Portugal Video

Portugal // The Algarves

It's hard to explain the beauty and serenity of the Western Algarves in the south of Portugal. Along the southern coast of the country there are the touristy beaches of the Algarves, with stunning cliffs and rock formations, resort beach towns, and secret caves. Along the Western coast, however, it's remote, peaceful, and much less touristy. When we started planning our Portugal trip we knew we wanted to visit the south because that's where the weather would be the nicest (and we needed to see the sun!) and we wanted to spend as much time in the rugged outdoors as possible. I randomly found a remote, rustic "resort" in the Western Algarves through a comment recommendation on a hiking website (told you it was random), and when we looked up the place we knew we had to stay there. It used to be an old farmhouse that has since been renovated into a comfy, rural hotel with a few spacious bedrooms and separate annexed houses. We were looking forward to staying there our entire trip, and as we made our way down the coast we began to realize just how remote this place actually was. The 2 hour drive from Lisbon was primarily farmland and fields, and with the sunshine and warm wind blowing through the open windows, we felt like we were driving through a fairytale countryside. We eventually drove down a bumpy, dirt road and found the entrance to our serene get-a-way, and it did not disappoint.

Portugal // Lisbon

For some reason we went into this trip totally underestimating Lisbon. It is probably because we were so eager to see real nature, go hiking and swim in the ocean and so we figured that visiting a big city would not be one of the major highlights from our visit to Portugal. Boy oh boy were we wrong.

Portugal // Aviero, Sintra & Cabo Da Roca

After Lousa we drove down the coast, stopping at a few little towns along the way. Aviero was an adorable venice-like town with a few canals and colorful buildings. We stopped in just for lunch, and that was about enough time to see everything we wanted to see. About 15 minutes away was a little beach community dotted with candy striped houses. It was super adorable, but SUPER windy and deserted, so we just drove through and headed back down the coast. 

Portugal // Hiking in Lousa

When planning our trip to Portugal, Lousa was not a destination that anyone had really recommended. It was, however, a place that promised great hiking which is something that we had been sorely missing in the flatlands of Holland. So after loving our time in Porto and stopping briefly to see the coastal town of Aviero, we headed inland towards the Serra da Lousa (the mountains of Lousa). Lousa is probably best know as the hometown of the Beirao Liquor distillery and so of course we had to have a few quick sips of this minty local treat while we got settled in there. We arrived in the late afternoon so day one here consisted of exploring the town and enjoying our awesome hidden gem of a hotel - Hotel Melia Palacio da Lousa. The town itself comes off as a sleepy, rural town with the big appeal being the excellent trails nearby. Most of the town had bland, high rise apartment buildings which looked strange and out of place next to beautifully decaying structures from earlier eras. Many properties had a few acres of land covered in veggie gardens and fruit trees and patrolled by stray cats. It sounds like a contradiction but the most dilapidated buildings in these parts of Portugal really are the most beautiful - layers of paint chip and fade together to make some amazing colors, cracked walls are covered in moss and ferns and missing windows show wild vines taking over a former living spaces.

Portugal // Porto

Porto was my wildest dream and worst nightmare. It's my wildest dream because of it's shear beauty - with unbelievable views from every street top, ruined buildings, vibrant azujelos (tiles), and bold, bright, fun colors - every second I felt like I was in an old magical movie. There is gorgeous street art everywhere you look - from electricity boxes on deserted roads to abandoned alleyways to huge murals on the sides of buildings. The culture and aura of the city is a mix of longing for times passed and embracing of new things to come, and it sucked us right up as soon as we arrived. However, it's my worst nightmare because I literally could. not. put down my camera. I swear it took us 20 minutes to wander down one alley because I couldn't stop photographing every detail. Sometimes I get so caught up in capturing the beauty that I forget to enjoy it in real life. Luckily I was able to do both and the whole weekend we were was amazing. Porto was the perfect introduction to the culture and beauty of Portugal and before we were leaving I was already planning our next trip back. I'm not even going to pretend to be sorry about the massive amount of photos in this post, because this isn't even half of them and I'm obsessed with them all.

Spring Break in Portgual

Before we moved to Holland we made a list of places we wanted to visit - Switzerland, Iceland, Belgium, France, Portugal, to name a few - and made a brief outline of when we would visit them. We decided to do Portugal during the University's spring break, which was the beginning of February, so we could justify spending a full week exploring the country. We ended up pushing back the trip to early March in hopes of having nice, sunny weather, and decided to still keep the trip to a week because anything less didn't seem long enough. I spent about a week researching where to go and what to see, and the more I found the more excited I was. For me, Portugal isn't a very typical European destination - when I think of Europe I think of France or Italy or Germany or Spain - so I feel like it's often overlooked (but again, maybe that's just me). All this to say that Portugal is now my new favorite place in all of Europe. No joke.  In the next few blog posts I hope to show you why it's so amazing and convince everyone to visit because it's seriously our favorite place in all of the world (so far :).

Our main goal of the trip was to explore some cool cities, enjoy the sun, and HIKE because we missed walking on land that isn't flat. By this time in our travels we have realized that we don't really like big cities - Paris was too overwhelming for us and we've found we get burnt out much quicker in a busy, crowded place. But we had heard amazing things about Portugal's cities, so we decided to spend a few short days in both Porto and Lisbon. If we could have done it again I would have given us an extra day in Lisbon because it was simply amazing, but we were still able to fit in a lot of the city in two days.

The Itinerary- 11 days driving from Porto to the Western Algarves:

• 3 nights in Porto
• 2 nights in Lousa, a random small town in between Porto and Lisbon which looked like it had cool hikes
• 1 night in Sintra
• 2 nights in Lisbon
• 2 nights in the Western Algarves

This turned out to be the perfect itinerary for us - seriously I don't know how it all worked out so perfectly- but every place we went and every thing we saw was amazing and I really wouldn't have done it any other way. We absolutely fell in love with Porto and the rugged, abandoned buildings, loved the beautiful hikes and gorgeous palace we stayed in Lousa, were blown away by the adorableness of Sintra and it's magical garden/castles/palace, became obsessed with Lisbon and the culture, food, views and vibe, and never wanted to leave the adorable farmhouse countryside escape we stayed in in the Algarves.

This week was my happy place.