Day Trips from Lisbon
We also visited the town of Óbidos which is also located on a hilltop. Óbidos remains a well-preserved example of medieval architecture; its streets, squares, walls and its castle are encircled by a fortified wall. Our time in Óbidos was short, but extremely memorable as we enjoyed one of our best meals here, sipped the local cherry liqueur in an edible chocolate shot glass, danced in the streets as music suddenly blared from the town’s speakers, and witnessed a clown parade (turns out it had something to do with the last day of school before Carnival but we did not find that out until later!!!)
But the highlight of our time in Óbidos has to be finding the perfect souvenir! Painted tiles that look just like our dog, TimTam!
Another great place to visit outside of Lisbon is Nazare, home of the world’s largest waves. Wave season is from November to February, but sadly there were no monster waves during our visit. This is how big they get!
While we did not see the monster waves, we did see the surfers needing to take the jet skis to get out to the waves so it was still impressive. There is another part of Nazare which is far calmer which can be seen in these photos.
The last day trip out of Lisbon that I want to mention is Evora and the Alentejo region which is filled with farmland, cork oaks and olive trees. There are also some pretty darn good wineries in this region too – even though the Duoro Valley gets more attention for wines in Portugal. I’ve got a thing for cork trees, I think they are the coolest. A completely renewable resource that can be regenerated every ten years once the first couple of low quality cork yields which are used for floors, bulletin boards, shoes, purses, and more! They save the good cork for the important stuff (wine).
The Algarve Coast
Another reason Portugal is perfect for families is that within 2-3 hours, you can also enjoy a beach vacation after soaking in the culture of Lisbon and the surrounding areas. We always try to plan some downtime at the end of each trip. We chose a very family friendly resort and you can see the boys were jumping for joy at all the kid-friendly activities. My crazy boys even decided to swim in the ocean even though the high was only in the low 60s with lots of cloud cover! Luckily, the pools were heated though!
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