Last Christmas, I was gifted a beautiful present. Do you all remember those advent calendars where you get to open one window each day and there's a little drawing behind the door? That's the kind of advent calendar every child despised - we wanted chocolate and toys! :D Imagine a self-made calendar like this, just that there were five lines and two doors each. I was allowed to open one door per line and would get the five things behind the doors - the others would be lost. It was way better than any of those calendars from my childhood!
So, to make this long story short, one of the lines was a city-trip. Where to? That depended on which door I picked. They were both destinations I had been wanting to visit but hadn't gotten around to yet. I ended up ditching Copenhagen (without knowing it, of course) for Lisbon.
So when the time came and we were planning our vacations we figured why not make this trip into a bigger thing and not only visit Lisbon, but tour through Portugal instead? And that's what we did. In September, we flew to Porto, spent a few amazing days there full of Francesinhas, Port Wine and LOTS of walking up and down hills before going to get our rental car and exploring the rest of the country. Our trip took us to Guimarães, Coimbra, Tomar, Évora, Fatima, Vendas Novas (for the Bifana, of course!), Peniche, Faro, Sagres, Odeceixe, Sines, Sintra and eventually, Lisbon. Where we had the most beautiful Airbnb EVER. If you ever want to go there, let me know. Check out the photos below, the ones from the Airbnb are at the end of the post.
It was a beautiful trip and I'm glad we didn't only do the city trip but instead jumped heads-on into the full Portugal-experience. Complete with tripas, Bacalhau, Moscatel and whatever else the Portuguese cuisine had in store for us. With lovely people and beautiful sunsets and with a tiny bit of wind and freezing water ;) I absolutely recommend visiting Portugal, it's a beautiful country.
