We just celebrated our first anniversary, and I’ve been missing Portugal a lot. I’m so glad we chose to travel here for our honeymoon—it was really perfect for us! I’ll always have the best memories from this trip and we definitely want to go back. A year ago today we landed in Lisbon, come relive the trip with me! Lotsss of photos ahead :)

the first few days: exploring lisbon

Honestly we didn’t do a ton of pre-planning for this trip. Next time I’ll probably do more, but we really wanted this to be a relaxed trip where we didn’t feel like we had to do it all and see everything. So we each had a few priorities but mostly left our days unstructured.

It was fun to wake up and wander out into the city with no agenda. The first few days we walked all over Lisbon. We toured the Castelo de São Jorge, Belém Tower, Jerónimos Monastery church, and Lisbon Cathedral (the oldest church in the city). We visited Livraria Bertrand, the world’s oldest bookstore. We ate pastéis de nata every day—my favorite were from Manteigaria, but we also went to Pastéis de Belém.

Our home base in Lisbon was the Independente Príncipe Real, which is a super cool renovated 19th century palace turned hostel/hotel in the Bairro Alto. The lower floors have dorms and the top floors have private suites. They have a great breakfast spread that’s free for suite guests—things like fruits, cereals, little pastries & cakes & breads, cheese, plain yogurt in glass cups, fresh tomato slices with salt, pepper, and oregano—plus when you sit down they bring an egg & espresso menu that’s also free! We would always pop in and eat a full breakfast or even just a little snack if we were headed out to another breakfast. We walked enough each day to really need the extra energy :)

Even though this wasn’t a fancy hotel, we really enjoyed our stay. And we especially loved being in the lively Bairro Alto neighborhood.

Dear Breakfast was a lovely light-filled cafe with good food & good coffee. We played cards over brunch and shared a big communal table with a few people from England, who provided us with my favorite overheard quote of the trip, describing Americanos: “It’s watered down espresso. I can’t imagine anything more dreadful.” 😅

Our most memorable meal was at Feitoria. We wanted to have one fine dining experience & chose Feitoria because it had a fully vegetarian tasting menu for Hayden in addition to the regular tasting menu for me.

At the beginning of the meal, they wheel a cart out from the kitchen that shows all of the ingredients they’ll be using to make your meal—all fresh on ice, and mostly local to Portugal. Some ingredients were even grown by the chef, and the honey used for the dessert came from his own bees!

The food & service was incredible. We even got to meet the chef & see the kitchen 🥲

travel day: lisbon —> sintra —> lisbon —> fátima

On our fourth day, we packed up a shared carry on suitcase, left the rest of our stuff in our Lisbon hotel, and took the train to Sintra to tour the Castle of the Moors and Peña Palace. In the early afternoon, we went back to the train station but ended up being affected by a rail strike! We had to get back to Lisbon by a certain time to catch a bus to Fátima, so we ended up taking a Bolt (a European Lyft) from Sintra to Lisbon. I still cannot get over the fact that our 40-minute drive only cost about 20 euro 🤯

Fátima was the tiniest blip on this trip but we made it in time to attend Mass at the basilica, which was one of Hayden’s top priorities. We stayed at Hotel Estrela and left the next morning to take a bus to Porto.

a day and a half in porto

We arrived at Porto by lunchtime, starving. After a real trial at the train station trying to buy tickets for the metro, we made our way into the city and had a leisurely brunch at Nicolau.

Livraria Lello is another of Portugal’s oldest bookstores and it’s also thought to have inspired Hogwarts’ Grand Staircase and Diagon Alley’s Flourish and Blotts bookshop in Harry Potter! It’s so beautiful inside. You do have to purchase a timed ticket to enter, but it’s only 8 euro and you get all of that back as a discount if you purchase a book.

So many old churches to pop into—this one is Igreja do Carmo, founded in 1736.

We climbed the Clérigos Tower’s 225 steps for 360 degree views of Porto—worth it.

We rode electric scooters out to Foz do Douro, where the Douro River meets the Atlantic. I felt right at home on the gray beach—it reminded me of Ocean Beach back home :)

For dinner we at Al Mare. The restaurant is on the water but it was too dark to see any views. Still a really nice meal!

*The Virginia Wolfe room at Torel Avantgarde*

Hayden picked our hotel in Porto and kept it a secret until we arrived! Torel Avantgarde was incredible ✨ We got the Virginia Wolfe room (all of the rooms are named after well known Avantgarde artists), overlooking the Douro River. It was larger than our entire San Francisco apartment lol.

*View of Porto from across the river in Gaia*

The next day, we crossed the bridge over to Gaia to visit the world’s oldest port house, Kopke. It’s been around since 1638! We did a port & chocolate tasting and chose some bottles to have shipped home.

back in lisbon

On our last day, we visited a tile shop, had breakfast at Neighborhood Cafe, coffee at Buna, our final pasteis at Manteigaria, and checked out LX Factory, where we purchased a really cute painting to take home!

On our last night we went out for a drink at Hotel Mundial’s rooftop bar, which was such a nice way to end the trip. We tried to get to bed at a reasonable hour because we had to be at the airport at 4:30 the next morning 👎

Obrigada, Portugal! 👋

seven days in portugal

the first few days: exploring lisbon

travel day: lisbon —> sintra —> lisbon —> fátima

a day and a half in porto

back in lisbon

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