Our daughter, Emma, moved to Portugal with her company in September 2019 and we took advantage of having a personal tour guide and visited as a family in December 2019. When we visit different countries, we like to stay amoungst the locals, dine in local restaurants and keep touristy destinations to a mimimum. We were able to do that, and more, on this trip.
We divided up the trip by visiting five cities and staying in four apartments, which were AirBNBs. We flew into Lisbon and stayed in the Principal Real neighborhood, close to my daughters apartment.
One of the reasons we love to travel is because we like to eat different cuisines. Portugal is known for it’s octopus – it was delicious and we sampled it in a number of restaurants. We spent about four days in Lisbon, enjoyed walking around, taking a tour and of course, shopping for portuguese pottery. More about that. There is lots of graffiti in Lisbon, not like the graffiti we are used to seeing, but more artistic and more of a political statement, instead of obscenities like in the US.
From Lisbon, we drove to Cascais, which is a seaside town, where the King of Portugal used to have his summer house. We stayed the night in our nicest AirBNB of the trip.
We set out the next and and stopped by Obidos, where there was a Christmas market. Obidos, and Portugal are known for it’s cherry liquor, called Jinja. Tradition at the market is to drink it from little chocolate cups.
We spent the night in Coimbra, which is a university town. We hired an excellent tour guide that showed us around the town, which was facinating. As for the eagerly sought blue and white ceramics I was on the hunt for, I found the mother lode here in Coimbra, which is famous for making a lot of the pottery.
Our last town was Porto, where we met up with our nephew, Christian, who is living in Hamburg, Germany. We celebrated Christmas in Porto by having an awesome Port tasting right on the river. The kids enjoyed exploring the town, hunting for food and restaurants that were open on Christmas Day. From Porto, we drove back to Lisbon and flew back to the US the next day. It was a great, 10 day trip, the food was wonderful, all affordable and the people were very friendly. I will definitely be back, to visit my daughter, and to shop for more blue and white portuguese porcelain!
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