The purpose of the trip is primarily religious pilgrimage to Fatima and other historical religious sites in Portugal. This is our first trip to Portugal
We love to spend time getting to know towns (big and small), especially coastal sites, and also natural wonders (lakes, mountains)..but we don't want to overdo it with too many places to visit in a short time.
Let's say we are lax but intense travelers who like to get a full, deep taste of where we visit.
Ideas of where to go? Special guide books? Special lodges or hotels? Train vs. car rental?
Posted by
Ashburn VA
1028 posts
It's easy to spend most of a day at Fatima if you want a really deep dive--we did. Actually, you can spend 20 minutes walking from the parking lot to the church. What other historical religious sites are you planning to visit and how far are they spread out? Does your 5-7 day itinerary include travel days? In other words, are days 5 and 7 travel days, with arrival on day 1 and departure on day 7? You've not got a lot of days. If you could tell us what religious sites you want to visit, we could start there, then see how much time you have left for everything else.
Posted by
219 posts
it was hard to avoid adding a comment, for I share your stated travel style -- I am a contentedly slow traveller, one who prefers to pick just a few towns or cities to visit and then get into them deeply, rather than dash around in order to glimpse as many "must-see" spectacles as possible. And Portugal, which I've visited twice, offers great opportunities for this sort of travel. But then, I think the first respondent may have said it all: First, unless you're entering overland from Spain, we need to know whether your stated number of travel days include the days you fly in, and the day you fly out. If so, your seven days reduce to just five "full" days, and worse, your five days reduce to only three. In either case, you probably won't be able to manage anything more than Fatima, and the city (probably Lisbon) that you fly into. Your aim of getting a "full, deep taste" of the places you visit is an admirable one, but probably not feasible unless you can manage at least six or seven full days in Portugal.
But still, a couple of other things: First, Portugal has a great train system, and that is what I would recommend, especially if you prefer coastal sites. A car might be useful if you wanted to get well off the tourist routes, but you did not state that as a goal, and anyway doing so would take you far from the coast.
Second, as for guidebooks, I happen to have the 2017 edition of the Lonely Planet Portugal guidebook, which I found to be very good for my style of travel. However, I don't know anything about later editions.
Posted by
Mid-Atlantic area
8289 posts
We had a rental car when we visited Portugal and were staying in Tomar when we visited Fátima and Batalha monastery as a day trip. A rental car makes getting around easier when visiting a couple sites on the same day. If coming from Lisbon and if you had a rental car, you could also stop at Alcobaca monastery en route to the Fátima area.
We visited Fátima in September 2023 and walked right into the sanctuary. That probably won’t be the case in June. Afterwards, we drove to where the children’s houses were as well as where the Angel of Peace appeared a couple times, and where Mary also appeared. From the houses to the where the Angel of Peace appeared is probably a half mile but fairly level.
There are free parking lots about a 5 minutes walk from both Alcobaca and Batalha monasteries, and a number of free parking lots in Fátima. Since they are not marked as being free you need to look them up, then bookmark them to whichever navigation program you’d be using.
One place we enjoyed in Lamego is the small Santuário de Nossa Senhora dos Remédios chapel and the 600 steps one needs to climb to reach it. Again, there are free parking lots in Lamego. We visited Lamego from what I consider to be special lodging, historic if nothing else; Parador Casa da Ínsua in Penalva do Castelo.