October 4, 2023

Summer loving Portugal

Chiara Di EUROPE, TRAVEL Douro Valley, Lagos, Lisbon, Porto, Portugal, Travel, Wanderlust 0 Comments

I absolutely loved my wander of Portugal. From the beautiful tile art and mesmerising city sunsets to wine country and the friendly people and culture, it really is a special place.

My nine-day wander started solo in Porto. There is something so satisfying about travelling solo – the days are filled with everything you want to do, you have more time to stop and take it all in, it challenges you outside of your comfort zone and time goes a little slower. On the flip side, I did miss evening company and it’s harder to take photos with yourself.

I stayed at Almadina Smart Luxury boutique hotel which when booking didn’t realise was only eight rooms. It was a sweet hotel and felt more like a group of apartments with a small reception. I was lucky to score a room on the top level with a terrace overlooking the city and a light above the bed reading ‘A day like this is all you need’ – total vibe.

Porto is such a charming city and was my favourite of the whole trip. It was easy to get my bearings, all it’s buildings had signature touches of tile art, it had a lively personality with many buskers and fellow travellers and the most special sunsets. I couldn’t help myself stopping every few steps to marvel at the beautiful unique tile art that covered most buildings; I’m told to prevent the concrete walls being damaged from humidity. To me, it added personality and charm to the buildings.

My first priority was a Pastéis de Nata (Portuguese tart) so I stopped for one at the first bakery I passed. I’m not really a sweet person but I like the balance between the vanilla cream and puff pastry of these tarts. This was the first of many during my time in Portugal.

I wandered by Livraria Lello – a library famous for its similarities to the one in Harry Potter, Clerigos Tower which you can climb up with views overlooking Porto, São Bento Station known for its beautiful tiles, Avenida dos Aliados and Praca da Liberdade – the central square of Porto, historic buildings Camara Municipal do Porto, Paroquial de Santo (church) and Se Do Porto (Porto Cathedral), and historic street Rua das Flores known for shopping. I also visited Bolhão Market offering a multitude of fresh produce which is a great spot for lunch or tastings.

I wanted to find some Portuguese tile art coasters that didn’t look like souvenirs and it was meant to be. As the thought popped into my head, I turned a corner and stumbled across a store called Toranja which sold items designed by local artists. I found the perfect coasters in four different designs.

I wandered along Cais da Ribeira enjoying the atmosphere of the locals, visitors and buskers, and made my way across Dom Luís I Bridge to the Vila Nova de Gaia side of the river. One of my favourite memories of the trip was watching the sunset at Jardim do Morro, a park overlooking Porto from Gaia. It was crowded with tourists but it was a very beautiful view and the buskers were doing good at serenading everyone.

I did a couple of day trips from Porto including a half day wander to Aveiro and Costa Nova and a full day wander to the Douro Valley. Costa Nova, meaning ‘new coast’, is a fishing town located one hour south of Porto and famous for its coloured houses created to protect fishing equipment. We wandered the main strip and fresh seafood market for a short time, before making our way to Aveiro, also a fishing town but much older from the Roman period.

In Aveiro we enjoyed a canal cruise along the Canal of San Horacio, walk around the town centre and a local sweet delicacy, Ovos Moles. It was a little disappointing the town had a lot of construction making it a less than ideal backdrop. Aveiro is also home to a ceramics centre and Michelin Star restaurant Salpoente.

Back in Porto I joined a port wine tour in Gaia with C&D Porto Local Tours. Our tour guide José led us through the journey of port wine from the production in Duoro, to the storage, aging and bottling in Gaia and the customs house in Porto. We enjoyed seven tastings over the two-hour walking tour, starting with three tastings at Sogevinus including a white port aged for two years, a tawny aged for 10 years, and a ruby red (late body vintage filtered wine) harvested in 2018. Next stop was Quevedo for a rosé port tasting, and last was Vasques de Carvalho, which I’m told is one of the best fortified wines in Portugal, for another white and two ruby red port tastings. I’m definitely more of a ruby red person being a red wine drinker.

