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Portugal - 3 week itinerary help

Posted by (Sydney) on

Hi!

We are planning a 3 week trip to Portugal in late June / early July and are looking for help with our itinerary. Any tips or recommendations welcome!

Our itinerary:

  • (fly in)
  • Porto - 4N
  • ( Pick up car)
  • Guimarães - 2N;
  • Batalha - 2N (Interest in surrounding historic sites Mafra/Obidos/Tomar//Alcoba);
  • Ericeira - 2N (for some beach time /diversity in itinerary)
  • Evora and Monsaraz - 4N
  • (drop off car)
  • Lisbon 5N
  • Sintra 2N
  • (fly out)

Other Info:

  • We are a couple travelling with a baby (1 year old)
  • We prefer to travel a little slower and where possible find quieter / more authentic places. Generally, we prefer driving, although are happy with public transport where convenient with a baby.
  • We are aware of this time being hot, and busy.
  • Where we are travelling the hot interior of Portugal, we'd be getting accommodation with AC / pool.
  • We are interested in history, nature, food and culture.
  • Being from Australia, we aren't too interested in the beaches, handle the heat well and dont mind longer drives.
Posted by
11159 posts

You have a good itinerary except for the omission of Coimbra which is a very worthwhile stop. If you decide to add it, stay at La Quinta de las Lagrimas. Nice pool! Historic. Large property walkable to city center.
. We loved our time in Guimares and spent several nights there. We chose to stay in the city center.
In your list that begins with Batalha, we loved Alcobaça where many Royals are buried including King Pedro and his Inés. Their story is well documented in the university town of Coimbra in the Quinta de las Lagrimas where their liasons took place. We enjoyed our stay there.
I highly recommend Pousada Convento Evora where we had a wonderful experience. It has a nice pool.

Posted by
6547 posts

Depending on how quickly you get around and what you want to see, you may be able to get by with 3 nights in Porto. I don’t feel you have enough nights allocated to Batalha for what you want to see. In Batalha the monastery will take a couple hours to visit and the same goes for Alcobaca monastery. Óbidos can be seen in a couple hours; fewer if you don’t walk the walk. One could easily spend a full day in Tomar between walking around the town and visiting the castle ruin and Convent of Christ. Of course you need to drive to each of those locations and that will eat away at your time. There are free parking lots in each of the places I mentioned. If you wanted to park right at the Convent of Christ in Tomar, that is a pay lot, but there are a couple free lots in town. The convent is a 15-20 minutes walk from them.

I can’t comment on the rest of your trip. On our trip we had a rental car.

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