We visited again in 2012, also on a Mediterranean cruise, but this time we only had part of a day in Lisbon. This time we grabbed a train to Sintra and ran around seeing as much as we could in just a few short hours. Then, back to the train, and away on the boat to our next stop. Again, we wished that we'd had more time to explore Portugal.
Over the last few years we've done a few river cruises in Europe and we've heard a lot of good things about Douro River cruises. Beautiful scenery, wineries, lots of great wine (in addition to Port Wine), etc. It seemed like a great trip for us - so we started looking into it, and we thought that it would be a good chance to spend a day or two pre-cruise near Lisbon.
We very quickly discovered that there were many other places in Portugal that we needed to visit! There was no way we'd be happy with just two days around Lisbon, and a week on a river boat. We decided that the only way to do this trip would be to DIY. So we started out with a rough itinerary of flying into Lisbon, then making our way to Porto, and from there heading east along the Douro, through Salamanca and ending with a day or two in Madrid.
After we read a few guidebooks, it was evident that even a week in Portugal was not enough to see everything that we wanted, so the planning got tough. A lot of great places had to be cut from the itinerary, in order to keep it manageable in just a week's time. We would need a few days just to get from Lisbon to Porto.
In the end we decided to fly into Lisbon, but not even stay there, since we'd already been. Instead, we'd go east and stay in Evora for a night, then north to Tomar for two nights, further north to Porto for two nights, east to Salamanca for one night, and finish with two nights in Madrid. I arranged hotels and a rental car, and now all that we had to do was wait for November!
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