Luxury Portugal Trip Review: Amarante, Wine Blending Exercise, Megaliths Near Evora, Lisbon Cooking Class, Cuisine & Wine Tastings

The trip to Portugal was perfect and the travel company was fantastic.  Since we did not know the country very well, we put ourselves in the hands of the travel company to do the planning once we described our interests and goals.  The company was exemplary in planning a perfect vacation for us.  We had high expectations that were constantly surpassed!  We agreed to various suggestions that we never would have planned on our own, such as a cooking dinner in Lisbon and a blending exercise at a winery.  Those were great fun with fantastic memories.  Also, the agency selected the absolute best hotels for us in each city and planned meals and wine tastings at tremendous venues that we wouldn't have discovered without their experience and connections.  We were also pleasantly surprised that we had only two guides, one that was with us for 5 days at the beginning of our trip and another that was with us for the final six days, even though we stayed in four cities during the vacation.  Both guides were exemplary and gave us an education and understanding of the country and its history.  The pace of the vacation worked very well for us - we were active without being overly rushed and had a reasonable amount of free time - we even managed to go swimming at our hotels on six different days (thanks to lovely indoor pools during the cool weather bridging October/November).