Private tour guides

We did the majority of our sightseeing in Portugal on our own . Portugal has an excellent public bus and train transportation system and you can stay in Lisbon and Porto and do day trips. You can do Bellem and Evora on your own. However, the only time we used the services of a private guide was to go to Sintra. I had read parking was difficult if one drove and one could also spend a long time waiting for buses to take you to the sights.
We contracted with Lisbon on Wheels , had a private guide and I customized our tour. If you decide to go with them , the name of our driver/guide was Jose. He was excellent. Our tour lasted approximately 10 1/2 hours and we saw Quinta da Regaleira, Pena Palace, Sintra National Palace and Castelo dos Mouros. We had skip the line tickets and were able to see the interiors of all the palaces.

Your tours is very good for up north..small group or private.

Best to book ahead for Sintra as it gets busy. A guide will ensure you see the highlights. Try Cool Tours or Inside Lisbon. Cabtour also does private tours and with a family it could be reasonable.

Belem and Evora can be done easily on your own, Lisbon too.

We just did a wonderful private day tour to Sintra with Rafael S. at Tours By Locals. We had been once before and spent a lot of time figuring out train, bus to get up there. It's a very congested area. Rafael picked us up in Lisbon, we drove to Sintra and were up on the mountainside before it got congested. We went through the Moorish Castle and Pena Palace in the morning. In the afternoon we went to a wonderful, small, very local restaurant in the village where he grew up. You pick your own meats and they grill them for you. After lunch he drove us to various remote locations along the Atlantic coast which were spectacular. It's a full day (9am-4:30pm). Highly recommend!

Thank you for the advice!!