Portugal travel guide: Everything you need to know before you go
Wild empty beaches with year-round sun, crag-top crusader castles, cities bursting with museums, baroque treasures and buzzing with boho nightlife... Portugal is every bit as enticing as its neighbour Spain. Yet it receives a fraction of the visitors. Come for palaces perched over the ocean, ruined abbeys set in meadows brilliant with butterflies and perfectly preserved medieval villages so quiet you can hear your footfall echoing off the cobbles.
Current travel restrictions and entry requirements
Travellers arriving in mainland Portugal and the Azores need to present one of the following: proof of vaccination (with vaccination schedule); a recovery certificate; or a negative PCR test (taken within 72 hours of departure) or a negative lab-conducted Rapid Antigen test (taken within 24 hours of departure). Under 12s do not need to present any documentation beyond a passport.
Masks are obligatory only on public transport, in taxis, and for visits to any health facilities. There are no vaccine or certification requirements to enter Madeira, but masks are required indoors anywhere on the island for everyone over six years old.
Best time to go
Portugal is good at any time of year if you choose your destination carefully. In mid-summer the coast is warm and sunny, but inland regions bake until the grass is brown (reaching the 40C in the centre and south). June sees the colourful São João festivals, which are at their liveliest in Porto, where locals bash each other over the head with rubber hammers and dance until dawn in the streets. Autumn and winter are beautiful in the Serra da Estrela mountains – with golden leaf fall and enough snow for skiing. Madeira has some of Europe’s warmest, sunniest mid-winters. Spring is beautiful everywhere – especially in the Alentejo and Centro regions, which are lush and blooming with wildflowers. April and May are the best times to see Blue Whales in the Azores.
Top regions and cities
Lisbon
Even by European standards Lisbon is a ridiculously pretty capital. The stately, statue-filled squares and elegant monochrome-mosaic pavements of the city’s handsome 18th-century centre (the Baixa) sit at the feet of a romantic castle. It’s one of Europe’s oldest fortifications: founded by Phoenicians and later expanded by Romans, Moors and Crusader knights. Lisbon’s neighbourhoods are sprinkled around the Baixa over seven hills. The best way to see it all is to get lost: wander the cobbled wynds of the Bairro Alto or the Alfama – past fado-clubs, boho bars and art nouveau cafes fragrant with bica coffee. Take a tram along the shore of glistening blue Tagus estuary to Belém for glittering gothic and baroque churches and the world’s best pastel de nata custard tarts. And catch a commuter train to the beach at chic Cascais (where Edward and Mrs Simpson had their summer home) or the pantomime castles and rococo mansions of Sintra set in pine woodlands over the Atlantic.
The Algarve
By Spanish standards, Portugal’s slice of the Mediterranean coast remains unspoilt. In parts. Yes, there are towns of concrete condos, high rise resorts and golf courses, but there are wild stretches too. Silk-soft stands and rolling dunes run for tens of lonely kilometres around Tavira Island in the east; and in the West, near Sagres, the coast crumbles into cave-pocked cliffs and crescent coves backed by butterfly-busy meadows. And then there are the hills, with their Mykonos-white cottages and castle towns and their little spa villages – like Monchique, set in pine woodlands next to a rushing, clear-water stream.
The Silver Coast
With its terracotta cottages clustered along a clifftop above a long, golden beach, Nazaré doesn’t feel like one of the world’s adventure sport capitals. But in autumn and winter the world’s most daring surfers gather here, to ride the world’s largest waves – hundred-foot-high rollers that crash onto the sand. It’s an astonishing sight. And surfers drawn here are discovering that the village sits at the heart of one of Europe’s loveliest coastal regions – the Costa Dourada. It’s gorgeous at any time. There are fabulous beaches of all shapes and sizes around Nazaré, Peniche and Aveiro (some placid enough for toddlers, others good enough for year-round championship surfing) and heaps to do nearby. Hop a few miles inland to visit the ancient hilltop university city of Coimbra, the tiny walled town of Óbidos (with its fairytale castle) and the towering Gothic Abbeys at Batalha and Alcobaça – both Unesco World Heritage sites.
Madeira
Does Europe have a prettier island than this? Madeira’s rugged ridges and rice-paddy-green terraces drop to honey-coloured beaches and a Caribbean-clear sea. Winding roads link tiny sugar-cube hamlets, trails that lead into the mountains and a string of cliff-top miradors with stunning dawn and sunset views. Sea-cooled, Madeira’s never too hot in summer. In winter it’s warm enough to swim in the sea. And in spring the landscape is brilliant with blossoming oleander, agapanthus and lilies of the valley.
