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Planning Portugal & Spain 2-3 Weeks Oct 2017

Just in the beginning stages of planning our next vacation, and since you were all so helpful this past year with Italy, I figured I'd pick your brains again. I'm thinking it'll be Portugal & Spain, but nothing is carved in stone yet.

Vacation will be 2-3 weeks, and I'm hoping to start compiling a good list of must see places, as well as the out of the way "real deal" places.

We will be flying out of San Francisco.
Not sure how we will split the time yet, suggestions are definitely welcome.
We love to explore, and try real ethnic cuisine.
I prefer not to rent a car, unless it's really necessary. We traveled by train in Italy, and it was a great experience.
Not really into hanging at the beach, but if the beach is nearby, that's fine.

So please tell me where to start, your feedback is most appreciated.

Posted by
3643 posts

For those two countries, you really need to investigate how to get between them. It's surprisingly difficult. E.g., you would think you could take a train between Lisbon and Seville; but you can't. You also wouldn't want to plan to rent a car in one and drop it in the other. The fee for doing so is prohibitive. Just keep these issues in mind as you plan your itinerary.
One highlight of our trip was staying in a pousada near Coimbra. We visited a really good Roman archaeological site at Condeixa Nova and the monastery at Batalha from there.

Posted by
51 posts

Rosalyn, that is some good info right there, thank you. I was hoping it would be easier to travel by train, but I guess flying isn't out of the question, I just find the trains to be so much easier.

Posted by
6113 posts

October is likely to be reasonable weather, but not necessarily beach weather every day.

Lisbon is a great base and from there, have day trips to Evora (stunning), Cascais, Obidos and Sintra. Lisbon itself needs 2 days. From there, you can head up to Porto and the Douro. There are many more places worth visiting including Coimbra, Tomar etc.

I would give the Algarve a miss at that time of year.

If you are just having a 2 week holiday, I would stay within Portugal as there is lots to see.

You will find plenty of ethnic cuisine in Portugal, as it's mostly local food rather than say Chinese or French cuisine. At least they eat at sensible times in Portugal. The one thing I hate about Spain is their eating hours. Who wants dinner at 11pm? Or being the only ones in the restaurant, eating at 8pm!

If you have 3 weeks, spend time in Spain too.

Posted by
127 posts

As mentioned above, ground transportation between Portugal and Spain is not the best. Having said that, it is easy to fly between Lisbon and several cities in Spain on discount airlines. Check out the list of budget airlines on Rick's website.
We could give you more specific advice regarding places to visit if you provided more detail regarding your interests. "Exploring and ethnic cuisine" are common interests with the vast majority of travelers using this website. Pretty much any place in Portugal or Spain will meet those needs.

Posted by
2787 posts

You might want to check out RS's Spain and Portugal tours to see where he takes his travelers. We have done both and did the Portugal tour last month (June) and really liked its content. Happy travels.

Posted by
11294 posts

In addition to Lisbon airport in the center of Portugal, there's also Faro airport in the south and Porto airport in the north. Spain has many airports. To see who flies where from an airport, look at that airport's Wikipedia page.

There are also some buses between the countries and a very few train routes. As long as you realize that, door to door, you will lose much of a day between countries (unless you drive, and then you will want to start and end in the same country to avoid the drop charge), you can certainly see them both. If you don't like that, stay with one country.

For Spain, it's easiest to think in terms of regions. This is not only a geographic division - each region has a very different history, cuisine, culture, etc, and some of them have have different languages and strong separatist movements as well. The ones most first time visitors focus on are Castille (around Madrid), Catalunya (around Barcelona), and Andalucia (around Seville and Granada). Other popular ones are Basque Country (around San Sebastian and Bilbao) and Galicia (around Santiago de Compostela and A Coruña); but of course there are others.

For getting around Spain, the high speed trains (called AVE) work very well, where they exist; the network is less well developed than in some other European countries. Buses fill in gaps in the train network, and are much nicer than Greyhound in the US; don't hesitate to take them. For some long distances, particularly if there's no high speed train, a plane may work well (right now, with the high speed service to Granada still being built, flying Barcelona to Granada saves time; when the AVE is ready, this may no longer be true).

The same is true of Portugal - buses there are more useful than in some other European countries, but for going from Lisbon to Coimbra to Porto, the train works great.

Posted by
8255 posts

We love Iberia. Both Portugal and Spain are great. Actually, we like Portugal the most, since the people are just amazing.

For Spain, I highly recommend 4-5 days in Madrid that should include day trips to Toledo and Segovia. Also, Seville is a must see. Granada is great if you can make it.

For Portugal, Lisbon is good for 3-4 days with a day trip to Evora, then move on to Sintra, Obidos and to Porto. Porto is great.