Portugal was actually our Plan B for spring break 2022. We had originally planned to do a multi-family trip to Costa Rica but that fell apart when Costa Rica instituted a vaccination requirement and several members of our extended group were unwilling or unable to get vaccinated. So we postponed that trip (ironically Costa Rica dropped their vaccine requirement about a week before we left) and planned a trip to Portugal for just our family.
My husband and I have travelled fairly extensively throughout Europe but our boys have never been. We had Portugal high on our list of next countries to visit and figured it would be a perfect introduction to Europe for the kids. Small and easy to get around yet extremely diverse, Portugal offers a lot of bang for your buck (both literally and figuratively).
There were three main areas that we wanted to visit in Portugal – Porto, Lisbon and the Algarve. We toyed around with the itinerary, worrying that it was too aggressive to try to go to all three areas in 9 days. When our youngest son’s school schedule changed to allow us to leave on Friday night instead of Saturday, we decided we could fit in all three but still spent a good bit of time playing with the schedule to maximize what we could see and do while minimizing travel stress on the kids.
We were stuck with roundtrip Lisbon flights, as it was cost prohibitive to fly in and out of different cities. We like to front-load the more difficult travel days so we decided to head to Porto immediately upon arrival in Lisbon and then end the trip in Lisbon, making for an easier journey home. What would happen in between was the tricky part.
My husband is a big fan of train travel and wanted the kids to experience at least one European train journey so we decided to take the high-speed train to Porto after flying into Lisbon. We knew we wanted a full day to explore Porto plus a day trip to the Duoro Valley, so we booked 3 nights in Porto.
From there we knew we would head south and wanted to make some stops along the way. I joined a Travel Portugal group on FaceBook and got tons of tips and information from there, as well as some recommended tour guides. I kept seeing posts from Porto Tours and Transfers of these great trips where the guide would drive you from Porto to Lisbon (or vice versa), stopping at your choice of several locations along the way. This seemed like a fantastic way to easily see more areas of the country and to maximize our travel days, while also making all the moving around easier on the kids.
Although we could customize the trip to anything we wanted, the most common stops between Porto and Lisbon are Aveiro, Coimbra, Batalha Monastery, Nazare, and Obidos. We had time for three stops and we chose Aveiro (“Portuguese Venice”), Nazare (home of the world’s biggest waves), and Obidos (a city inside a walled castle).
The next question we had to answer was where to end the transfer after the three stops. We could continue all the way to the Algarve, but it would be a super long trip and we would have to cut down on our time in each of the three stops in order to make it there at a reasonable hour. We could also spend the night in Lisbon to break up the trip, but I felt like that would be a waste of a night as we’d basically only be sleeping there and then moving on in the morning.
A great compromise seemed to be to spend the night in Sintra, which is a small town outside of Lisbon famous for its palaces, castles, and estates. We had been planning to go to Sintra as a day trip from Lisbon towards the end of the trip, but by stopping there overnight on the way to the Algarve, we were able to both break up the long drive and to fit in a tour of Sintra the next day before continuing on to Lagos.
We spent two nights in Lagos and did a boat ride to Benagil Cave and a cliff walk on our full day there. Then we took the train to return to Lisbon, where we wrapped up our trip with 3 nights in the city.
This is what our final itinerary looked like:
Day 1 – arrive in Lisbon and take the train to Porto, afternoon exploring Porto, overnight in Porto
Day 2 – explore Porto, overnight in Porto
Day 3 – Duoro Valley tour, overnight in Porto
Day 4 – transfer from Porto to Sintra with stops in Aveiro, Nazare and Obidos, overnight in Sintra
Day 5 – tour Sintra in the morning and early afternoon, transfer to Lagos, overnight in Lagos
Day 6 – boat tour to Benagil cave and cliff walk in Carvoeiro, overnight in Lagos
Day 7 – morning and early afternoon in Lagos, train to Lisbon, overnight in Lisbon
Day 8 – explore Lisbon, overnight in Lisbon
Day 9 – explore Lisbon, overnight in Lisbon
Day 10 – fly home from Lisbon
