As is always the case on our family travels, should you have been following my lovely wife on social media you would have known by now that we spent a glorious week-plus in Portugal. It was our first trip to the country, so we tried to reasonably cover as many points of interest as possible while not rushing through any. There is never enough time to see everything, but thankfully Portugal is a relatively small country with an excellent highway system, so we did cover a lot.
We set foot in over a dozen locations, having driven over 1,600 kilometers in total. We walked 25,000 steps a day on average (and in Portugal, where almost every town is built on steep hills, that must be equivalent to 40,000 on flat ground). In between sightseeing, we sampled delicious local food and wine – an activity that we always dedicate significant time to. We loved all of it.
The Portuguese take their national heritage very seriously. Quite a number of top sights on any itinerary through the country is bound to be on the World Heritage list, so it was remarkably easy for me to add 10 places to my visited roster (possibly 11, if one exceptional place not yet on the list but nominated for inclusion in 2019 is formally inscribed later this year). I have over 100 GB of photographs to work through in the coming weeks and months, but you can certainly expect that I will eventually share my visual impressions of every one of them – and a few places that may not be on WH list but deserve attention none the less – in this space.
For a teaser, here is a look at Porto’s Ribeira district from the Bridge of Luis I.
