Portugal by Car: 8-Day Self-Drive Loop from Lisbon

We had a wonderfully immersive and scenic 8 days throughout Portugal! However there are 2 very important details that were not provided to by Tour Radar. 1. Being previously unfamiliar with being in Europe it would have saved us a lot of initial stress if we were given some basic instruction on the car’s operation, for example: how to get the gear shifter into reverse. There was zero information that you needed to pull up the shifter knob before getting it into reverse. The car rental stalls are so narrow it’s impossible to pull out of your stall and turn onto the parking garage path without having to pull ahead and back up multiple times in order to get out. I blocked traffic and had car horn blowing at me until a good samaritan came and showed me what to do. 2. Once on the road I became immediately aware that listening to Google Maps telling me the names of the roads I needed to drive on was almost useless. There are very few, if any, road/street signs in Portugal. Driving the highways was much better identified with road signs but they are heavily tolled. Once you exit the highway's you are left completely without any signs to indicate what road you need to follow because Google Maps most often only provides you the long Portuguese street names to follow however, there are no street signs to tell you what the road names are and there’s often multiple roads branching out from your exit. The only way I succeeded was to follow which way the arrow was pointing along the bard blue line on the Google Map on the car screen. This was truly the most annoying and continuously stressful part of the self driving experience in Portugal. Aside from these 2 experiences the rest of the trip was wonderful! 3: we were given a final itinerary of where each night’s hotels were located however, the only information provided on what to be sure to see or do was only provided in the initial travel description on the site when your looking for places to travel. Without that initial travel site information we would have been left with nothing. As it was I also had to Google a lot on what to see or experience in the areas we were in. So all being told, we saw many wonderful things and loved Portugal!! Lastly, absolutely buy the rental car insurance because Avis came up with 5 or 6 dings or scrapes that were never initially tagged prior to our rental and wiuld have cost us nearly $1,000 to repair. But our insurance covered all if it. By the way, I was an extremely careful driver and never encountered any of the issues Avis Rental Return noted upon our return.

The self discovery of Portugal certainly met our expectations. We saw so much & had a great time doing it. We only changed one thing on the proposed tour & that was the vehicle. When we got to the Avis, we had a long wait for service, to discover that the primary driver was the person who booked the car. This was not part of our plan. Secondly, the voucher was for a 7seater & we had it confirmed that we had a 9 seater booked. Initially Avis was not going to allow any changes. But I was able prove what our booking was & then they assisted us. Otchanges made to the itineraof meet & greet at the tour company.

The accommodations, the sights, the roads were all fantastic, five star. But the time allowed at each stop was insufficient and exhausting by the end of the 12 days. Some places we wanted more time at, but had to stay on driving schedule. Others we could have given a miss altogether.

The locations and hotels selected were excellent. At the last minute my husband ended up in a wheelchair for most of the trip. Once I mentioned it to the check-in staff they went above and beyond to accommodate our needs. Changing rooms so that he had a walk in shower, a room close to the elevator and assistance with luggage or whatever we needed. Thank you.

Overall, we had a very nice trip. The itinerary is arranged well and includes good recommendations for places to stop and points of interest to visit. The hotels are all owned by the same company called Vila Gale, and are all about what I expected for the price point – nice and comfortable with basic rooms – the one outlier was the Vila Gale Collection Alter Real, which was stunning! The one hiccup we had was that the car booked for us on arrival was a manual car, which none of us were able to drive. Apparently manual cars are much more common in Europe than in the U.S, and the only automatic cars available required an upgrade, which cost us another $1,400. JUST BE AWARE THAT THE DEFAULT CAR RESERVATION IS FOR AN ECONOMY SIZE, MANUAL CAR. Request an upgrade ahead of time if you need it. Pros of this trip: - Comfortable hotels - Nice itinerary with good suggestions on places to see (don't skip Evora, Tomar or Aveiro – Porto was our absolute favorite) - Independence (by self-driving, we avoided visiting points of interest with 40+ people getting off a tour bus together at the same time) Cons of the trip: - Hiccup with the manual car, no clear description of what kind of car was provided ahead of the trip outside of "category Y" - Hotels don't have shampoo/conditioner – only one "multi-purpose soap," which would have been good to know ahead of time so I could have brought my own - There are two separate nights in Coimbra, which our family felt was not the most interesting town. It helps break up the drive but is not nearly as scenic or interesting as Porto, Lisbon or even some of the smaller and quaint towns along the way. We had a very nice trip to Portugal overall.

I’m still travelling and currently in the middle of Morocco with limited access to Internet. I need to provide some feedback. The trip was great. The hotels were amazing. Getting the car was not a great experience. A 2-hr delay sitting in Herrz due to a “distribution issue” and no cars. Then when I was finally called it got rushed, no real opportunity to explore excess, given a full EV car that added a huge element of stress continually having to find charging stations and wait. The hotel ones charge slow and never fully. The maps stopped working on the 3rd last day and I had to turn on international roaming at a cost. Emailed Hertz when it happened. No response. The sat nav kept turning back to Portuguese. I navigated my way safely through 1200kms of crazy driving and roads and on the 2nd last day, leaving a hotel car park, the boot flew open and hit a concrete beam and damaged the boot. With no excess I’m yet to be informed re what this will cost me. Given I used the remote and buttons to open/close I do not feel responsible for this incident. I spent a lot of time writing a response in Portuguese and English re the incident but they didn’t want to hear about it when I dropped the car off. They said the 1 1/2 pages was too long. Other than that - I had an amazing trip. I’ll write a more detailed response when I get back. Thanks Rachael Stephenson

Great itinerary. Hotels were quite nice with breakfast included. Highways in Portugal may be the best in the world.

Good not great could have been better

The only problem was starting us with a car that was way too small. Would have appreciated a little more information about the places to see, and other possible options if we so wished. Otherwise a great trip