The first of two October long weekends seemed ideal. It *should* be still warm enough all going well, it was outside of peak season so everything wasn't overpriced and wouldn't be overrun, and we could tack on an extra day of leave to make it a 4-day trip. The only real complicating factor was flights for that given time period - and it wasn't easy. We either spend lots of money and get flights at good times which maximizes the time we had available for the trip; or we get cheap flights and either chew into the time we had available, or extend the holiday by some days in order to still have the same time. The end answer? a blend of all of these. We readily recognised that we simply had to take an extra day in order for the trip to work, so 4 days became 5, but we could not stretch it more than that. We'd already eyed up the ideal flight out to Porto direct on a Friday night with Ryanair, but we didn't leap on it quickly enough because of the turmoil surrounding the other flights and it jumped up from the realm of reasonable to pricey. There was no other flight we could take to anywhere in Portugal direct on the Friday night, at all - and to try and fly in to Porto or anywhere the next morning would cost us half a day at least. Without it our trip wouldn't really work - so we decided to pony up the dosh and buy it anyway, before its cost increased even more (which luckily it hadn't while we spent nearly a week sussing out options). The return flight would be 2 flights and be more complicated - and all had to be booked separately to keep the costs down. We had the options of going from Lisbon to Berlin via Toulouse with some hours there, via Geneva with some hours there or via Geneva with only transit time there and a whole morning in Lisbon. We opted for the latter option, as after all the point of the trip was to spend time in Portugal!
Everything came together fairly simply after that, though we did have one potential spanner threaten to derail the whole works with less than 2 weeks to go - Ryanair. It seems they had stuffed up their pilot's leave situation and started cancelling a whole heap of flights to try and make up for the shortfall. Initially they did not tell the people that were on those flights until the day before that they were cancelled - a huge backlash and more bad publicity saw them publish a list of cancelled flights a week before our trip. If our flight to Porto was on there, it would seriously destroy our holiday schedule with their being no alternative that evening and probably destroy our wallets trying to secure last-minute flights whenever they might have been. Luckily for us, our flight was not one of the cancelled ones! Now we just needed to keep our fingers crossed that Ryanair wouldn't decide to cancel it anyway, or something else cause it to get cancelled...
Day 0 - Getting There
Day 1 - Exploring Porto and the Surrounds
Day 2 - Putting the Port in Portugal
Day 3 - Introduction to Lisbon
It was quite hot, and there was still an hour and a half to go before the walking tour. Sasha is a wizz when it comes to looking up places to eat, but today she was a bit fed up and charged me with the duty of finding somewhere to eat. Not only that, but she wanted Portuguese food; somewhere not too far; somewhere that didn't just have hot food on the menu; and also somewhere that served fruit and vegetables. I was certain that it was an impossible and conflicting set of requirements, but upon searching did discover a Portuguese place with good ratings in an adjacent street. So, this is where we went for lunch - it was called Stasha, and not only did they have a variety of Portuguese food but they had Portuguese salad, which just happened to have a wide mix of both fruit and vegetables in it! Sasha naturally opted for this, while I went for the Duck risotto as I'm a bit of a sucker for Duck. Accompanied by green wine - a Portuguese speciality of a "young" wine that is still but fizzes a little to taste, this was just the lunch we had been looking for and met all of Sasha's requirements!
We took stock of what to do next but didn't come up with a firm plan, and decided to head up the hill to the Castle where we might get some sunset views, as it was within an hour of that time approaching. We got to the castle, however anywhere that might have had the views you had to pay to get in to - and considering the castle closed in 30mins (before sunset would fully happen) we didn't think it worth it. We ended up at a place shaped and themed after the Lisbon trams, and had a cocktail drink here to quench our thirst and take stock of what to do next. Sasha had a place in mind on the other side of the Old City, which had a great reputation and was said to be very "local and traditional". If it was no good, there was apparently another place also with good ratings next door. It sounded good, so we caught a bus down the hill, and began the route to walk up the other hill on the side of the Old City when we discovered a funicular right on the street we needed to walk up - the Elevador da Gloria. It was there, it was boarding, our transport pass already covered it - so why not? So we did (although we had to wait for the next one, but we got decent seats that way). |
Day 4 - A Change of Plans
Day 5 - Departing Portugal
Summing Up
Porto - I'd always heard this was a nicer city than Lisbon, and a nice place in general. Certainly it is a very nice and charming city and I enjoyed my time there. We could have spent longer there - a whole half of one of our 2 days there was spent on a trip out to the Douro Valley, which isn't exactly Porto itself but was well worth doing and I certainly liked the fact that we got to do it by steam train. Sasha did raise a valid point - we probably saw more of the Douro Valley than our friends because we travelled by the steam train, but probably experienced less of it because we were tied to visiting where the steam train went and also were bound by its time. I don't think any of our friends ventured as far up as Tua, and probably some of them went and visited the vineyards in the Douro Valley too while we only saw them. I did proffer the suggestion during the planning that we could go to Regua in the morning, spend time in the Douro Valley and then catch the steam train in the afternoon but Sasha quite rightly pointed out that would eat into valuable Porto time, which we had not much of anyway. So, pressed for time, I think we did Douro the best way we could have - and Porto too for that matter.