I enjoyed a sunset dinner at Tempero d’Maria in Gaia with two ladies from Frankfurt that I met on the tour – another positive about travelling solo. The rice with shellfish dish came out in a pot for me to scoop out and was delicious.

As if I hadn’t had enough port wine, the next day I did a full day small group tour to the Douro (golden) Valley home to the Douro River which travels from a mountain in Spain through to the ocean in Porto. Our sweet guide Miguel from Oporto Sensations Tour took us on the one-hour journey out of Porto through the sixth tallest mountain in Portugal and across the highest bridge (230m high).

We are told it takes three-years to produce good Douro wine and five-years for port wine. Green wine, a mix between table wine and sparkling wine, is local to Douro. It’s aged in steel barrels for six months and is more of a white wine variety. Portugal is also where corks are produced, so it really is all-round wine country.

Our first stop was Sabrosa Viewpoint at Magellan House overlooking the Valley. We then had a coffee and sweet treat at a bakery before our cruise along the river to see more of the Valley. Douro is very beautiful with its rolling hills and vineyards, which I’m told gets up to 50C during summer – lucky for us this was not the case for our visit.

After our river cruise we visited Croft Port and had a winery tour before enjoying rosé and tawny port wine and olive oil tastings. It was a very picturesque vineyard. We enjoyed lunch at a family run restaurant – Douro Jovem – with more beautiful views overlooking Douro. Earlier in the day we had a choice from a few mains and I opted for the dourada fish (golden bream) with rice, potatoes and salad complemented by red and white table wine.

Our last stop for the day was Quinta do Val Moreira established in 2018 where we had more Douro and port wine tastings as well as more bread and olive oil. Being a newer establishment, this winery uses a machine to crush the grapes.

I tried a number of local savoury delicacies in Porto including Francesinha, a very heavy cheese, bacon and sausage sandwich covered in cheese and baked in a special sauce. I really think they should offer a tasting size as I only made my way through a quarter of its richness. I was also introduced to Portugal’s salty fish dishes including Bacalhau à Brás, a traditional cod fish with potato French fries style, leeks and olives. I enjoyed a Portuguese tapas dinner at Porto Oito including Chamuca de Alheira de Caca (samosa with Portuguese sausage), Salada Nobre (salad with pear, apple, cheese and rocket) and Berinjela Gratinada com Legumes (baked eggplant with vegetables).

I caught the three-hour fast train from Porto to Lisbon with Comboios de Portugal to meet my friend Abby for the rest of my trip. Lisbon has a lot of similarities to San Francisco with seven hills making up the city, novelty trams, a bridge resembling Golden Gate and more. We met at our hotel, Mundial, in the heart of downtown and our first stop was Belém for a Portuguese tart at Pastéis de Belém, believed to be the original home of the delicacy. We opted for a take-away so we didn’t have to wait in line which meant adding our own icing sugar and cinnamon whilst fighting off the wind tunnel in the laneway next door. The town has a lot of historical buildings including Belém Tower and Jerónimos Monastery, and is approximately 20-minutes drive from downtown Lisbon.

We enjoyed sunset drinks from our hotel rooftop – it was only supposed to be one drink but we met some locals and stayed for a few hours. It was so pretty seeing the changing colours of the night sky. We went across to Figus restaurant for dinner and tried another local cod delicacy, Bacalhau com Broa – codfish with corn bread and potatoes.

We joined a We Hate Tourism Tours four-hour morning walking tour guided by Nuno. After starting the tour enjoying the panoramic view over Lisbon from Miradouro da Senhora do Monte in Largo Monte, we made our way back down the hill via Estrela D’Ouro (the Golden Star neighbourhood) and learnt about 25 April 1974 when Democracy started, Vila Bertha terraced housing, St Anthony the main Saint of Lisbon, the Roman Theatre and the multicultural neighbourhood of Mouraria (historically considered a poor neighbourhood due to the direction of the sun).

