Portugal in January
 

I am looking to plan a trip to Portugal for 10 days in the beginning of January. I am looking for any suggestions on what would be good to see and do that time of year. I know very little about the country, but i have heard from many people that it is so wonderful.
Generally speaking, as travelers, my husband and I do not love to jump around too much. We like to try and find 1 or 2 places to base out of and do day trips from there. It's nice to be able to settle in a bit and get to know a place. For example, 5 days in a city, and 5 days in the countryside.
Any feedback would be so wonderful.

There are a number of recent threads here on planning trips to Portugal, use the "view by country" option to find them. My initial take on your question is to split your time between Lisbon and Porto, perhaps with Coimbra added.

Lisbon and Porto are the obvious choices for base cities.

From Lisbon you can easily day trip to Evora, Obidos, Sintra (a must short-in day trip) or even Fatima all by train or bus.

From Porto: Guimares (a national patrimony of Portugal); Braga and its famous Bom de Jesus pilrimmage site; and up the Duoro River Valley and Coimbra for starters - all by train or bus.

If you want a third base do as I did - base in Nazarre, a cute fishing village with the famous Albaca and Batalha monasteries and a neat old town where locals sell fresh-caubght fish grilled al fresco to tourists.

We spent 2 weeks in Portugal over NYE in 2010/2011. We spent 2 nights in Sintra, 5 nights in Lisbon, 5 nights in Tomar, 1 night in Marvao and 1 night in Evora. We enjoyed ourselves very much!

You can see our pics here https://www.flickr.com/photos/pug_gi...7636734183955/

Our trip report is here

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...m#last-comment

Thank you Everyone! this is so helpful. I love Fodor's!

If the weather is important to you the Algarve is usually very pleasant even in the winter months. Depends what you are looking for I would guess. Best of luck.