Portugal recommendations

heatherdh

SBH Insider
Hello, we've always received excellent travel advice from our fellow SBHonliner's and hoping for a few more!

We are planning a trip to Portugal next summer. We will spend a few days in Lisbon and then would like to rent a car and head south to visit some of the seaside towns and beaches. Can anyone recommend a good town to act as our base? We've looked at villas in
Albufeira and Faro.

We'd welcome any other suggestions as well.

Thank you!
 
We have only been as Far East along the coast, as Albufeira.....but I have been twice to Lagos; and it's a really fun town ! Beautiful cliffs with beaches, great pubs, food and atmosphere. We loved it there.
Hopefully you can also get to Cascais; on the coast just about 30 minutes from Lisbon. It's another really special place, with a large boardwalk that goes along the ocean.
I know you will enjoy your time there; it's one of my very favorite places ever!
 
Portugal's beaches are on my travel wish list for the next year or two (in tough competition with Argentina and South Africa).

I spent a week in Lisbon and can offer a few recommendations. Our most splendid dining experience was A Travessa. The setting is a 17th Century convent and the food was perfect. I highly recommend staying at the Pestana Palace, a hotel and also a national historic monument. The formal restaurant at the hotel was a very close second to A Travessa. Both restaurants had unique settings and fabulous cuisine. The Pestana Palace is a short taxi ride to the center of Lisbon (Leesh Boa as pronounced in Portugal) and walkable to the waterfront dining and nightlife of the beautiful Belem area.

Another very special memory of my trip was a visit to the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima.

If you enjoy art, the Gulbenkian is worth a visit. We were fortunate to see Yo Yo Ma perform there while we were in town. We also visited a port house which presented us with a menu of ports listed by year. I was not knowledgeable of port, so I did a tasting from my birth year and both years my children were born. I would also recommend dining in a restaurant that offered an authentic Fado experience.
 
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