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Curated itineraries, local tips and inspiration for your next adventure in Portugal.
Forget the laminated menus on Rua Serpa Pinto. Locals eat lunch at 12:30 sharp behind plastic strip curtains on the right bank of the Nabão, ten euros for soup, main, and house wine. Here's the honest guide.
Everyone climbs up to the Convent of Christ and leaves before dinner. But Tomar only starts after five in the afternoon, when the buses pull out and the town goes back to its locals. Three days, three quintas, and the industrial Tomar nobody bothers to see.
Most visitors arrive in Tomar for the Convent of Christ and leave at sundown convinced they've seen the city. They haven't. The real Tomar starts at 6pm, when the buses leave, and this is the honest guide to finding it.
Four nights in June when Loulé's old town closes to cars and opens its squares to over a hundred concerts from the Mediterranean, Africa and the Arab world. Where to sleep, where to eat octopus rice before the first set, and why the small stages are always the best ones.
Twelve kilometres across the Planalto Mirandês, seven wine presses cut into the rock two thousand years ago, and almost nobody on the way. An honest guide to walking Mogadouro with decent boots, a paper map and a room booked at A Casa do Gi.
In June, Sagres has about three weeks when the north wind has not yet settled and the water no longer freezes your feet. An honest guide on which beach to choose, when to paddle out, and where to eat between sessions.
Three days of festival in June, cherries at €5/kg straight from the grower, and a route of villages on the Gardunha slope that transforms in fifteen days. An honest guide to Fundão's Cherry Festival and the Cova da Beira, with none of the rural-Portugal clichés.
Guarda is the highest city in mainland Portugal. It is also where the wool tradition survived best. An honest guide to the cobertor de papa, burel, Serra cheese, and what not to waste your money on.
In Portugal's highest city, eating is taken seriously: bucho recheado on Saturdays, runny Estrela cheese in January, and wood-oven kid goat that justifies a 24-hour order. An honest guide to what to order, what to skip, and how to leave Guarda without indigestion.
Saturday morning, eight o'clock, market hall of the highest city in Portugal. A frank guide to the DOP cheese worth the investment, the honey that crystallises as it should, and the jams with overly pretty labels you should walk past.
In the highest city in Portugal, light keeps strict office hours, and anyone who shows up at two in the afternoon goes home unimpressed. This is the honest guide to Guarda's viewpoints, the right hours, and the only way to photograph it properly.
Guarda becomes three different cities a day depending on the light. This is the honest guide to its viewpoints, the right hours, and the months when photography actually works. Skip noon. Go at October twilight.