My family just returned from our spring break trip to Portugal that we booked using miles and points. We spent time in Lisbon, Nazaré, Leiria, Óbidos and Sintra. Overall, we had a fabulous time in Portugal!
I plan to write separate posts on our flights, hotels and activities. But first, here are some of my initial thoughts on this trip:
- It was nice to tour Portugal with our friends who had been living there for 8 months. They shared a lot of information with us and could speak Portuguese better than us.
- We actually shared a rental house with our friends, and this was our first time vacationing with another family. We discovered our kids were much better behaved with this other family around, so maybe we should consider this type of arrangement in the future. Seriously, there was almost no bickering between my two teenagers, and that’s a rarity. 😂
- We found the Portuguese people to be very welcoming and kind.
- Portugal has some beautiful scenery and interesting destinations that don’t seem to get the same press and attention as other places in Europe like France and Italy.
- Portugal is HILLY. Every place we visited was very hilly, and of course we walked around a lot. I’m thankful that we visited while we have the ability to walk those hills without issues (except for a bit of huffing and puffing at times). Don’t put off traveling to Europe!
- The lower cost of food/hotels/attractions in Portugal was a nice change from France, Switzerland and Italy.
- The beds in Portugal are hard. Very hard. We’ve had hard beds in other European countries, but these beds get the award for the hardest.
- One day in Sintra is not nearly enough. I knew it wouldn’t be, but there is really so much more we could have seen in Sintra.
- We flew to Portugal in Business Class and back in Economy and Premium Economy. We discovered that Iberia Premium Economy is our sweet spot.
- As always, even though the trip was great, it’s so good to get back home to our dogs, our beds and everything else familiar.
Will we go back to Portugal? Well, I wouldn’t mind. It’s hard, though, because we have so many places in the world we’d like to visit. I have another trip to Europe this summer and two trips to Asia in the works.
I can’t wait to write more about our trip!
Author: Nancy
Nancy lives near Dallas, Texas, with her husband and three kids. Her favorite vacations include the beach, cruising and everything Disney.
In this article author tells his story when he was return to hometown from purtgal. some important information covered in this article.
We went this summer and traveled on miles with our kids and loved it too! I’m also a librarian and love to help families find good books for their kids as they travel, so I’ve pulled together a collection of books about Portugal that readers with families might like to check out: http://storybooklists.com/country/storybooks-with-portugal/
Looking forward to hearing all about it!
Looks like a fantastic trip. How difficult would it be for a non-portuguese speaker to make their way around?
@projectx Fairly easy. Many of the Portuguese people speak English.
Our kids still talk about THOD (The Hill of Death) that was how we had to get to our Airbnb in Lisbon a few years ago.
The other thing I remember about Lisbon is that they had the first outdoor automatic escalators that I had ever seen (to take you up some of those hills)
@Dan Ha! THOD, that seems accurate for many of the hills we saw. We did ride the Santa Justa Lift elevator for the experience (and views).