carlym

A friend and I are going to Portugal in February, and we're going to be in Batalha on a Sunday. It looks like seeing the sights in Batalha won't take all day, and we're interested in seeing Alcobaca, some of the caves in the area, or something else. It looks like the bus options on Sunday are impossible, though, and we don't want to get stuck. Does anyone have a suggestion for hiring a driver for a half day or some other non-bus transportation? We thought about staying in one of the other larger towns nearby, but then we would just have a problem getting the bus to Batalha. (We will be coming into Batalha on Sunday night and leaving Monday morning. We don't want to stay in Lisbon and do a tour from there; Sunday will be our first full day in Portugal, and we don't want to have to get up early and be on a 9 or 10-hour tour.)

Rubicund

You don't mention hiring a car? It's the most effective way to get around.

carlym

We really don't want to rent a car--for one thing, we don't want to have to get off the plane in Lisbon and start driving while jet-lagged (and I checked car rental options in Batalha, and they look limited or non existent), and we just generally find driving in a foreign country stressful. If we could rent a car from Batalha for just that day, that would be a decent solution, but it couldn't find any place in Batalha to reserve a car and pick it up there.

We might end up staying in Lisbon and just taking the bus to Batalha Sunday afternoon and back Sunday evening,which looks manageable (regular bus, not a tour bus).

lobo_mau

Batalha is a village grown under the shadow of the monastery. No surprise there is small offer for car renting. The towns of some dimension in the neighborhood are Caldas da Rainha or Leiria (regional capital).

carlym

Yeah, I wasn't surprised about the lack of car rental options. Thanks for the response.