After 8 days in southern Spain we are heading to Portugal with our rental car for 17 days. It was going to be less but Aer Lingus just cancelled our initial flight so we had a choice to travel one day later or 2 days earlier. Being that we were struggling with our itinerary we opted to do the longer trip. As a side note we plan to park the car in places like Porto and use our feet and local transportation. We will also return our rental car upon arrival in Lisbon.
Do you all think this itinerary is ok and doable? We do have 2 x 1 night stays but feel we are ok with that and will just take in the views and sights wherever we can on those 2 long driving days.
Day 1......Seville to Lagos (3 nights) with lunch stop in Tavira
Day 2.....Beach day and explore the rock formations around Lagos
Day 3.....Salema and Sagres
Day 4......Early drive to Evora (2 nights) Tour of Evora sights
Day 5......Megaliths, cork factory tour, anything else we can comfortably fit in without feeling rushed. 2nd night Evora
Day 6.....Early drive from Evora to Monsanto with lunch stop/explore then continue drive to Castelo Rodrigo (1 night) arriving early evening.
Hopefully paelolithic rock art tour in evening.
Day 7......Drive to Pinhao or Peso da Regua (1 night) enjoying the scenery of the drive, arriving around noon. Explore the area
afternoon/evening.
Day8.....Am drive to Braga for the sights there. Afternoon drive to Porto.(3 nights)
Day 9.....Porto
Day 10....Porto
Day 11.....AM drive to Coimbra.(2 nights)....explore coimbra
Day 12.....In Coimbra
Day 13.....AM drive to Lisbon (4 nights) with stops along the way....Obidos, Alcobaca, Batalha, we are unsure where at this point.
Arriving Lisbon late afternoon/early evening.
Day 14.....Lisbon
Day 15......Day trip to Sintra
Day 16......Lisbon
Day 17.......Flight out of Lisbon
This of course is all assuming that the entire country is not put on a travel restriction. We are currently planning to take whatever precautions we can and hopefully stay healthy, though if things continue to decline then we will certainly reconsider.
I should add:
we did our car research. It was actually cheaper to pick up the car in spain and drop in lisbon than pick up in portugal/drop in portugal. The rates in Spain are just cheaper and so even with the drop fee it worked out to be less expensive. Also need a car since daughter has been living in France this last year and is travelling with us along with her extensive baggage before going home. 😲🙄😉