Thanks. My 'stops' were really more of a wish list, and I figured we'd be cutting some of them out. That's why I wanted feedback. When I read the guidebooks, they all sound appealing for 1 reason or another.

We do plan on getting rid of the car in Lisbon, and using the train for a day trip.

If we get ourselves up and running by 8:30ish on day 2, I think we can make the 11:43. Can we buy food on the train, or is there somewhere near the station where we can pick something up for lunch?

I supposed if we are running late, we'd have to skip the train.

If I were to eliminate either Batalha, Alcobaca, or Nazare, which one can I do most without?

Hi, MFNYC,

When I mentioned dropping off the car, I was referring to Day 5. I think the Sintra/Estoril combination on one day and a train trip to Cascais on another day isn't the most bang for your buck. I think I'd do one of two things on Day 5. Keep the car and skip Sintra that day, using the car to get from Obidos to Cabo da Roca, maybe Convento dos Capuchinos if that interests you, and maybe a fish meal at Praia d'Adraga, absolutely fantastic. Then you can take the nice drive from Cabo da Roca to Cascais, pray that the parking gods are on your side and spend some time there and continue along the coast/river into Lisbon, stopping in Estoril ifyou are so inclined. Then I would take the train to Sintra for a day.

OR, if you are planning to visit a lot of the more remote sites in Sintra, spend day 5 in Sintra only. Again parking can be a real headache, but depending on what you want to see, it will be necessary. Have you decided what you want to visit in Sintra? There's the town itself (mainly filled with stores now, some selling very nice handicrafts, but still, it's all stores, and some dynamite pastry shops as well), the National Palace, the Pena Palace up on the top of the hill, the Moorish Castle, Monserrate (a beautiful "summer home" for a magnate turned into a public garden and renovation), and Convento dos Capuchinos. Obviously you can't do all of those things in one day, and many of them would be hard to get to without a car.

I guess in large part how you use that Day 5 with a car it depends on whether you want to go to Cabo da Roca and the coast between Sintra and Cascais. And what sites you want to see in Sintra itself.

As between Batalha, Alcobaca and Nazare, I really like them all. Alcobaca and Batalha are both religious sites with beautiful churches, statuaries, so toss a coin and pick one of them maybe. And Nazare is a fishing village turned tourist magnet, but it is a beautiful bit of coastline, and the "upper town" has great views, nice little cafes, and a pretty church. YOu can ride up to the upper town on a tram which is kind of fun. Great fish meals on the seaside, too.

There is no food on the train that I'm aware of, but at the end of the line in Pocinho there is a little cafe in the station as well as a cafe up the hill a block away for some quick food. I don't know Pinhao well enough to know what's there for take-out, but take-out is not prevalent anywhere in Portugal.

oops, just forgot one thing. There is a very good website that is run by the municipality of Sintra that describes four sites they refer to as the "Parks of Sintra." That includes Monserrate, Convent of Capuchinos, Pena Palace, and Moorish Castle. The National Palace down in the town of Sintra proper is run by the national government, I imagine, and is not included in this site.

http://www.parquesdesintra.pt/en/

Well if Estoril is primarily a casino, then I'm not particularly interested in that, nor would I be interested in a shopping district (Cascais?). I know Sintra is a must-see from what I read, so I have to decide if we should do it with or without car. Your Cabo da Roca route looks interesting. I would like to see some nice coastal views. How might it compare to the California coast?

Your idea of saving Sintra for the "train" day is a possibility.

Thanks for the great info. It's hard to figure it all out, without someone's personal expertise.

Hi, MFNYC,
Happy to try to help. I know a lot of people enjoy Cascais, but it has become essentially a bedroom community for people working in Lisbon. It has some nice old streets and cafes, lots of high end shops, and horrendous traffic during most times of the day. It's a town center that worked when it was a little fishing village, but has grown way beyond those limits.

Both Cabo da Roca and Praia d'Adraga are very pretty, IMO. The praia (beach) is a very tiny beach, with nothing other than the restaurant on it. The fish here is as fresh as any you will ever find. Here's their website.