Porto and the Douro Valley
With winding, church-stippled streets clambering up the side of a steep valley cut by the Douro River, Portugal’s northern capital of Porto has a setting almost as breath-taking as Lisbon. And at less than half the size, it’s perfect for urban walking. Stroll along the riverfront in the neighbourhood of Vila Nova de Gaia, stopping to sample port in one of the myriad historic adega wine-warehouses. Climb the steep streets, which are lined with a hodge-podge of rococo churches and tall medieval houses to squares lined with striking modernist buildings. And use the city as a base to explore Portugal’s northern beaches, and the steep, sinuous Douro river – which cuts through a patchwork of vineyards.
Best under-the-radar destinations
Azores
This mid-Atlantic archipelago is Europe’s Hawaii – a cluster of beach-fringed smoking volcanoes set in an inky-blue ocean. There’s great hiking, mountain-biking and surfing and, with some of the clearest air outside the poles, the sunsets and starry skies are magnificent. But it’s the wild, unpolluted ocean that’s the main draw. There’s nowhere better in Europe to see whales and dolphins – with an astonishing 25 species visiting Azores annually, including the largest animal on Earth, the Blue Whale, which migrates here in spring.
The Alentejo
Stretching across the bottom of Portugal between Lisbon and the Algarve, the Alentejo is Iberia’s Tuscany (without the crowds). Come for sleepy stone villages ringed with medieval walls and topped with castles; walk their narrow streets and chance upon a forgotten local restaurant serving fabulous Alentejo wines, olives and cheeses. Drive through meadows and along tiny roads to Roman ruins and standing stones older than Stonehenge, and swim off empty beaches backed by crumbling, caramel-coloured cliffs.
Serra da Estrela mountains
The Serra da Estrela mountains – a 90-minute drive from the Silver Coast – have some of Portugal’s loveliest landscapes: gorgeous gorges cut by rushing mountain rivers and stepped with waterfalls; steep valleys of tumbling terraced fields sitting at the feet of granite Hobbit-villages; and enough snow in January and February for a small ski resort.
Best things to do
Drive along the Spanish border
Portugal’s frontier with the auld enemy Spain is Europe’s oldest contested border. Littered with forgotten fortified towns and villages – built by Romans, Moors, Christian kings and British soldiers under Wellington – it’s a fascinating drive. And the landscapes of rugged mountains, heaths, river-cut gorges and vast lakes arew spectacular.
Stay in a rural pousada
Spain has its paradors, Portugal its pousadas – historic monasteries, palaces and castles reinvented as luxurious rural hotels. The country’s interior is speckled with them – from the ancient Phoenician castle of Alcacer do Sal in the Altentejo (a hop from the fashionable beach at Comporta where Madonna has a home), to a converted convent next to the sprawling palace where a young Catherine of Bragança grew-up before leaving to become Queen of England.
Walk the Vicentina Coast
Cutting through wildlflower meadows, running across hidden coves and over rocky cliffs nested by storks and peregrine falcons, The Rota Vicentina is one of Western Europe’s loveliest coastal walks. You can spend a week or more wandering it entire length – from Sagres at the southwestern tip of the Algarve to the vast beaches around Sines in the Alentejo; or you can walk a small stretch in a morning or an afternoon.
Getting around
Portugal is tiny – 350 miles long and around 130 wide – so there’s no need to take internal flights. While there is a good, regular train service (not high speed) between the coastal cities, inland areas can be a struggle to reach on public transport – with few rail connections and irregular buses. The best way to get around is by hire car.
How to get there
The cheapest and quickest way to get to Portugal is on a budget flight into Lisbon, Faro (in the Algarve) or Porto. While Brittany Ferries is considering introducing direct lines between the UK and Porto the only way to reach Portugal by boat is currently via Spain. Ferries leave twice weekly from both Portsmouth and Plymouth for Santander (23 hours). Santander is a four to five-hour drive from the Portuguese border near Bragança. There are also direct buses from Santander to Porto, taking around 10 hours – see flixbus.co.uk.
Money-saving tip
Portugal is hot and busy mid-summer. Travel in the shoulder seasons (April, May and September) and you’ll have even better weather, and hotel and restaurant prices will be up to 30 per cent lower.
FAQs
What’s the weather like?
Warm Mediterranean summers along the coast, which are hot and dry in the southern interior. Southern Portugal and the islands have mild winters (with day time temperatures around 15C and in the 20s on Madeira from late February).
What time zone is it in?
Continental Portugal and Madeira are the same as GMT. Summer time is GMT+1 and runs from March to the end of October. The Azores is GMT-1.
What currency do I need?
Euros.
What language is spoken?
Portuguese are good linguists and you will find that English and French are widely understood. If you speak a few words of Portuguese you will win many friends; speaking Spanish to Portuguese people may be met with a cool response.
