Checking to see if there are other members of this tour on the forums. If so what are you pre-tour plans if you care to share.
This will be my 4th RS tour and our first semi-off season trip. My wife works in education and does not like to miss school. This trip is over her Easter break which allowed us a Spring trip this year.
Haven’t been on the tour, but have visited Portugal on my own. One thing you could do pre-tour is take the train to Sintra and stay a couple of nights.
Hi Mark. I was on this trip last fall and would also recommend Sentra.
There are a number of reports regarding this trip you might want to view.
Regarding Sentra, go early in the morning as it gets very crowded by even mid morning.
You also will not have time to go once the tour starts.
The tour of Lisbon offers a quick glimpse of a number of neighborhoods, but for most it is a quick walk through.
That said, you could take your per-tour time to visit some of them in more detail.
This is a terrific tour
Yikes spelling is always an issue, that should have been Sintra.
We are on the 9/2 tour and arriving three days in advance. We plan to tour Sintra. I’m not sure if we will book a tour or do it on our own.
We will be on the tour following yours. We are arriving in Lisbon on April 4 and staying for just over a week with our daughter, then starting our tour.
We have done spring trips in the past and ended up in Spain once and Sicily once during the week before Easter. It was very interesting. Hope you’re getting as excited as we are to visit Portugal.
Thanks for all the responses. Our current plans are a food tour in Lisbon on Saturday and a guided tour of Sintra on Monday. Sunday is currently open.
Getting close as I just received my friendly reminder that final tour payment is due soon.
The took us on a food tour as part of the tour. For the life of me, I can’t recall where in Portugal we were. Pretty sure it was toward the end, but just FYI.
The food tour was at the end in Porto in a group setting as part of the tour. We also took one our own in Lisbon and it was a wonderful way to connect to the city when we first arrived. We got great tips on where to eat, met wonderful people, and saw parts of Lisbon we didn’t see on the RS tour. I think there is value in both: different cities, different histories, different traditions, and different food.
I am on this tour and arriving on the 4th. I plan to do a day trip to Sintra on the 5th and do the walking tour of Lisbon following the book on the 4th when I arrive plus maybe the tram 28. But, still I'm debating whether I should just go straight to Sintra and spend the night there on the 4th then stay in Lisbon on the 5th. But it looks like most of the hotels in Sintra are booked. At least the ones the book recommends. See you both there.
We did the Portugal tour a few years ago. We went straight from the airport to Sintra via the airport bus to Lisbon and the train to Sintra and stayed 2 nights at the lovely Chalet Saudade which is an easy walk from the train station. We really enjoyed Sintra but we would not have liked it if we had day tripped there. It is yet another place that is so much nicer when the day-trippers leave. We were able to be on the first bus of the day up to the Palace and then we walked down to the castle and then worked our way back down to the town on a nice trail that our B&B told us about.
As Carol said, Sintra is lovely but you have to sleep there to appreciate it. Even with a private guide, you'll have crowds.
It's easy enough to start with 2 or even 3 nights in Sintra. Here's what I wish someone had told me before I went: it's a 30-40 minute taxi or Uber ride from the airport to your hotel in Sintra and it's not expensive, even for a solo traveler like me. Outside rush hour, Uber was not much more than €30. Taxis aren't much more. I took the metro to Oriente Station, had to wait in line to buy a ticket, then spent a lot of time going from ticket booth to ticket booth in Oriente (after I found the ticket booths) until I got to the correct one. Then I had nearly an hour's wait for the slow, uncomfortable train to Sintra. Then a taxi from the station.