There was no doubt more to explore of Porto, but I do think while 1 more day in Porto could have been ideal, we probably would have struggled to fill any more days than that. As it was, we pretty much saw all of what we wanted to see in Porto and spent most of one day sampling the Port wine in an unexpectedly extensive manner - but also in a very cheap manner, thanks to the donation of the Port by the Aussie couple! All summed up, Porto was everything it promised to be, did not disappoint and I would happily go back.
Lisbon - My first impressions of Portugal's capital city were not great. This was due to a number of things - we first wandered the old city where we were staying and there was a lot of shady looking people around, so it felt somewhat unsafe and that you had to be on your guard (which is hardly relaxing); on the face of things there did not seem to be a lot of obvious things to do or go see, and a few things that were touted as being such were not and/or quite pricey; our experience with the initial lunch place being a complete bust compounded the already not so great impression we'd formed; and having come to Lisbon after Porto, and especially having really liked Porto, Lisbon suffered because we were comparing it to Porto and it was coming up short. By lunchtime on Day 3 I don't think either of us were particularly fussed with the city (Porto already had us hooked by then), but the city did start redeeming itself from there and by the end of the day I had grown to like it. I think what really helped boost Lisbon in our perceptions though was funnily enough not actually Lisbon itself, but Sintra.
Sintra was amazing - quite how we'd missed it in our research I don't know and that was a major failing on our part, but we just had the best day there and I'm so glad we not only had it brought to our attention but that we managed to get there. More than anything though aside from how great Sintra was, it boosted Lisbon in our perceptions because prior to the discovery of Sintra it looked like we had a day and a half to flll in in Lisbon with a not-extensive list of things to do - time which perhaps at first seemed like it would have been better spent in Porto. Sintra validated the time we'd allocated to being based in Lisbon, which was only as long as it was because we'd just happened to add the extra half day on the last day because flights allowed. There's more Palaces and Castles to explore in Sintra too, but I'm happy with the ones we did and also the length of day we had there. It is definitely one of the must-do's of Lisbon, as is the 28E tram - Lisbon has 3 tram routes but the 28E is "the one". However, in my opinion the best part is around the Castle hill up until the Square - any further beyond that is rather ho-hum, and I would not recommend doing it in the daytime - if you have the chance, do it in the evening especially if its warm out!
The shady people turned out to only be in the Old City, and only during the main daylight hours; we didn't have any further problems with places not existing; there was a little bit more on offer than what we thought, and we had to pick & choose what we definitely wanted to do by the end; and in general, Lisbon grew on us. It might not be so stunningly pretty like Porto, its definitely got a busier and more commercial feel in many areas but it does have a charm of its own. I would go back, but I'm not in any great hurry to do so.
Portugal overall - its a neat country, in many ways it is reminiscent of Spain, but at the same time it feels quite distinctively not-Spanish. I had a lot of fun visiting this country, especially for a country which had not been high on my visit-priorities-list initially. Had either or both of us gone there earlier in our travels, might we have tried to make it back again before we leave? possibly, but who knows? Certainly around the South of Portugal, the Algarve etc looks quite pretty with its white beaches and Mediterranean seas. I suspect this may not be our only ever visit to Portugal - but there is not going to be another chance before we finish our Extended OE. I am okay with that - we had a pretty decent visit this time, covered a decent portion of the country, and it was great! Speaking of which... a Map!