Best Portugal Food Experiences

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By Melissa First off, I’d like to start by saying these choices are not happy accidents. I do copious research before embarking on a trip. Why? One of great joys of travel is the opportunity to experience the food of another culture and no matter where you are in the world finding the best a country has to offer culinarily takes a little leg work. The internet is now a plethora of information and, while I take every opinion with a grain of salt, there are many websites that make finding the best meal options relatively easy. I also don’t…

Top 10 Portugal tips and experiences

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Now that we’ve been back in the routine of our daily lives, we’ve been reflecting upon our trip and thinking about our favorite parts of our trip to Portugal. The following is our list of our favorite experiences while there and some tips for those traveling there. 1. Music. We didn’t quite expect this. Particularly in Lisbon, Coimbra and Porto, music is everywhere. We’d read about the Fado bars in Lisbon and definitely wanted to check them out but the music isn’t limited to those establishments. The street music on the Rua das Floras in Porto and in Lisbon, the…

Cascais: a great way to end a holiday

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We ended two terrific weeks in Portugal in the beach town of Cascais (pronounced: Kish-kaysh). This town has a lot going for it: close proximity to Lisbon, beautiful beaches to its west and along its promenades, a lovely historic old town and like the rest of Portugal, great food and people. We didn’t do much sight seeing here, mostly just kicked back and prepped for our return home. I will let the photographs describe this great seaside town. Adeus Cascais and Portugal, for now.

The Sintra National Palace, I mean who doesn’t have a Julius Caesar room?

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Since we still had our aforementioned car, we skipped our train back to Lisbon and Cascais and detoured en route to Sintra. Sintra sits at the foot of the Natural Park of Sintra-Cascais. We had limited time as we wanted to get to the beach and Cascais so we strolled about a bit, had a lunch and hit the Royal Palace. Tip #1: Sintra is very touristy. Not that other places we went were not, but this place is built for tourists. Tip #2: While all of Portugal seems to be paved with cobblestone sidewalks, these ones seemed particularly steep…

Evora. More than just a bone church.

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Nestled among rolling golden hills of cattle ranches, vineyards and cork trees sits Evora. This area is known to have been inhabited since BC. 4-3,000 BC to be exact… Since we had a car (unplanned, since the trains were on strike the day we needed to make it to Evora) we visited Anta Grande do Zambujeiro. This is an ancient funerary outside of Evora in the middle of the aforementioned cattle ranch land. It makes one wonder, how the heck did they move those stones? Hmmm… Fast forward to the Romans, Evora was a major city on the trade route…

Trains, automobiles and the Knights Templar: our side trip to Tomar, Portugal

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Sometimes, in Europe, the trains go on strike. That means limited or no information. It could be hours or it could be all day. We arrived at the beautiful Porto train station on just such a day. If 30 years of business travel in the US has taught me anything it’s that things go wrong and it’s always best to try to be in control of your own destiny. So, with more than 300 kilometers to go before we slept on our heaviest train day of the trip and with limited time in Portugal, when the train system brought us…

Porto Portugal on a weekend

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If Coimbra’s train station makes you initially question why you are there, Porto’s embraces you with open arms. It’s walls are adorned with blue and white ceramic tiles with “scenes of daily life” and everyone seems happy to be there. Stop, look up, take a minute and soak it in…. welcome to Porto. This city straddles the Douro River where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. It’s multiple bridges rise higher and higher towards the sky from the banks of the Douro approximately 280 feet below. The pastel colored buildings of the old city and waterfront landings bustle with restaurants, wine…