Travel Review: Luxury Portugal Vacation, Porto, Sintra, Lisbon, Duoro Valley, Port Wine Tour, Cooking Lesson, Food Tour, Fado Show

Being a bit of lazy travelers and foodies, I think we were a bit too ambitious with our tours. With just 8 nights, our original itinerary was pretty full. We did cut out 2 trips and decided it was too much and our agent suggested we remove Evora and Braga, Guimaraes trips.  Even with those trips removed, we realized, we probably needed to have structured our days a little different.

We found full day trips to be a lot for us. Think in Oporto, would have been good to have done a food tour the day we arrived, late afternoon/early evening to get us keep moving and getting oriented to the city. On the second day, would have done a half day tour, do the port tour and see few key spots and if dropped off at a good spot to walk around and see street vendors on Saturday and have a late lunch some place would have been fine. Am a huge Harry Potter fan and Lello bookstore was on my must list and on our free day we went in the morning prior to opening and got in a long line to the bookstore just to find out that we needed to get vouchers, by that time the voucher line was 40mins long- you need to go to a different building at the corner to purchase - not sure if you can purchase in advance but should have done research beforehand.

Douro Valley is beautiful but the winery we went to was not too impressive, I think we probably should have reserved a nice place with a view of the valley to have lunch or sit and have wine with a little nosh but not do a tour of a winery. I saw these pictures of places with lounge chairs or hammock on a patio overlooking the valley...NOW, that's where I would like have parked myself for an hour. To us, we had a great port tour and felt another one was not needed. Our guide/Driver tried at the last minute to get a reservation at the winery we were visiting to have lunch but was booked. I'm so glad our agent suggested we not do the all day boat tour - we would have died!

Lisboa: Once again, I think we should have started with a food tour. It’s not really a eat your way through type of tour but more of seeing the city and stop just in time to give you a little rest and nosh. It’s only few hours and a great way to explore the city. Downside was that we did this on Good Friday and the market was closed…bummer. On the second day, another half day tour may have been better for us… head to Belem for a drive and see the sights and walk a bit around the tower as we did but skip the tour of the Monastery, after seeing convent of Christ in Tomar and Monastery of Batalha, think we were a bit “Monastered out” when we got to Belem, just seeing from outside was probably ok…but note, it’s beautiful inside but doing short travel, we have to pick and choose and just can’t see everything. Time Out market, we did not make it...we are foodies, what were we thinking?