Hotel and parking in Guimares
 

For our Sept trip to Portugal we were planning about a week in Porto, with a few day trips in the area for the first days, then car rental return and spend the last few days of the week exploring Porto.
I read on a different post about the nightmare Porto traffic, and because of that we are now considering the first 3-4 days in Guimares (with the car) and the last few days in Porto (without the car).
My question is now about Guimares: I love the looks of Pousada Mosterio de Guimarães, but it's a little outside of the town, so I'm wondering: if we'd have to drive into the town to visit it during the day and then for dinner, how difficult is to park in the old town?
If parking is an issue, we'd probably stay somewhere else and just walk to restaurants for dinner. What do you suggest? Thanks.

Guimaraes parking
 

Hi
There are a number of parking lots in Guimaraes, some belong to city and the others are private.
Do a web search for "estacionamento municipal em guimaraes" and it will show you both types of parking lots on a street map.
The site you want will start with"cm-guimaraes"
The site is in Portuguese but you can relate the location of the parking lots to your hotel and the attractions you want to see.
The dark blue are city owned the light blue are private.
Happy travels

Thanks, that's a great web site and easy to figure out.

We were in Guimaraes in September of 2019. We stayed at a great AirBnB that had free included parking. It was easy to walk to restaurants & to take the car out for day trips. The apartment was called Old Market Apartment [City Center] and the host was António. He speaks perfect English and the place was extremely clean & comfortable. Highly recommended. If you are considering staying in the old town area. And if you are looking for a nicer dinner I highly recommend Duho Restaurante. It was a bit of a walk so a cab might be easier as it's a bit outside the main tourist area. The food and service were excellent.

We're kind of set on the*Pousada Mosterio de Guimarães, even though is not in the old town (which we usually prefer), so we'll try to make that one work. The Duho Restaurante looks great, thanks for the recommendation. Did you have a reservation? As a general rule, do you think we'd need dinner reservations in Portugal? Thanks.

You'll definitely want a reservation for Duho. It's not very big and every table was full when we were there. We did eat twice at Cervejaria Guimaraes which is on one of the less touristy squares with nice outside seating. They are known for their steak (which we had both times) and their franceshina. Both times we did not have a reservation (had a disappointing meal at another restaurant we had reserved in advance that left my husband still hungry & then a place we had planned to eat at was unexpectedly closed so we ended up here two nights). I also recommend them if you are looking to eat outside on a square (Duho has no outside).

Edited to add- we did reserve most of our dinners in advance. I do a lot of research before leaving to try to make sure our dinners are the kinds of places we like. I hate wandering around trying to find a place at the last minute. It usually doesn't turn out well for us.

Thanks. We usually make dinner reservations in advance too, but that does not stop me from thinking that I'm over-planning :-)
Love, love, love outdoor seating when possible, thanks for Cervejaria Guimaraes suggestion, on the list it goes!