What to do in Portugal?

What we would do here

Not a place to walk into, but something to do: our pick per area.

• An azulejo tile painting workshop

  The blue tiles are what covers Lisbon, and a workshop teaches how they are painted and why the colour changes after firing. Afterwards you look at the city's walls completely differently

• A Portuguese wine tasting
  Lisbon Winery · 4.9 stars · 829 reviews

  Portugal grows grape varieties that barely leave the country, so they are hard to get to know from outside. A guided sitting with a few glasses explains in one go what separates the north from the Alentejo, and where to look for the rest of the trip

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• A surf lesson on the ocean coast
  Carcavelos Surf School · 4.8 stars · 1193 reviews

  The beaches west of Sintra face the open Atlantic, which is also what makes them cold and full of swell. A lesson is the one reason to get into the water on this stretch of coast

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• A port lodge in Gaia
  Cockburn's Port Lodge · 4.8 stars · 1632 reviews

  All the port houses sit on the bank opposite Porto rather than in the city, because the climate there suited storage. The visit explains both the wine and why the city is built on two banks

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• A day in the terraced Douro vineyards
  Quinta do Crasto · 4.7 stars · 317 reviews

  The terraces in the valley were cut into the slope by hand over centuries, which is why this region is recognised as a cultural landscape. From the train you see them, from the vineyard you stand on them

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• Kayaking to the sea caves
  Benagil Cave Kayak Tour · 4.9 stars · 2921 reviews

  The limestone caves along this coast open to the sea rather than the land, so there is no way in on foot. A small boat enters openings the tour boats stop outside of

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• The schist villages of central Portugal

  In the mountains east of Coimbra are villages where every house is built of local schist, some restored and linked by walking trails. It is the part of Portugal with no coast and no queue

• The sparkling wine cellars of Bairrada
  Caves Messias · 4.8 stars · 155 reviews

  Central Portugal is the country's sparkling wine region, and it is barely known outside it. The visit goes down into cellars where bottles are still turned by hand and ends with a tasting, and it makes a good stop on the road between Lisbon and Porto

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• Walking in Peneda Gerês national park

  This is the only national park in Portugal, and it sits in the far north where most trips do not reach. Waterfalls, stone villages and trails with nobody on them

• A cork farm

  The Alentejo supplies much of the world's cork, and the bark is stripped by hand from the trunk without killing the tree. There is nowhere else on the trip you see this

• Dolphins in the Sado estuary
  Sado Dolphin Watching · 4.9 stars · 2316 reviews

  A resident group of dolphins lives in the Sado estuary, on the Arrabida side of the Alentejo, and does not migrate away. You go out in a small boat with a guide, and it is the one experience in the region that is entirely nature rather than wine or stone

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