We also passed many street art murals and beautiful tiled buildings, each of which tell their own story with blue and white being the traditional colours. The buildings in Porto were definitely more well manicured, Lisbon had a mix of buildings with tiles and a more rundown look without tiles. We were told most city apartments also have no insulation, no air-conditioning and no elevators. We finished the tour in downtown, sharing a toast with a Ginjinha berry liqueur at Ginjinha Sem Rival. It was a great tour to discover the neighbourhoods of Lisbon, though probably an hour too long for our attention spans.

The TimeOut Market was a beaut lunch spot – full of a variety of cuisines, local delicacies and great atmosphere. I enjoyed Portuguese tapas of a prosciutto and cheese skewer, cod salad, mussels, octopus salad and mini beef roll with an Aperol Spritz. We topped lunch off with a Pastéis de Nata of course. Outside in the main square there were locally made markets selling clothing, jewellery, sunglasses and more. Abby so kindly bought me a gold necklace for my birthday. I continued the afternoon shopping in downtown for bathers, summer dresses, summer holiday sunnies and earrings.

We had a wonderful evening dining at Rocco restaurant at The Ivens hotel. We had a table in the bar section and it was great ambience, food and wine. We indulged in the fried beans and cheese platter for entrée and shared the lobster linguine and rigatoni ragu for main as well as a bottle of wine. We whiled away the night and it was nice not to get kicked off our table in a rush. After dinner, we went to Park Bar, a rooftop bar six stories above a car park. It had a nice view over the city and 25 Abril Bridge (the Golden Gate lookalike) and would be even nicer at sunset. It wasn’t really our crowd. We walked through Bairro Alto, the bar and restaurant district, on the way back to our hotel.

We took a self-guided day trip to Sintra and Cascais from Lisbon. The train to Sintra took approximately 30-minutes from Lisbon. As the trip to Sintra was a little last minute, once we arrived in Sintra and made our way to the Visitor Centre for some assistance, we realised we should have planned ahead as Peña Palace was sold out for the day and we could only get into the Peña Gardens. It cost €7.50 for entry to the gardens and €12.50 for the Sintra city bus to take us there and back with as many stops as we liked. We probably should have taken the Historians offer to ride on his tour for €14 so we knew what we were looking at. The gardens were very nice and green with lots of different areas. We were able to get a little closer to the Palace entrance by visiting the Gift Shop.

We then took Bus 1623 from Sintra to Cascais which takes approximately 30-minutes also. We did get a little lost finding the bus stop but another bus dropped us off to where we needed to be. When we were finally on the 1623, it was a very speedy ride. In Cascais we enjoyed lunch at M.A.R. in the alfresco overlooking Praia da Rainha and relaxed and swam in the freezing Atlantic Ocean after. We finished the day with a gelato and walk through town before another 30-minute train back to Lisbon.

It was then time for our road trip to Lagos. We picked up our car hire from AVIS right next to Hotel Mundial and the attendant tried to upsell us to an automatic, bigger car, zero excess, GPS… every up-sell option. We declined all, proceeding with our blue Volkswagen Golf, and I still think the attendant put a curse on us! Getting into our car and departing was our first lesson not to hire a manual car when you haven’t driven one for 10 years. There were a few bunny hops out of town and then we came to a standstill at one point as we weren’t able to get the car out of reverse gear holding traffic up in the heart of Lisbon for 15 minutes (LOLs). Thanks to the kind man who Abby found on the sidewalk to come to our rescue. After that hiccup, I can say the manual part was smooth sailing and no hills thank goodness.

We took the coastal route on the way down (approximately 4.5 hours direct instead of three-hours) and followed the way to Sines, stopping at Porto Covo for a walk along the cliff edge coastline. It was here we also learnt how to use the reverse part of our gear stick – probably something that we should have figured out before leaving Lisbon (more LOLs). Next stop was the sweet town of Vila Nova de Milfontes where we had a quick walk through and lunch. There are many more beaches to explore along the way but we were now keen to get to Lagos and unwind.

