Returning to Portugal

I’m happy to report that we are at the airport waiting for our flight to take us back to Portugal.  During our trip in 2023, the five weeks we spent in Lisbon made an impression for so many reasons.  We knew we wanted to visit Europe again two years later, and here we are.  Being limited to a 90-day trip (Schengen rules for Americans), we decided it would be worth it to spend all that time seeing more of the country.

This has been in the works for quite a while and it felt oddly familiar to plan out another capsule wardrobe, minimal amount of items for the backpack, and dive back into the traveling lifestyle. 

Upon landing in Lisbon, we take a high speed train to Porto to begin our trip. The second largest city in the country, Porto is much further north than where we have been before. It is on the Douro River and in a well known region for wine and port. After Porto, we travel south to Coimbra, the first capital of Portugal and a university city.

As many of you know, we continue our normal work schedule. The time zone difference allows us to spend days exploring and evenings at our jobs. That said, after Coimbra we are taking a full week of vacation to head up into the mountains near the Spanish border. We found a rustic farm that hosts guests, has a pool, serves breakfast, and is in a national park. We will be able to do some hiking, see a little bit of the upland area which promises some great scenery, and also just lounge by the pool. Despite our travels it is rare that we stop working and put our feet up and I have a hard time remembering the last time we did so.

Finally, we head back to Lisbon for a few weeks. We fell in love with kiosk culture there and one particular neighborhood and park was our favorite. We luckily found a rental a few blocks away. It puts us a little further west than we were before, and a bit further from the bigger touristy areas. There are certainly some sites, restaurants, and museums we would like to return to, as well as see if it feels the same after two years

We will keep you posted!