2024 Portugal

My husband Rich and I had a 3-week vacation planned for touring Portugal from April 16-May 5, 2020, which included 5 days in Lisbon, 2 days in Sintra, 3 days Porto and a 9-day driving trip across the Douro Valley.  Our trip was carefully researched, scheduled, booked, and paid for when COVID19 shut down all travel in mid March and canceled our plans.  We waited as long as we dared while we watched the situation grow more and more dire, then reluctantly pulled the plug on our excursion.  Luckily, we canceled early enough so that we received full cash refunds for just about all our expenses including airfare from Air Canada, hotels, tour bookings, etc.  Shortly after, realizing the huge debt that it was racking up, Air Canada stopped offering cash refunds and would only issue travel credits.  Since the pandemic, we have been slower than most to ease back into air travel.  Between 2020 and 2021, we made road trips all around Ontario, visiting many beautiful little towns within 2-3 hours of Toronto that we would not have previously prioritized.  In May 2023, we booked our first flight in almost 4 years when we resumed our regular trek to New York City to watch Broadway plays.  By then, I had totally forgotten the rules and regulations of air travel and made several rookie mistakes.

Back in 2020, we were amongst the first out of all our friends and family to consider visiting Portugal.  Since then, just about everyone that we know has taken some version of the trip that we had so meticulously planned.   Now in September 2024, four and a half years since we canceled our initial plans, we have finally rescheduled our trip to Portugal with some modifications.  On this revised trip, we decided to forego the drive through the Douro Valley and concentrate on the cities, spending 5 days in Porto, 3 days in Sintra (the castle and palace town) and 7 days in Lisbon.  As a general rule, I prefer visiting fewer locations and staying longer in each of them rather than having to pack up and relocate every day.  I also like to explore each new city that I encounter in great detail, looking for quirky, off-the-beaten path sites and experiences beyond the general touristy highlights.  Having more time in each city and town would allow us the luxury to do this. And lastly, we had been frightened off by tales of how expensive car rental has become since the pandemic.  We will fly into Porto via Air Transat, take the CP national train when we head from Porto to Sintra, a suburban train to get from Sintra to Lisbon, then fly out of Lisbon via Air Transat.  We chose Air Transat because it was the only airline that had a one-way direct flight to Porto in late September.  In retrospect, this was fortunate considering there was a threat of an Air Canada pilots’ strike.  Even though the strike was resolved before our trip, it was nice to not have to worry about it at all.

In 2019, we acquired a new BMO Infinite Mastercard that gave us travel bonus points, 21-day travel health insurance and 4 free airport lounge passes per year.  Since this is our first overseas travel since the pandemic, this will be our first opportunity to take advantage of the lounge passes, or at least try to.  There was an article in the Globe and Mail recently about how airport lounges were becoming overbooked and started turning overflow people away.  Given that we have a late redeye flight to Porto, hopefully this will not apply to us.

It used to be that each time we landed in a new country, we would look for the local cell provider to buy a physical SIM card to have data access on our cell phones.  Since 2023, we switched to electronic SIM cards (e-SIMs) provided by the Airalo app and used them successfully in the United States for a fraction of the cost of the physical SIM and without the inconvenience of hunting down a physical store.  Now we will buy e-SIMs for Portugal and will load up on data since we expect to be using Google Maps quite a bit to find our way around the windy streets.  As we are away for 16 days, we decided to go for the biggest allocation of data which is 20Gigs for $44.50 Canadian.  It is slightly cheaper to go big than to incrementally top up as you run out of data.

For our accommodations at each of our three destinations, we tried to pick an apartment hotel as close to the train station as possible so that we would not have to lug our luggage that far when we arrived.  An apartment hotel is perfect for our needs since we get more living space than a hotel room and most importantly a kitchen where we can store fruit and breakfast fare for the days when we need an early start.  But it also has a hotel concierge service that can help us with luggage storage if we arrive before check-in time, and in the case of Sintra, hopefully the attendant can help us call for a taxi to bring us to the gates of the palaces prior to the start of bus service. Unfortunately, none of the places that we selected had washing machines, but at least there are drying racks and irons for some make-shift laundry in the sink.

