| Tips and photos for Portugal vacations and tourism, posted by real travelers and Portugal locals. Map |
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In Portugal you will not have any trouble to find banks and ATM machines to take Euros, the currency used in Portugal.
There are several Banks: BES, BCP, GGD and others.
On my pic you can see the huge building of Caixa Geral de Depositos (CGD) in Lisbon. Leave a Comment
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Vila Real District is situated at the centre of the northern region in Portugal. It is the “core” of Douro vineyard area, and provides some of the most beautiful landscapes in Portugal – the slopes of the mountains covered in vineyards overlooking River Douro.
While visiting this District, don’t miss the capital city – Vila Real, although I think one day to explore this city is more than enough. It is, however, a good base to explore the region. Be sure not to miss:
. Casa de Mateus, a fabulous palace on the outskirts of the city, with beautiful gardens and tasty manufactured jams.
. Pinhão, a lovely village bathed by River Pinhão, where it meets River Douro. Pinhão’s train station is considered as the most beautiful train station in Portugal, and it has amazing panels made in azulejos depicting daily scenes from the vineyards and the grapes harvests.
. Sabrosa, a quiet little town with some impressive manor houses dating from the 15th and 18th centuries.
. Régua, a beautiful town bathed by River Douro. A central piece in the commerce of Porto sweet wine and Douro wines; the landscapes surrounding this town are just breathtaking!!
. a cruise on River Douro. Even in bad weather, it is magnificent!!
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If you see this logo (take a look at the pic) photo you will know that is an Internet Space.
The Internet Spaces are places open usually until late and at weekends where you can access to internet without paying, it is total free.
Usually these places are in a local very visible and in the centre of the town; it is the city Hall that rules these spaces, so if you want to know if there is a Internet Space in the town you are visiting, go and ask on the City Hall or on the Tourist Office.
On this website you can see the towns where are located the Internet Spaces:
http://www.espacosinternet.pt/ Leave a Comment
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It did not take us long to find out why Lisbon is called the 'City of the Seven Hills'!! As soon as we had arrived in the country and checked our bags into the hotel, we ventured out on foot for a little exploration of the downtown core of the city. We soon discovered that whether you want to visit the Alfama district on the hillside or just return to the hotel from the main tourist areas, there was always a climb involved.
This was repeated in many of the great places that we visited - climbing the mountains of Sintra to it's Moorish Castle, up and down the 686 double-staircase of the shrine in Lamego and also visiting the amazing old fort from the cliffs of Ilha da Berlenga. Of course I won't even mention the numerous mountaintop castles where you have to park your car outside the gates and hoof it from there! Altogether, it was great to do it on foot and see things up-close. However, it can be tiring - one reason why you will not see many Nightlife Tips on these pages! Leave a Comment
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We had planned our trip from Canada by reading the tips of various VT members (especially 'Canadienne' and 'Micas_pt') in combination with a few tourist leaflets that we had received from Portugal's tourism ministry. Using that information, I planned a rough trip itinerary in my mind and then began making phone calls to accommodations at the various locations where I thought we would be staying the night. I pre-booked most of the places because I was not sure how strong the demand would be in late-May, just before the Euro 2004 football championships kicked off in host-country Portugal.
I received good advice to spend some time in Lisbon, there definitely was lots to see both there and in it's immediate surroundings. We barely scratched it's surface in four nights! In the end our trip and my 'Pages' went like this:
'Lisbon' 3 nights during which we took in the nearby 'Sintra' and 'Belem' sights!
After this it was off to the southern 'Algarve' for 2 more nights, 'Evora' 1 night, 'Monsaraz' and 'Marvao' toured on our way to Castelo Branco for 1 night.
Then it was onward to 'Monsanto' and 'Covilha' before another night in 'Guarda'.
That was followed by the drive to 'Lamego' where we spent 2 nights and also toured the northern 'Giraz do Minho' area and the Port wine producing Douro River region at 'Pinhao'.
