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Where to stay in the Duoro Valley

We are 4 people, traveling in May 2025. We will have a car. Rather than staying in Porto and doing day trips to the Duoro, we would like to stay in the Duoro region. Our perfect vacation is a leisurely breakfast watching the world wake up around us, one or two agenda items to do, a laid back lunch featuring wine, and a leisurely dinner watching the sun go down.
Questions:
1. Is it feasible to stay in the Duoro region
2. Any suggestions for quintas or locations to stay. Mid range to mid range plus
3. Any tours which base out of the Duoro (others have recommended Duoro first or Cool Tours but these leave out of Porto)
4. Does taking the Duoro valley train in reverse (Duoro to Porto) make sense?

Thanks.

Posted by
6507 posts

We stayed 2 nights at Quinta do Tedo. Loved it. We didn't take any tours. I contacted a few wineries after some research and selected wineries with nice wines/views. It was very easy to get around. The train ride from Porto to Pinhao is supposed to be nice. We had a car. If you take the train, you pretty much have to stay in Pinhao or use a tour or guide.

There are a couple quite excellent facebook groups that are helpful for planning travel to Portugal.

Posted by
7172 posts

If staying in that area a few days and because you will have a vehicle, consider visiting Lamego. It’s about a 40 minutes drive from Pinhão with most of it being along the river. In Lamego we enjoyed the climbing the 600 steps up to the small Santuário de Nossa Senhora dos Remédios chapel.

Posted by
1817 posts

I’ve stayed at Quinta de la Rosa a couple of times and love it. It’s in Pinhão. From there you can take a two hour river cruise, which has been enough for me. There are a number of wineries close by for tours. The Quinta itself has a great tour of its winery plus a very nice restaurant right on the river. It’s what I call mid range.
Julie Dawn Fox has other recommendations for Quintas in several price ranges. She is how I discovered Rosa.

Posted by
1 posts

Shhh, but we’re all alone at Quinta dos Murças right now. Book through Mr & Mrs Smith. Lovely room, helpful staff, and they’ll make dinner for you, but have no restaurant on site.

We took a leisurely 3h walk around the hills, then back to the pool.

Tomorrow we take the train from the stop right in front to Pinhao where we have a 1 hr boat tour that drops us at (their) kayaks and we paddle back to Pinhao and catch the 15 minute train back to the hotel/winery.