You either like road trips or you’re planning your next adventure, this is the right article for you! I’ll take you through the plan I had for my road trip in Portugal, which I did in August 2021, maybe you find some inspiration here.
Portugal was on my list for a while and I felt like I just don’t want to go there for a few days, explore just one city and come back. This is how I decided to go for a longer stay, explore some of the places I had on my list and do that through a road trip.
I won’t go in too many details about every particular place I visited in each of the regions, as I plan at some point to write a detailed article for each one of them, but I’ll go through the schedule I had, where I rented the car from and other different details that hopefully will help you plan your holiday.
Let’s go!
Optimizing the holiday from both schedule and budget perspectives is tricky sometimes. Let’s start with the schedule.
My friends and I wanted to minimize the days off required for this trip, but still explore quite a few areas in Portugal. So our plan was to start this trip on Friday evening, catch a flight after our working schedule, in the evening, and come back after 2 weekends. This is how we would have been able to stay for a 10-day trip, with minimal number of days off.
And guess what? Super luckily we found a flight within our budget, leaving on a Friday evening and coming back on a Monday, 10 days later.
So day 1 of this trip was landing in Lisbon, arriving quite late. The plan was to explore the city for a few days, then rent the car to start our adventure to the next places.
😴 Slept in: Lisbon
Day 2 - Saturday
First day exploring Lisbon. As I was saying, I won’t go in much detail on the full itinerary for each city, but I will hopefully come back with a detailed article for each one of these areas, focusing on the high level plan in this article.
We started with some of the places outside the city center, like Belém tower, spending some time in the super Instagrammable library Ler Davagar and enjoying the beautiful view over the Abril Bridge.
The second part of the day was dedicated mostly to exploring the central part of the city, ending it with a beautiful sunset at one of the Miradouros.
So this was a day full of walking, going to the Arco da Rua Augusta, getting lost on Lisbon’s streets, riding the famous Tram 28 and enjoying some of the tasty Pasteis de Nata. We ended the day with an incredibly beautiful sunset at Miradouro de Santa Luzia, one of my favorite places in Lisbon.
😴 Slept in: Lisbon
Day 3 - Sunday
More of Lisbon. The second day was more of “getting lost on the streets”, exploring some neighborhoods like Bairro Alto, having a walk on the super colorful Pink street and trying different foods.
We dedicated some time in the afternoon for going to pick up the car. Even though we were about to start driving the next day, our plan was to return the car Monday afternoon, and because renting a car is done in 24 hours multiples, it was advantageous for us to pick it up one day in advance so that we would be ready to go the next morning and not waste time with paperwork since those hours were “included” in the rental.
After researching different rental companies, prices, and asking different people, we heard good things and decided to rent our car from olivauto, a local company in Lisbon. Their price was by far the best one, we paid 408€ for a manual Seat Ibiza for 8 days. In addition to this, of course, there were taxes for the highways, parking, gas and all of that, but the car itself had a good price compared to what I found besides them.
😴 Slept in: Lisbon
Day 4 - Monday
We started the day quite early as we were driving directly to Porto. We did not do something particular here, we stuck to the route recommended by Google Maps and drove directly there. It was quite tricky to find a parking spot, but after we finally found a paid parking place, we paid for two days (the time we have dedicated for Porto), and started exploring the city.
This first day in Porto was more of the city center area and highlights of the city: Dom Luís I Bridge, Cais da Ribeira, Rua das Flores and Capela das Almas. On our way exploring the city we saw the incredible big queue for Livraria Lello, which was definitely on the list, especially that as a Harry Potter fan this library reminds you of Hogwarts. Seeing the queue, we decided to buy tickets in advance from their website, and the next day to start with it, in order to come to the queue as early as possible.
Slept in: Porto
Day 5 - Tuesday
So you already had the spoiler, this day started with Livraria Lello. They were opening at 9:30, but because of the huge line (trust me, it was huge) we saw one day before, we went there at 8:30. That was a perfect idea as there were already 10-15 people already in line, waiting for the library to get opened. We enjoyed a coffee in the queue and had a walk around the library once it opened.
Because we skipped breakfast for the queue, right after exiting the library we went for some food. We went for brunch at Zenith, because we read some good reviews. Again, this place had a queue as well, but went much faster. Totally worth it, this is the place to go for a super tasty brunch in Porto!
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Day 6 - Wednesday
Driving back to the central part of the country. This was one of the most packed days, but one of the best ones as well. We packed our luggage and checked out early in the morning, with five places on the list for the day:
- Capela do Senhor da Pedra – a quick morning stop on our way
- Nazaré – famous place in Portugal for the incredible big waves and beautiful view. We stopped for a walk on the beach, for a walk around and for lunch. Gorgeous place!
