THE ITINERARY OF OUR WEEK IN PORTUGAL

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My friends and I had been together back in college, we planned to do at least one trip while in college but that hope never materialized. After college, sadly we parted ways, each to build their own life. We kept in touch for a while but as we, all got busy and hardly ever met again. However, I came up with an idea to meet up and do this trip together.



We were so excited for our trip to Portugal, however, our time was only limited to one week, due to our budget and I had to go back to work. It is practically impossible to explore the whole of Portugal in one week. There is so much to see and do that we only got a chance of visiting only the highlights:



LISBON

We landed in Lisbon on our first day and checked into our hotel which we'd found on this great site, since we were so excited we even had our must do list in Lisbon. We had an early check in and rather than sit and wait, we were eager to see the sites that we had only heard about.



We headed to the Alfama and walked in its maze like medieval streets; we missed a few turns and had fun experiencing the ancient atmosphere of white washed houses, tiny squares and quaint churches. It is a constant reminder of an era long gone and yet it is still a home to people and retains such a traditional charm right in the heart of the city. I have always had a thing for castles and the St George’s castle captivated me. The magnificent castle is visible from every place in Lisbon and it gave us breath-taking views of Lisbon once we climbed the towers.



In the afternoon we headed to Belem, which is Lisbon’s most monumental and historical area, we visited the iconic Belem Tower, the Jeronimos Monastery, the Ajuda Palace and Belem Palace.



On the second day we headed to Sintra one of the most stunning towns away from Lisbon. I must say it is such an incredible place and we spent the whole day exploring its fairytale palaces and museums and had a picnic at the Pena Park. We rode a tram back to our hotel in the evening.



On the third day, we somewhat just wanted to take it easy and we parted ways with some heading to explore different parts of the city that we had not really had time to explore such as Ancient Art Museum, Oceanarium and Gulbenkian Museum.



COSTA DO SOL

On the fourth day, we left Lisbon early in the morning and headed to Costa do Sol , Lisbon’s Riviera. There is no complete visit to Portugal without spending some time on its magical coastline in the former fishing village of Caiscais. We spent the night here and in the morning headed to Estoril.



On day six, we headed to Obidos, Alcobaca and Batalha and on the last day, we explored the University City of Coimbra. It was such a fascinating experience and we were so sad that our trip had finally ended, we would have liked to see more of Portugal, but that was all we could see due to time limitations, however we decided we had to plan a return trip.

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