To see both Cabo da Roca and the beach, Go to google.pt, click on imagens, and do a search for both, you'll get the idea. Being in the ocean-starved midwest, I always love going out there, there are some very nice paths to walk along the coast as well. But if you're from a coast, you may be less enthralled about seeing ocean views than I am.

Good luck with all of this, I think your plan is coming together nicely. Laurie

Laurie,
Based on that train schedule, I changed my car rental pickup to the night before, so we can get out of Porto no later than 9am in order to make the 11:43 train out of Pinhao. Originally we were to pick up the car that morning, but the car rental place didn't open until 9am, so that was cutting it too close. We'll just have to figure our where to park it for the night, but I think the proprietors at Guest House Duoro can help us with that (I've read they are VERY helpful in general).

Day 3 we will definitely stop in Coimbra, and if time allows, Conimbriga.

Day 4 stop will be Nazare and either Batalha or Alcobaca. Is either of those 2 easier to access and/or park than the other?

For day 5 stops, I did look at some of the images, and those areas look lovely. I think we will take the route you suggest. If we have the time, maybe we can stop at Sintra too, if not, we'll save it for a day trip by train from Lisbon on Day 7.

I think we'll take Estoril and Cascais off the list, unless somehow things move along quicker than we anticipate.

We enjoyed Alcobaca much more than Batalha. I don't remember having any parking problems at either cathedral.
I hope you have time to enjoy a seafood meal in Nazare.

Any preferred/recommended route from Porto to Pinhao? On google maps, there are 3 choices, A4 & IP4 though Vila Real, A4 all the way, through Peso da Regua, or A7 all the way (this looks like the longest).

By process of elimination, I would first say that the second option using the A4 and then goes down through Mesao Frio and over to Regua, is the worst, strictly talking time-wise. I have a distinct memory of driving Mesao Frio to Regua, and it is slow going, there is a lot of traffic, lots of small trucks. So that leaves the other two.

When the first option takes you off the IP4 south of Vila Real, the road through Sabrosa down to Pinhao is a lovely road, but not one you can make very good time on. It's a route that takes you through the vineyards and there are frequently delivery trucks, etc.

And the third option has the advantage of being almost all A highways, but it is so much further in terms of kms, and that also requires you to get off the A24 and head to Pinhao through Sabrosa through lovely vineyards but not on fast roads.

Note that the A4 out of Porto loses its A designation somewhere before Amarante, giving you a stretch on an IP road -- these tend to have lots of passing lanes, limited access, but they are nowhere near the engineering caliber of the A roads and speeds are correspondingly slower.

I've driven all three of these routes but never in a "have to get there" mindset. I'll throw out one option that sort of combines two of the three google gave -- if it were me, and I were going strictly for time, I think the shortest way might be to take the A4 to the IP4 to the A24 and down to Regua, and then your only stretch on minor roads is the 27 km between Regua and Pinhao. People drive at extremely high speeds on the A highways. I don't know what speed google calculates driving time at, but if you're on an A highway going 120 km an hour you will be the slowest car on the highway and cars will pass you like you're standing still. This is not to say that I think you should drive at 140 or 160 km an hour, but it is to say that you can be pretty sure that you can go at the maximum speed limit on the A highways, whereas on the others, the luck of the day's traffic may have a big impact on your time.

also, my overall impression is that the google times are a bit on the wishful thinking side. I think it will take more than 2 hours to do any one of these drives even under the best of conditions (not the least of which is getting out of Porto), but on roads like the one from Mesao Frio to Regua, if you get behind a truck, you are just not going to go more than 60-80 km no matter what the speed limit is. And there are LOTS of curves in these roads.

I hope this helps a bit, but I'm afraid it may just make things more confusing. Laurie

I guess we'd want to do the quickest route there. If we take the 11:43 train, we should get back around 2:15 (according to train schedule). I suppose we could do the more scenic route (3rd option) when we drive back to Porto.

