Portugal in early January 2024

We loved our 23 days in Portugal.
Cooler in January, but Lisboa has palm trees. Which surprised us.
We spent 10 days in Lisboa and I have enough things to do for another 10 days.
We stayed in Lisboa, Coimbra, Aveiro, Porto. Day trips up the Douro and to Sinatra.
Huge fan of the country.

I’ve lived here through eight January’s and I like the month. There are very few tourists and we have a number of very lovely days with highs in the 60s. The skies are usually very clear when it’s not raining, and the days are glorious.
The question you need to ask before you rent an apartment is what kind of heat is included. You want to look for some thing with mini splits or central heat. It won’t be the type central heat as in the states, but it will keep the apartment warm as do the mini splits. If the answer is they use oil radiators or space heaters it’s unlikely that you will be comfortable.
Everything that is open during the summer is open during January so there’s plenty to do.

@kathrynj - reminds me of the butane heaters we used when we lived in Spain and rolled from room to room. Whichever room had the heater was the room that was heated, except at night when it had to be turned off. Then the entire apartment was cold.

I’m so glad to see this question recently asked! We returned from Lisbon in October and we so loved our visit we’re contemplating a visit again in hopefully an even “cheaper” month.

We’re thinking of January or February 2025. The cold won’t bother us because we live in a city that is way colder (and also one that has much more volatile temperatures, like we can experience 12C at night and get close to 30C with high humidity in the day — ugh). What would worry me more is rain.

Does Lisbon tend to get days of nonstop or almost nonstop rain in those months? Long periods of rain will “ruin” the holiday as one of our most favorite parts of our Lisbon experience was walking everywhere and popping in and out of establishments.

On our second day in Lisbon this past trip, we joined a walking tour. We asked our tour guide — a local — if there are any months in Lisbon when it’s not so crowded with tourists. She said it seems there’s no month that is “reliably” with less tourists especially after COVID :( . I think she said something like they has expected a slow down last November but that didn’t happen. So what are other people’s experiences? Is January and February just as busy as October?

I didn’t find the crowd too bad in October, except for a few places like say in Pena Palace. It wasn’t as enjoyable (though still enjoyable enough) because of the hordes of people.

I don’t think January and February are anywhere as busy as October. There could be several days of cloudy skies with showers. But, it really doesn’t rain all day. It’s usually fairly easy to dodge the brief showers, but no guarantees. We’ve had two plus weeks of rainy weather recently. This is quite unusual for October. So predicting is becoming more and more difficult.