- Azenhas do Mar – a less crowded town right near the ocean. This is where we had our room booked for the night, in a beautiful place called Residencial Real, just in front of the ocean. It was just incredible to go out of your room on the balcony and see the waves touching the land a few meters away, totally recommending this place! We were really sad that we didn’t stay for too long and couldn’t enjoy the place enough, next time I would check in earlier.
- Praia da Ursa – we didn’t go down to the beach because we didn’t have much time left, but we enjoyed the view from the top for some time, great scenery!
- Cabo da Roca – the most western point in Europe, we enjoyed a super windy sunset here
Slept in: Azenhas do Mar
Day 7 - Thursday
We left Sintra in the afternoon, taking our car back to end the day with an epic sunset view at Boca do Inferno, having a snack there and just enjoying the silence. Just….incredible!
😴 Slept in: Sintra
Day 8 - Friday
Reaaady for some beach days. The last part of our trip was dedicated to Algarve. Based on the places we had on our list, we decided to book our accommodation in Lagos, which was like a central point for everything we wanted to cover in the few days in Algarve.
This day had quite a few hours on the road. We left Sintra and headed directly to Algarve, with one gas stop on the way. Because it wasn’t a short ride, we only had one place on our list for the day: Praia da Amoreira. It was again one of those places where it was suuuuper difficult to find a parking spot. There were limited number of places for parking available and we had to do 15-20 minutes of going back and forth in the area before someone else left and we were able to park in their place. We enjoyed the beach for a few hours, listened to some music and chilled there, after that going straight to Lagos to check in and get our room.
😴 Slept in: Lagos
Praia da Amoreira
You can find many Lagos accommodation options here.
Day 9 - Saturday
Top of the list for our trip to Algarve was Benagil Cave. And after seeing it, it still is my top of the list. It was fascinating to read that you can’t get there by foot, swimming there is not possible too easy either, joining an organized tour is the easiest solution.
And because we wanted to avoid big crowds and tours happening in the afternoon, we joined a kayak tour, super early in the morning, with secret algarve. It started early, 8 in the morning, and the guys there were really friendly and nice. They gave us waterproof bags for our cameras, phones and belongings, gave us a quick intro to kayaking and we were ready for exploring the area. We first stopped at Benagil Cave, entered the cave and had about 15-20 minutes of free time for swimming and pictures. After that, we continued our kayak adventure for one more hour, near the beautiful rocks in the area. The tour was just perfect, early in the morning, not crowded, and unforgettable.
After this, we drove to Praia de Marinha to enjoy the rest of the day at the beach. Everybody was looking for some more chill time after the boomerang around the country, so this afternoon was dedicated to relaxing, enjoying the beach, the sun and the waves.
😴 Slept in: Lagos
Benagil Cave
Day 10 - Sunday
One more day in Algarve and a few more key places on our list. The plan for today was to go to these places, stop for a few hours at each one of them, enjoy the place, take some pictures and then move on to the next one. Three places on the list:
- Ponta da Piedade
- Camilo Beach
- Praia dos Estudantes
It was super easy going from one of these places to the other with a car, as they are quite close to each other. It was a super nice day, full of pictures and enjoying views, walking around, having some beach time and lots of sun. Honestly, it was the perfect way to end the trip.
😴 Slept in: Lagos
Day 11 - Monday
Final day, with our plane leaving close to the evening from Lisbon. We woke up and drove to the capital, planning to spend some more time in the city center before heading to the airport. On our way, we only stopped at the Cristo Rei Statue, as we didn’t cover this place on our first days in Lisbon, with a great view over the Abril Bridge, which by the way, looks so similar to the Golden Gate Bridge.
Next on the schedule, we headed to the city center, to have our last round of Pasteis de Nata and a yummy lunch. We benefited from still having the car, as we could keep the luggage there and not worry too much of it. After the last round of souvenirs, we went back to the olivauto office to return our car. We paid some of the road taxes that were registered on the car, but we also had to pay some additional highway taxes 1-2 weeks after returning from our trip, as they were not instantaneously registered on the car device for tolls.
All good, no issues with the car, it was just the time to go back to the airport and onboard for our return home.
Hope you enjoyed the article and you’ll find some inspiration for your trip to Portugal!
Costs
I kept track of some of the costs for this trip to Portugal, to help you manage your budget
- Renting the car for 8 days – 408€. We were a group of 3 -> 136€ / pers
- Gas – ~60€/pers
- Tolls for the road – ~100€ -> 33€/pers
- Accommodation for 10 nights – ~300€/pers
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This article does not contain any paid promotion on hotels / rental car companies / restaurants etc., everything is documented based on my experience.
