Salema and lunch in Albufeira and they were okay. However, I could have easily spent all three days exploring just Lagos. As it was, other than walking the old town, I only had time to run to and explore Ponta da Piedade. There were so many other viewpoints and beaches in and around Lagos that went unexplored. You cannot see everything unless you have unlimited time and money.

  11. The car toll transponder is a necessity. You just drive through the tolls and the transponder will beep. I'm still waiting for the final toll bill from the car rental company.

  12. I got lots of practice driving roundabouts in the Algarve. Tip: Only put on your right turn signal when you specifically want to exit the roundabout! If you intend to exit the second third or fourth exit in the roundabout, you should actually put on your left turn signal to let other drivers know that you intend to continue around the roundabout. It irks me when drivers don't signal at all and you have no idea what they are intending. However, the dangerous drivers are the ones that put on the right turn signal just before they enter the roundabout and then proceed to drive 3/4 around the roundabout before finally exiting. An accident waiting to happen.

Posted by
1017 posts

Thank you for all your tips. Leaving for Portugal next week. I planned on using Uber, but based on your report, I am going to download and use the Bolt app.

Posted by
1289 posts

I suggest that you sign up and activate the bolt app while still in US and you still have access to texting. Bolt needs to send an activation code by text to your phone before it can be used.

Another caveat is that your credit card may put a hold on your card and require that you verify that Bolt is a legitimate charge. I probably could have avoided this by setting up the payment method on the app before I left Canada.

IIRC, Bolt will usually charge €1 on your credit card to verify and then reverse the charge. Funny thing is that the verification did not take place until after two or three rides at which point MasterCard put a hold on my credit card.

Fortunately, I had bought an Orange Travel eSim which allowed me to call and text, including some limited international minutes and texts. I was able to telephone my credit card and resolve the issue in about 15 minutes.

Posted by
663 posts

Start your Lisbon Tram 28 ride from Campo de Ourique and end in Martim Moniz. Most tourists do the reverse and the line-up at MM is huge. Buy your Via Viagem card beforehand (otherwise it is a 20 minute walk to the nearest metro, or you pay more than double, €3, by cash or credit card on the tram. It is worth it to wait 10 minutes for next tram in order to get a window seat. By the same token, if you don't mind standing up, you can skip the whole line-up in order to fill up any available standing room on the tram just before it leaves.

I 100% endorse this. I got a prized window seat with no effort, no queue. I was thinking of taking it back the other way as well, until I saw the queue at Martim Moniz, which was several tram-loads long.

Posted by
406 posts

Sign up for Bolt before you leave your home country. I tried signing up in Portugal and got nothing but error messages. Investigation showed that I was not allowed to sign up in Portugal.

Posted by
1289 posts

BTW, Orange Holiday eSIM (€19.99, 14 days, 12 GB, unlimited calls and texts in Europe, 30 minutes calls 200 texts international) worked great in Portugal (and in stopovers in the UK and Spain).

Never underestimate the ability to make a phone call, which you cannot do with many esims including Airolo.

I used my phone to make restaurant reservations, requests to the condo manager and inquiries with attractions and tours. I also had to call back to Mastercard in Canada when a hold got put on my card.

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