Andrea61

After hours reading Fodors and doing google searches we have chosen Portugal for the last 2 weeks of March. We decided against Spain because of Holy Week (crowds, traffic, cost & 4 night min. in hotels) and as my fiance is totally into food - we hear the food is fabulous in Portugal. We are 40, no kids, into relaxing, walking tours, seeing the sites, driving and eating where the locals go. First trip to Portugal and we want to see a lot without going too crazy.

Arrive Faro rent a car
2 nights Vilamoura (Pinhal do Sol)
3 nights Lagos (Porto Mos vilas - secretplaces.com)
1 night inland? - possibly Monchique
2 nights Cascais (Casa de Pergola)
2 nights Lisbon (Pensao Londres)
1 night Palmela - south of Lisbon
(Palacio de Rio Frio)
Return to Faro - maybe stay one night then fly home.

Any advice and/or feedback on hotels we've chosen would be appreciated. We would have loved Salema (Romantik Villa) but wanted to be more central and avoid moving around more than we already are. Thanks everyone. You have been a wealth of information!
Andrea, Vancouver Canada

bobthenavigator

We have been to Portugal twice in late March. Why are you changing hotels 6 times? You can do this trip by staying in 3 locations. I would pick Lagos, Cascais and Evora. You can day trip to any of the other locations from there.
BTW, the food is adequate in Portugal but hardly fabulous. Good luck !

Sher

Andrea. We are spending the first two weeks in Portugal. It is our first trip.
Our itinerary is different than yours, but for our twelve nights we are spending two four night stays, one night in the middle of the trip, and the last three nights at a hotel in Lisbon.
What I did was decide which cities I wanted to visit and then use mappy.com to calculate the distances between them. If you find a grouping within a reasonable area, pick one place to stay and do day trips as Bob suggests.
This is how I planned our trip to cut down on the packing and unpacking. I hope it works our for us.

Andrea61

Thanks. In hind sight it does seem like a lot of packing and unpacking. Nothing has been booked yet. I've been getting carried away all the cool places to stay!

bobthenavigator

Andrea, As you travel more you will learn that it is not about hotels, it is always about locations. The local commuter train from Cascais is easy into Lisbon, and you can drive to Sintra, Cabo de Roca etc. from there. Lagos is your best location on the Algarve. Good luck !

lobo_mau

I like your original planing. If you split the travel by more hotels, you have the trouble of more packing/unpacking, but you benefit from smaller distances to see the points of your interest. There is a trade off, that nobody is able to find for you.
While in Lagos, visit Sagres and Cabo Sao Vicente.
Mochique is a lovely spa in the mountains and an ideal point for active winter holydays with water treatments, massages, etc, but from you post, I don't think it is what you are looking for. If you check it in the map, You'll see that it's quite close to Lagos (It's still Algarve region). In my opinion you could go further north to Pousada Santa Clara (Alentejo region), another quiet and relaxing spot, nearby the dam. If you keep interested in Monchique you can do it as a side travel from Lagos, or even better en route from Lagos to Santa Clara.
After Santa Clara to North, make sure you stop for lunch in Vila Nova de Milfontes, a fishmen village. I post about my favourite meal ever (in Vila Nova de Milfontes), if you wish I may elaborate about it again. From Vila Nova de Milfontes to North, I advise you to cross from Troia (Troy) to Setubal using the ferry boat, just for the picturesque of it.
From Cascais, don't forget to see Sintra hills and Sintra itself. If you have a good map, check the costal drive from Cascais to Azenhas do Mar, with arrival to Sintra from the North.
My suggestion for the end of the trip is to add a night to Lisbon and do Lisbon/Faro directly in the last day. Since you do the scenic way on the way North, most likely you don't want to do the same thing again on the way South and using the highway, you can do easily Lisbon to Faro in 3 hours. As I suggested to somebody else, check http://www.discoverportugal2day.com as the most comprehensive travelog about Portugal.

Person_X

Well, I'm sort of jealous!

I went to Portugal a couple months back for a two week trip and it was a great experience. I'm sure you will have a wonderful time.

I did want to mention that I more or less agree with Bobthenavigator on the subject of food in Portugal. It isn't that the food is bad or uninteresting; but (in my limited experience at least) there wasn't much variety to be had in the cafes and restaraunts. I suspect you will find the cafe menus are fairly uniform in thier offerings.

Nevertheless I want to stress that on balance, my portugal trip was a great experience. Don't let me discourage you! It took a week and a half before I started to get really tired of the food. Maybe you can end your trip in Lisbon, which had an Indian restaraunt and some good pizza joints.