We are planning a trip to Portugal in the spring and have seen pictures of some really nice looking fisherman wool sweaters, I was wondering if there is a certain area that would be the best place to buy them. We are starting in Lisbon and working out way north. Any other suggestions for some unique souvenirs would be appreciated as well.
Thank you
I really have not seen the sweaters you mention, but I haven’t been looking either..
Cork products would be my suggestion for unique souvenirs. You will see lots of cork bags, etc. everywhere. But, for really good quality cork products, Cork & Co. and Forms are two great shops in the Chiado area of Lisbon.
The Vista Alegre store in Chiado has beautiful decorative porcelain items, many with a portuguese theme.
The only place that I have seen such wool jumpers for sale is at the roadside market at Sagres on the Algarve and these are mass produced in the Far East, not handmade in Portugal. They are very bulky and would fill a suitcase!
Cork products are unusual - a bit of an acquired taste (not mine). There is also plenty of painted pottery and the cockerel is the symbol of Portugal.
I agree with the cork souvenirs. Sustainable products are great, very unusual variety of shoes, purses, ties, pens, postcards etc all over. Shop for the best prices, quality will add costs.
Sardines from that store (RSBook)that sells them according to your birth year in Lisbon and at the airport. The store is fun, packaging of sardines creative.
Mars bars are Milky Ways and very good like Kit Kats that are made in Europe with great chocolate, taste different than what we get in the USA made in ?..
In Porto there are a lot of fabrics like dining tablecloths and placemats, made in Portugal.
Go visit a home goods store , you will find ceramic serving items from Portugal, saw stuff in Porto but how would you get it home!
Overall prices in Porto the best I saw.
Grocery stores can be a place for souvenirs at a much cheaper costs too.
Forgot to mention Port Wine of course.
The only place I saw wool made products was outside of Fatima in the hamlet town of Aljustrel where the three children lived. I saw wool products there that I never saw again in Lisbon or Porto.
Traveled 9/18 .
Google the phrase "market day" in conjunction with the name of each city you plan to visit. If you manage to hit a major weekly market, you may encounter some interesting items.
I've been to the Thursday market in Barcelos twice, though both visits were decades ago and I don't know how much it now offers beyond food products. It was a very interesting experience, though.
Department stores are sometimes a good source of quality local products.
I did buy some sweaters that appeared hand- and locally-made, but that was long ago. I think they were either at markets or hanging in small local shops. I'd say just to keep your eyes open. But they were indeed very bulky; I had to mail them home, which was a lot less expensive back in the 1970s and 1980s than it is now. At least you don't have to worry about breakage.
A few weeks ago in Sitio (above Nazare) on the square, an elderly gent was selling clay birds that when wet sing when you blow thru them. 2 euro. Regret just buying 1 as it was a hit with family.
Cork handbags are great. Not cheap but less than good quality leather bags of similar size/style. I have one that I get comments on all the time. Lightweight, durable, almost waterproff and really looks like leather. Of course tiles and other ceramics make wonderful souvenirs.
Ceramics, textiles, and cork items. The ceramic tiles are beautiful and unique as are the many items made of cork.
Cork wins for essence-of-Portugal. If you say "fisherman wool sweaters," people think Irish waaay before Portugese.
In a sorta dollar/euro store in Evora, I chanced on rolls of cork, like thick shelf liner paper, plus inch-ish-wide cork strapping, being sold by the meter. If you're crafts-y, wow, the price is right. Back home I made a tote bag & a small purse, two of my best souvenirs ever.
(My mantra for travel stuff is Cheap, Lightweight, & Unbreakable.) The surface texture is like velvet, or suede, but laughs at water.
For lots more euros, the cork bags sold all over Portugal were gorgeous, and the shoes, and the bowties, and the umbrellas, and...
Portuguese painted tiles, azulejo, are fantastic, too, from individual miniatures to entire scenes. Not C,L,& U, but still wow. We did succumb to one.
Have fun looking!
We bought a wool sweater in Sitio, the town above Nazare, I can't remember, think might have been a market day. Nazare definitely had more textile products like sheets than some places. The other place I think I saw some was in a gift shop near the Sao Jorge castle in Lisbon. It looked more like a tea shop from the outside, but had some sweaters and other clothes inside.
Asia, my choice is azulejos (tiles), which I have around my house and enjoy every day. There is an antique tile shop in Lisboa, with beautiful items large and small, and from modest (not low) to very expensive. I bought a single tile from the 16th century, a leftover from the destruction of the earthquake of 1755, I do believe. Also bought a couple thinner new creations from a family tile-making workshop/gallery in Sintra. I found the Tile Museum in Lisbon to be a unique and satisfying couple of hours. And, of course, port from the port wineries of Porto!
You will probably see these roosters in many places, I bought mine in Evora.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooster_of_Barcelos
Thank you every body these are all great suggestions!!
We did purchase several of the roosters for gifts, a cork sunglasses case, and 3 handpainted tiles from an artist in Sintra. My very favorites, though, are a small (4x6) signed original watercolor painting of Tram 28 from a small shop near Igrejia da Sao Vincent de Fora in Lisbon and two smallish (roughly 5x7 on 8x10 paper) prints of watercolor paintings of window & balcony in Porto, which were actually of the buildings in the alleyway where we purchased them from the artist - each shows the tilework on the buildings. The fact that we actually had already taken photos of those two buildings was a fun coincidence and makes for a great memory which is the best part of a good souvenir. We saw plenty of Lisbon-ish prints around, but we saw exactly the same ones in Lisbon (Alfama, Belem, Baixa), Nazare and Porto - and didn't really like them much anyways. The ones we bought were different and we didn't see them anywhere else.
(we were there for the last 2 weeks of October)
I saw plenty of sweaters, primarily in Nazare and in Sitio above Nazare but as others have said - they didn't seem to evoke Portugal much and would have required a suitcase of their own on the trip home!
