My Portugal Travel Tips
The fact that my last blog post was written 3 years ago and the one before that was another 3 years ago, is hilarious to me. But when the creative juices start flowing baby, you just go along with it, you don’t fight it. But oof 3 years has changed a lot. Moved towns, built a house, had another baby, changed careers - crazy times. But what’s even crazier is that with our now family of 4, we thought we could continue on with our travel adventures just like we always have. LOL joke’s on us.
Our first trip as a family of 4 was to beautiful Portugal last February. It’s taken an entire year to recover from that trauma to be able to write about it now. Honestly though, looking back, it was an incredible trip and so much fun. But in the moment, holy cannoli (excuse my language, I’m a mom now and these days my swearing has become quite PG), what a shit show. Just kidding, I still swear.
The flight we took from Montreal to Lisbon was a red eye flight that was like 7 hours long and the ENTIRE time, our kids took shifts having major meltdowns. I may have been on the verge of psychosis after having two kids scream in my ear for 7 hours. And my dad, bless his heart, came with us on the trip but pretended like he didn’t know us the entire flight. I looked over at him with absolute plea in my eyes, like help me, save me. But he sat beside me with his eyes closed pretending to be asleep. Cool cool cool.
We celebrated our kids’ 1st and 4th birthdays in Portugal so they were still so young and we were still navigating the unfamiliarity of our new family dynamic. Throw in dinners in tiny confined restaurants, no nap routine, and two parents who didn’t know what the F we were doing, oh it was a formula for just a grand ol time.
We had this whole beautiful trip planned for Portugal that included Lisbon and Porto and the Algarve and in the midst of trying to figure out what our travel life looks like now with our new family, we thought it’d be best to cut out the Algarve and shorten our stay in Porto to give the kids (but mostly us) a little bit of a sense of stability and routine.
TLDR: Oh boy were we wrong. And I kinda just wanted to share my insights so it might help you plan your trip to Portugal.
Right after our trip, a friend reached out asking for tips, food recommendations, the whole shebang because she was planning a vacation to Portugal with her little family. I word-vomited SO HARD that the screenshots I kept of our conversation is something I refer back to often. I’ve sent these screenshots to like 4 other friends since then because apparently Portugal has become a hot spot within my circle and I’ve been told that the info I’ve shared has been helpful. And since we’re all pals here, you can have them too.
In summary, here are the lessons we learned:
1. Go to Porto, and for longer than 24 hours. The change of pace and change of scenery is good for the kids (at least for ours and on this specific trip) and for us.
2. Go to the Algarve. We chose to exclude this part of the plan out of sheer inconvenience (transportation, time to get there, etc). That was a dumb move, we regret not going.
3. Stay at the bottom of the hill. Lisbon is nicknamed “The City of Seven Hills” and staying in the Gracia neighbourhood at the very tippy top of Lisbon was annoying to get to and from. We like walking whenever possible and staying here was just pure masochism.
4. Take a tuk tuk tour. We did this when we first arrived in Lisbon and it was super helpful in giving us a lay of the land.
5. Belém was worth it. We did a day trip to the town where Pasteis de Natas were born and loved it. Especially since there were other fun things to do in the surrounding fun area like the Belém Tower, the Jerónimos Monastery, and the National Coach and Carriage Museum which literally no one except Kevin was into, but hey - to each their own, right?
I hope these tips help in some way and that you get to enjoy Portugal with far less trauma and tantrums than I did.
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