Porto Or Coimbra for a day trip
 

which do you prefer....??

Porto! It's my favourite city in Portugal.

Some people don't enjoy a day trip if they feel they were unable to see most of the memorable sights of a place, or experience its ambience away from the tourist attractions. Others don't mind cherry picking a few targets, and shrug off missing the rest.

So if your personality veers toward wanting to feel you've "done justice" to a place, Coimbra is much more compact, with a smaller handful of gem sights, and it is easy to tour without feeling rushed at all within a day, and you don't need a guided tour.

Porto is a much more complex place, with many corners of fascinating atmosphere (many not listed in guidebooks), so a day trip inevitably means a fairly truncated experience of the city. If you are the kind of person who enjoys guided walking tours or tram tours, that would be one way to accomplish an ambitious agenda. If you just want to hit some fun "wows" and have a delicious port cocktail, it's not hard to do, or you can even just go wandering without much of a plan -- although I think you do have to be careful in Porto to make sure to wander away from the tourist trap areas near the river banks.

We loved Porto, but we were there for five days. As Sandralist says, one day may not do it justice.

Byrd

after having done both I would say Porto has an edge - a very very unique place - Coimbra however may yes be more manageable for a day trip - or really IME half a day or so to see everything of major interest.

We, too, were in Porto for 5 days (two years in a row, 5 days each). One day is indeed not nearly enough to see the sights but it can give a brief feel of what this magnificent city stands for.
I wasn't really impressed by Coimbra. No desire to return.

I'm not sure I'd return to Coimbra either, having seen all I want to see there. Some of the answer depends on what you travel to see and do, and what the rest of your trip will be like. The library at Coimbra is a marvelous sight worth going out of one's way to see. There are Roman ruins nearby that can be reached with a car or some minimal planning ahead. However, if you mainly are looking for an enjoyable atmosphere of yesteryear + lunch, then charming Guimaraes fits that bill more easily, even though it has lesser "sights."

Porto is full of atmosphere -- although like I said, I think some people end up missing it by heading for the dreary tourist scene around the bars that focus on Port wine, or some of the gussied up tourist streets with typical tourist shopping. But those are easily missed if you'd rather poke around behind the "scenes" in Porto.

But I was certainly impressed by what I saw in Coimbra, although not everyone shares my interests (nor I theirs!)

Just to complete the thought:

Not feeling a desire to return to a place can be part of what makes for a successful day trip for some people. It can be rather frustrating to acquire a long list of places one would like to go back to -- because at some point one begins to realize that is actually not going to happen, especially for people who also have a long list of places they haven't visited yet at all but want to see.

I'm a pretty moody traveler, and sometimes I am definiately not in the mood to visit a complex famous city for a day, whereas I might be in the mood to pop into a town with some exceptional gems if I can easily get there for a day, and leave having satisfied my curiousity completely, with no feeling of "I hope I can come back to see the rest."

But sometimes I am happy to spend a day in Paris, or Rome or Porto. Why not?

thank you all for your input..becuz I'm in Portugal for only 6 days I think we'll stay in Lisbon, go to Sintra and maybe Obidos ( closer for day trip)...so many places and we'll have to come back.

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Trouble on Europe posting.