We then began heading south again with a drive to the western Atlantic coast at 'Praia da Mira' just south of Aveiro for 1 night. This was followed by a stop in 'Obidos' before touring nearby 'Ilha da Berlenga' and spending the night at Peniche.
The final part of the trip was a dash back to Lisbon where we spent our final night after an afternoon tour of the mountains around Sintra in 'Distrito de Lisboa'. Leave a Comment
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About 2 months before we left Canada for Portugal, I bought a DK Eyewitness Travel Guide book (for about US$30) in order to get some background information on this new (to me) country. After looking at Fodors and Lonely Planet as well, I picked DK because it is totally loaded with colour photographs, maps and helpful hints. It really made a huge difference to us to be able to see the various attractions and read the detailed descriptions of each one.
The book even has various suggested tour routes with all the relevent details, such as the Serra de Sintra drive or even one near Evora to see ancient cromlechs! For Lisbon, it also provided us with detailed street maps of the different sections of the city as well as another entire chapter on the delights in the area immediately surrounding Lisbon. There are sections describing the time-line of Portugal's history, it's various rulers down through the ages, local food customs and a whole wealth of information!
It's useful restaurant phrases and a small Portugese/English phrase section all came in very handy! To get maximum enjoyment out of your trip, I strongly suggest that you get a guide book of any description to give you an understanding of the culture and attractions of the country that you are visiting! Leave a Comment
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We bought (E10 or US$12) this now battered road map at a tourist information shop in Sintra, during our first full day in Portugal - even though we were not picking up our rental car for another two days. If you plan to be driving off the main highways at all, you had better have a detailed map of the road system so you can have a fighting chance of figuring out either where you are or how best to get to your next destination!
This was a huge two-sided fold-out map, with the photo only showing the southern Portugal side. Inside our small car, we had to fold it every whichway to keep it down to a size that we could manage! We found that the map was great for pointing out the smaller country roads as well as some of the tourist highlights. One surprising thing was that there seems to be so much European Union-sponsored road building taking place in Portugal that we on a few occasions stumbled onto 4-lane highways that were not shown!
We also found it useful to mark our trail with a blue felt pen as we progressed - it made it a lot easier to quickly see exactly where we were when we had to consult the map! Leave a Comment
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Aveiro, the main city of this coastal district, is often referred to the Portuguese Venice. It is a city by the river/lagoon and here you may also see canals, bridges over the canals and neighbourhoods. Traditional boats called Moliceiros will delight visitors because of their colourful paintings and traditional shape. Aveiro is famous for the production of salt. In Aveiro you should try a sweet made of eggs called “ovos moles”, absolutely delicious!! In this area you will have the opportunity to visit fishing villages with their typical and colourful wooden houses. Leave a Comment
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Beja district is very big and spreads from the interior to the coast. The coast is fabulous – called Costa Vicentina, it is a protected landscape meaning that (fortunately) you can’t build anything there. Going up from the Algarve till Vila Nova de Milfontes you will travel along the coast and find amazing off the beaten path spots by the sea and beautiful dunes. In the interior of this district you will find plains and beautiful small white villages some of them “defended” by a castle or wall. Mértola is an example of these lovely typical villages. As in other Alentejo districts, products made of cork are typical. Leave a Comment
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Portalegre is one of the 3 districts from the Alentejo area, a beautiful landscape of plains, small hills, olive trees and deserted peaceful fields. Portalegre is a nice city to visit, but beware of extreme weather conditions (considering you are in Portugal) in this area: it is very cold in winter and very hot in summer. I have already got extreme conditions here such as –2ºC for winter nights and 44ºC for summer days. In this area you should enjoy the food, absolutely fabulous!! Wine from the Alentejo region is also very good. Aviz is a nice off the beaten path village and near there is a dam. Fronteira and Galveias are peaceful little villages that you may visit in half a day. Ponte de Sor being a slightly bigger village will provide you with more options for accommodation and nightlife. Leave a Comment
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on August 28, 2004
on June 10, 2004
on December 2, 2004
