My husband and I will be traveling to Portugal in November for 8 days. We have flights in and out of Lisbon, but we have not made any other arrangements yet.

I've been reading lots of itineraries in order to narrow down the places we'll visit. I've noticed that very few people visit both Lisbon and Oporto unless they are in Portugal for a couple of weeks. Is this not really feasible in an 8 day trip with stops at small towns along the way?

We don't have a lot of interest in beaches, preferring atmospheric towns, ruins, museums. Additionally, we don't do well with a lot of downtime and prefer to keep moving with only 1-2 nights in a place unless there are a lot of sights to see there.

So far, we are most interested in Lisbon, Sintra, Fatima, Obidos, Conimbriga, and Oporto, to give you an idea of the places swimming around in our heads. However, if Oporto is too much distance or not worth it, we might look at Evora and environs (something about chapels decorated with bones really fascinates me).

Don't feel obligated to comment on the itinerary at this time (but, if you really want to talk about those places, I'd be interested), because I know there's not enough there to really critique yet. We were just interested in the driving times and feasibility of going from Lisbon to Oporto to know how to plan further. Some countries have such small roads that it takes a lot longer than you would expect to drive around (ran into that one in Scotland once!).

Thanks so much!

We spent twelve nights in Portugal in May and visited all of these places.

I must say that we did not drive into Porto. We parked the car in Braga and took the train in. We only spent one day there, so this may not work if you want to do an overnight.

I really feel that if you concentrate on the places you mentioned you will be o.k. If I had to do it again, I would have flights into Porto and out of Lisbon, but we managed.

What we did was arrive in Lisbon at 11:30 and immediately drive North. Then we made our way back to Lisbon. We are not bothered by a long flight and we prefer to take off right away. It would probably take you about four hours, if I remember correctly. But I would rather be close to the departure airport the last couple of days.

Posted too quickly.

Anyway, we loved Portugal and really wished we had had more time. But if that is all the time you have then you can do it.

Between Lisbon and Porto is your greatest distance. The other places you mention are close together.

We are saving Evora and the Alentejo for the next trip. The roads are really fine, especially the route North from Lisbon to Porto.

The roads around some of the sights like Fatima are slower, but all are in very good condition and easy to drive.

Check out Carjet.com. Our car rental was very reasonble through them and we picked up the car at the Lisbon airport (Budget).

Thanks, Sher! Maybe we should do a one-way car rental, then take the train back from Porto to Lisbon? Or take the train to Porto and rent the car there for drop off in Lisbon. I believe there is a high-speed connection.

Our trip to Portugal was a little over two weeks in length. We share the same interests you speak of. We decided to skip Porto altogether since we much prefer smaller towns and villages.

In addition to the places you've mentioned, have you considered Alcobaca, Batahla and Tomar? The templar ruins at Tomar were one of the highlights of our trip. Queluz and Leira might also be of interest--although those were 2 destinations we could not fit into our plans. I found Fatima moving because my family roots are very Catholic. However, without the religous interest, I would not have cared for it solely as a tourist destination.

We visited Conimbriga and found it interesting. Whether it is "worth it," depends upon your frame of reference. My husband loves all things Roman and we have made an effort to see Roman ruins every time we've been to Europe. But we haven't been to Italy yet! We also bypassed Coimbra. We stopped at Conimbriga on our way driving from Obidos to Braga.

If Conimbriga is a "for sure" destination, you might consider heading west after that. Or perhaps skipping Conimbriga and heading west sooner.

Marvao was the absolute highlight of our trip. It is the definition of atmospheric village. We also enjoyed Monsaraz, Vila Vicosa and Sortelha. Evora was not a favorite, but then again I did not like the bone chapel (DH loved it).

We stayed in several pousadas (Crato, Belmonte, Almeida, and Obidos) and loved them all except for Obidos.

Our driving experience was a bit different from Sher's. We found major toll roads to be easy, fast and worth every penny of the tolls. However, smaller roads were often very narrow, winding, steep and much slower going. We didn't drive in Lisbon and picked up the rental car before leaving Sintra.

ttt

We spent 12 days in Portugal in April-May and loved it. We spent 3 days in Lisbon and the rest of the time north of Lisbon. We drove all over in a rented car and particularly enjoyed Oporto and the north. We visited sintra, obidos, nazare, batalha, bucaco, viano, braga, ponte de lima, and several other places.

You can get more information from the following threads:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34618766
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34521019

Thanks guys, for your advice! I think we may concentrate on the Porto-Lisbon axis this time, to not over-extend ourselves. Maybe we could combine the west of Portugal with the south of Spain on a different trip as we have not yet been to Seville.

