Need Advice: 9 Days in Portugal in March
 

We will be spending 9 days in Portugal in March - flying into and out of Lisbon. Our travel style is more laid-back, liking to immerse ourselves in the culture and don't typically like to over-do it by packing too much into a short time frame. I've been reading that a day trip to Sintra is a must but curious if there are any other day trips that are are highly recomended. I'm also wondering if 9 days in Lisbon would be too much & if there are any other recommended places we should be staying as part of our 9 day trip. Any travel advice would be much appreciated! Thanks!

We spent 10 nights in Lisbon this past March/April. Our daytrip to Sintra was a bit of a disaster (torrential rain, howling wind!) but we really enjoyed our day in Cascais--a charming seaside town with a lovely park and some great (to us) museums. The fact that the weather was nice that day (we had a lot of rain on this trip, unfortunately) was a bonus.

Sintra is beautiful. We were also told it is the top tourist destination in Portugal. It lived up to that reputation when we were there for a couple days in June. We spent the bulk of our time outside Sintra. Sintra was way overcrowded for us,

Thank you both for your replies! Would you recommend renting a car to drive outside the city to Sintr or Cascais or is the public transportation easily navigable?

We used public transportation for both and found it very easy.

We stopped by the beach town of Nazare (about an hour outside of Lisbon) in September. We were particularly interested because a surfer from Hawaii surfed the largest wave in the world there a few years ago. In September the surf was flat, but the town itself was quite beautiful and the beach the widest and most spectacular I've seen (and I'm from Hawaii). The waves are largest in the winter. I've seen postings, and surf is already quite large right now. It's worth a visit and a chance to see the big waves in March, I think. The seafood there is also wonderful.