In Porto, we will be staying in the Baixa area, just a 3-minute walk from the beautiful Sao Bento train station, which is supposed to be a tourist attraction in its own right.  During our 5-day stay in Porto, we would be visiting each of the major areas except for Bonfim, which is mostly residential.  Within Baixa, there is beautiful architecture, shops and restaurants within steps of our apartment including the large Mercado Bolhao, a bi-level food mart that is just a few minutes away. South of us is the area called Sé where we will tour major cathedrals including Bolsa Palace, Church of Sao Francisco, and Cathedral of Se.  Continuing further south to Ribeira, we will explore the waterfront shops and restaurants on both sides of the Douro River at Cais Ribeira and Cais Gaia, as well as do some port tasting in Vila Nova de Gaia where I also want to ride the funicular.  Traveling west to the BoaVista area, we will take the bus to the Serralves Art Museum and then on the way back to the hotel, stop by the Cedofeita district to walk along neighbourhoods featuring Art Nouveau buildings including Livraria Lello. On our last day in Porto, we want to stroll along the beaches in the Foz Do Douro area.  Hopefully the weather cooperates.

While at the Porto Airport, we will buy the Andante card which is Porto’s version of Toronto’s Presto card and costs less than 1 euro.  Porto transit works on zones with the cost of a ride increasing depending on the number of zones being crossed. From the airport to Sao Bento covers 4 zones so this is the ticket we will initially load on our cards.  You can only load one type of ticket (# of zones) on your card at any time.  After that, all of our trips within Porto will span 2 zones, including the final trip to get from Sao Bento to Campanha Train station where we start our trip to Sintra, so we can load the rest once we arrive at Sao Bento.

To get to Sintra, we will take the national train Comboios de Portugal (CP) from Porto Campanha station to Lisbon Oriente station, which will take just under 3 hours.  Once in Lisbon, a suburban train can take us to Sintra so we can buy the Navegante card from the Oriente train station.  Lisbon’s Navegante transit card is more encompassing than the Andante, as it covers all subways, buses, suburban trains, trams, funiculars, elevators and ferries.  There are many ways to load or use the card.  You can purchase single tickets and top up as required, buy a day pass for infinite rides on all modes of transportation within 24 hours, and other passes.  But the cheapest way to ride seems to be a term they call “Zapping” where you load some amount of money (minimum 3 Euros or increments of 5 Euros up to a maximum of 40).  The Zapping method reduces the fares of some types of rides almost by half.  If you can plan out what you may need to spend, this is the way to go.  We will try this as I want to ride on elevators, funiculars, ferries and possibly a tram in addition to the buses, subways and trains.  With zapping, you don’t need to worry about what type of tickets to load or how much it costs.  The reader will just deduct the appropriate, discounted amount when you flash the card against it.  Because the Navegante card covers suburban trains, we can use it to travel from Lisbon Oriente to Sintra and then return from Sintra to Lisbon Rossio station near where we are staying.

We have 3 days in Sintra with the first being partly a travel day where we hope to arrive from Porto by early afternoon.  This will give us enough time to check into our hotel apartment (350 metres from the train station), orient ourselves, visit the National Palace of Sintra, check out the shops in the town and have a leisurely early dinner.  For the next two days, we plan to visit Pena Palace and Grounds, Palace of Monserrate, Quinta da Regaleira and Castle of the Moors.  At this writing, all these places are closed from Sept 15-19 under threat of rural forest fires.  This would be a major blow to our plans if this remains the case during our stay 3 weeks from now, so we are busy making contingency plans just in case.  Fingers crossed that this will all be resolved by the time we arrive.  Whereas while we are in Porto, I am hoping for sunshine especially on our beach day, I wish for Sintra to get plenty of rain before we arrive!

Our 7 days in Lisbon will be filled with a wide variety of activities and modes of transportation as we plan to explore beyond the usual tourist areas.  We will be staying in Chiado at a hotel apartment a mere 350 metres from the Rossio train station, as the crow flies.  Unfortunately, we are not crows and the “short walk” involves a steep climb up multiple long flights of stairs, raising 113 metres in elevation while carrying all of our luggage!  We have been in training for the past few weeks by taking stairs whenever there is the opportunity. The area around Chiado and neighbouring Baixa are full of unique shops, restaurants and beautiful squares or pracas to explore.  We will be transiting to districts further afield including Alfama to visit St.George’s Castle, Marvila to check out the Tile Museum, Areeiro to tour the Calouste Gulbenkian Art Museum, Alcantara where we will explore the Prazeres Cemetery, Berado Art Deco Museum and LXFactory, a hip art and shopping district, and of course Belém to visit the Jeronimós Monastary and Belem Tower.  I also want to take a ferry across to Cacilhas on the other side of the River Tagus, ride the Santa Justa elevator, the Bica Funicular, and if it is not too crowded, the historic #28 Tram.  Finally on our last day of Lisbon, we will be taking a 3-hour street art walking tour that will wrap up our trip.

We are excited to finally be heading to Portugal.  Should be a great vacation if weather cooperates.