Does 2 nights in Porto and 2 nights in Lisbon seem reasonable, with the remainder spent in small towns in between?

If it were me, I would either continue (fly) Lisbon to Porto or go to Oriente station and catch an Alfa Pendular (3-hours) to Porto. In Porto I would pick up a rental car and spend day-2 in the north (Braga and Guimaraes). Then I'd go south, have roast suckling pig in a region called Mealhada (mi al ya da) on the way to Coimbra (on the old highway). You should be able to visit Fatima (and then Sintra or Estoril) on your way back to Lisbon.

We did much of that on a weekend but we were chauffered by a relative who used to live in Lisbon.

Turn in your rental when you get back in Lisbon. You don't really need a car in Lisbon.

Here is an excerpt from a trip report I posted last year:

Well, for those wanting to travel by train, let me just say a few more things:

1) One mistake I made was to assume that taxis would be available at each train station. This is true at larger train stations but not necessarily at smaller ones (Obidos, for instance). Actually Obidos is a very remote station and it almost looks abandoned. It also happens to be on the other side of the city and quite some distance from the hotels. I think the taxi drivers in the area know when the trains arrive and wait at the station at these specific times to see if anyone will need a ride...but I wouldn't count on it for every arrival. I got lucky...but I'm not sure what I would have done if a taxi hadn't been there.

NOTE: Rest assured, there are TONS of taxis available at the Lisbon, Sintra, Coimbra, and Oporto train stations.

2) The train timetables and schedules available on the internet at www.cp.pt leave out a LOT of trains. For example, according to the website there is only one Interregional run daily from Oporto to Lisbon (and this is at midnight!). In fact there are about ten. You also have the option of taking the faster Intercity or Alfa Pendular trains (vastly preferable). So, it is fairly safe to assume that you will have more departure time options than you might be led to believe after reviewing the website. When you get to Portugal, stop by any station or a Tourismo and get the timetables from the attendent. These are much more helpful.

Having said that, I noted that Obidos is kind of off by itself on a lonely spur of the railroad system, and the options are much more limited there. And, always keep in mind that weekends and holidays have a reduced number of trains running.

3) Train Fares. The fare from Lisbon to Sintra was less than a Euro. From Sintra I took a train to Cacem (a short hop) and then at Cacem I got a train to Obidos. The fare was about five Euros. In general, unless you are making a very long journey, you can expect to pay less than 10 Euros for IR trains, and up to 20 Euros for AP. With Alfa Pendular you also have the option to upgrade to First Class for an additional 10 Euros (this was for a trip from Oporto to Lisbon, by the way). I have no idea if First Class is worth the extra ten Euro; I rode regular and it was perfectly comfortable.

4) A map showing the various train lines is available at the www.cp.pt website. This was the most useful thing I downloaded from the site. It shows which lines go where in PDF format.

Hope this information is all useful.

My wife and I lived in Lisbon for a year (2001-2002) and had a chance to see a lot of the smaller towns in the area.

I highly recommend going to Batalha - the unfinished chapels there are pretty incredible. You can see everything there in about 3 hours. You should not miss Tomar - this is a fantastic castle/monastery. Conimbriga has very interesting Roman mosaic floors.

Not far away is Bucaco (pronounced Bussaco). This was our favorite place in the country. You should stay at the hotel in the forest (the Palace Hotel Bucaco). The forest was established by monks over five hundred years ago - there is still a papal bull carved in stone at one of the gates that forbids women to enter, and punishes cutting down a tree by excommunication. The forest was lovely and peaceful - truly not to be missed. You can also drink from the Luso spring nearby, which is the source of the fabulous Luso bottled water you will see everywhere in Portugal.

Porto's big attraction are the Port wine makers. If that is your kind of thing, it is definitely worth a visit. Otherwise, I wouldn't really recommend Porto.

While in Lisbon, you should go to the Calouste Gulbenkian museum. It is a little out of the way - it is walking distance from the Corte Ingles, and there is a metro stop there. The Gulbenkian is not a large museum, but the collection is very high quality, especially the Lalique jewelry. It reminded me a lot of the Thyssen museum in Madrid.

Evora is a nice town - staying in the Pousada there is the best part of it. We were there in November and the weather was lovely. Don't miss the roasted chestnuts that are sold by the street vendors.

Have fun!

Since my previous answer, I have uploaded my newest webpage on our trip to Portugal. Here is the URL:


http://www.travel.stv77.com/portugal/pt.htm