I guess then we should be on the road by 8:30am (is this early enough?) to play it safe. It will be a Saturday, so I don't know if it will make any difference one way or another traffic-wise.

Hi there, I just returned on saturday from a two week trip in Portugal. You will have a wonderful time out there. One thing you should know is that there was major construction on the A4 highway at Amarante. We had to detour to another highway via town roads. It took a while as there were some big trucks doing the same and the town roads were narrow.

In Porto i highly recommend walking over to Vila Nova de Gaia. The view of Porto from there was amazing. I used the Rick Steves guide for my trip and he had recommended a restaurant called Ora Viva Restaurant on Rua Fonte Taurina, 83. The food/atmosphere was great!!! It's one block in from the river. It's small but the food is excellent.

Once you get into Pinhao there are a few little cafes right by the train station where you can get a quick bite. Nothing exciting but it works. There are also a few little markets where you can grab snacks/water, etc.

The Coimbra university was impressive its easy to get there from the pedestrian street below.

Have a wonderful time

I have a silly questions...what is the usual dinner hour? Is it like Barcelona where many restaurants don't even open until 8 or 9pm? Also, do things shut down in the afternoon for siesta?

dmelo1, thanks for the heads up on road construction. My husband (who will be doing the driving, I do the navigating), is no the most patient of drivers.

We will have a portable GPS with us as well.

I will print out this entire thread before I leave.

Another question: We'll be arriving in Porto bright and early (7am) on a Friday morning. Our room won't be ready for several hours. I know we'll be tired, from jetlag and lack of sleep, so I was thinking a hop-on/off bus tour may be a good way to see Porto, without knocking ourselves out. First we'll drop our bags off, then have breakfast. But after that we'll have a few hours to kill before we can check into our room. Any recommended bus tours? Do they pick up near Guest House Douro (99 - 101 rua Fonte Taurina)?

dmelo1, I would also like to thank you for the heads up on road construction. I actually had planned to stay in the Douro for 3 days and do Porto as a day trip from there, but when I read about the construction on what is already a long trip I decided to stay 2 days in the Douro and the last night in Porto. It will also make our noon flight back to the states the next day much less stressful.

I am leaving on Saturday for 2 weeks in Portugal, and I think reading your comment may have made a huge improvement in my overall plan. You are very kind to mention this.

Hi, MFNYC, I think that info about construction on the A4 is great to have -- makes me wonder whether the northern route, though 40 km longer, would ultimately be quicker, since is is all super highway all the way to Regua.

The evening meal in Portugal is much earlier than in Spain. Many restaurants are open by 7 or 7:30, but you won't see many Portuguese there for at least the first hour. And things do tend to close over the lunch hour, but usually just an hour somewhere between 12 and 2 pm. Bigger places and many tourist oriented businesses just don't close at all.

I don't know anything about the hop on hop off buses in Porto, but if I wanted to just sit and veg out for a while, I can't think of a nicer place to do it than from the Gaia side up top (where the tram goes across). There's a very nice park and stunning views. Or the park/garden at the Serralves modern art museum (I wasn't much of a fan of the art inside but the grounds are very relaxing).

Laurie

MFNYC & spcfa,

I'm more than happy to provide information to fellow travelers. Just makes things easier when you know what to expect. Have a great time out there...it's hard not to.

dmelo1, that restaurant you mention appear to be a few doors from the place where we're staying!

Funny thing, I emailed Guest House Douro, just to confirm and to ask a couple of questions. Carmen, the proprietor, asked if I wouldn't mind bringing her some bagels from NYC! I've read great things about GHD, and it's proprietors, so they are more than worthy of some bagels.

We did the hop on hop off bus when we arrived in Porto and it gave us a good overview of places we wanted to explore more.
We didn't hop off at all.

If you are that close, definitely check out the restaurant. Antonio is the owner, nice guy. His mom has a restaurant on the same street as well. Seems like the Hotel proprietors do deserve some bagels, to funny