We checked into our room at the Belmar Spa & Beach Resort on Praia de Porto Mos and enjoyed the afternoon by the adults only pool with cocktails. It was so nice and relaxing staying in a resort away from downtown. That evening, we were headed into downtown for dinner however we didn’t realise there were two Rua de Abril’s in Lagos and ended up in Praia da Luz instead. It was meant to be as we found Fortaleza da Luz, a beautiful restaurant overlooking the water, for a sunset drink and pre-dinner snack.

We eventually arrived in downtown Lagos and decided it was time to try some Piri Piri chicken – a South African influence in Portugal. It was nice but quite different to Nandos – more of a thin chicken breast with light marinating. The server gave us some spicier sauce to taste and the spice took forever to calm down, I even needed some milk to help. We had after drinks at Bon Vivant which had a nice rooftop but it was a bit cold to enjoy and then went to Beer & Co for some live music.

The next morning we went back into town for a bakery breakfast at Padaria Central, each enjoying a puff pastry with spinach, ricotta and feta and shared a pastry with de nata. We drove to Praia de Dona Ana to spend the day. It was very easy driving around Lagos, I would definitely recommend a car for daytime activities. Parking was a little difficult but we managed to park on side street curb about 10-minutes walk away. We hadn’t pre-booked a sun bed and none were available so we had to go without shade. We were told the water would be warmer here but it was just as freezing as Cascais.

After an hour or so in the sun, I went for a walk along Ponta da Piedade to see the sea caves, grottos and Praia do Camilo. It was a nice outlook over all the cliff edges. We then had an afternoon massage booked back at our Resort day spa. I tried the Lomi Lomi massage, a Hawaiian style oil massage using more of the lower arm. It was just what I needed after a couple of weeks travelling. The rest of the afternoon was spent by the pool. We definitely felt refreshed after our few days here.

On our last day, we were grateful to be able to enjoy the Resort’s facilities after check-out as our flight to Greece wasn’t until midnight. We lazed by the pool, had poolside service and freshened up in the hotel spa. We left Lagos mid-afternoon with the aim of making it to Lisbon marina for dinner. We had topped up our hire car’s petrol in downtown Lagos before heading on our way and took the quicker three-hour highway route back to Lisbon.

We noticed the car struggling after continuous driving for a couple of hours and thought it might have been the gears but it continued and eventually started to shake a bit. It got worse and worse and about 5km from our destination in Lisbon, the car lost acceleration and broke down. The whole time I was trying to get us off the highway, but we only got as far as making our way off what felt like the world’s longest bridge, Ponte Vasco da Gama – 17.2km long in fact.

The car Engine light came on and that is all we knew. We called for roadside assistance and had to wait two hours for the tow truck to arrive due to Friday peak hour traffic. In the meantime, an hour and a half into our breakdown, someone from Main Roads came to check on us and had apparently been watching us on the cameras for all this time – ‘what took you so long’ was our thoughts. We definitely would have felt more at ease if this occurred sooner.

And it gets worse, when the tow truck driver arrived, his winch wouldn’t work so that took a little while to resolve. Thank goodness we allowed a longer time period in Lisbon otherwise we wouldn’t have made our flight. We did end up getting off the freeway and to the safety of a taxi driver who had also been waiting a couple of hours for us. Amongst the stress, there were so many LOLs during the ordeal. I was very grateful for Abby during our times of crisis as whilst I froze, she made things happen.

What we found out following was that we had put the wrong petrol in our vehicle so that car hire excess the attendant tried to talk us into would have come in real handy right about now. We were hopeful it would be covered by our travel insurance but there’s a clause excluding it eek. So lesson learnt, ask if you don’t understand the petrol labels.

It was no Italian at Lisbon Marina for us, but by this point all we cared for was some McDonalds at Lisbon Airport which the airport delivered prior to our red eye to Athens for Greek Island adventures, which I will share next.

What a whirlwind in the end but so many funny moments. I really loved my summer wander in Portugal, especially the personalities and beauty of Porto and Lisbon and definitely have a renewed love for tiles.

Until next time…

LWL xxx