Across Portugal in 10 days: 3 women live it up

Portugal was one of the few European countries that I hadn’t travelled to, so I started planning a trip a few months ago. I also wanted to try driving across the country in a caravan, so I wrote to a local company asking if I could rent a vehicle for 10 days or so. To my delight, it turned out that the company wanted publicity through social media and after looking at my followers online and the kind of travel I do, they decided to sponsor the van for the entire trip! I’ve done solo roadtrips by car earlier, but I asked a couple of very good friends of mine, with whom I have travelled before, to join me on this one.

Vidya, Heera and I drove from coast to coast and covered 1,800 km over 10 days. I had mapped out the route in advance but we didn’t know how much time we’d spend in each place. First, we picked up the caravan in Lisbon and drove to Algarve (Faro District), the southernmost point in Portugal. We spent two days there and headed to Sintra followed by Porto and back.

The landscape is very mountainous so navigating the streets especially in a manual transmission vehicle was quite taxing. We went through the countryside, smaller towns and city centres to avoid paying toll taxes on the highways because it works outvery expensive.

As for the van, it had everything right from beds, a stove, washing area, tables, chairs and so on, but not a toilet. So, we would stop at petrol pumps while driving. At nights, we stayed in camping sites that charged about €3-4 per person and €3 for the van. They were equipped with showers, clean toilets, a swimming pool, washers, dryers — all of five-star quality. We met a lot of interesting people from across the world here, and they were all surprised to see three Indian women driving through the country!

While on the road, we made breakfast in the van every day, but stopped at local diners and restaurants for lunch. Portugal has about 900 km of coast so seafood makes for an integral part of their cuisine. Sardines are a favourite for most and I’m told they’re the best in the world. A particular sandwich that we enjoyed in Porto was called francesinha. It was made with bread, wet-cured ham, linguiça, fresh sausages, steak or roast meat, and covered with melted cheese and a hot thick tomato and beer sauce. Apart from this, oranges were delicious and really inexpensive.

If anyone would ask me to recommend what they can experience in Portugal, I would urge them to visit Porto. My favourite find was a unique bookstore called Livraria Lello, from where JK Rowling drew inspiration for her Harry Potter series. Another highlight was looking at all the street art — Lisbon is a city of graffiti. It is also one of the safest places in the world, so I would suggest travellers explore this for really interesting experiences and encounters. I took a tuk-tuk (this is the only country in Europe that has tuk-tuks) and explored a locality called Marvila. I found some works of my favourite graffiti artist called Kobra, who I follow on social media. As for shopping, we bought jewellery, exquisite pottery that the country is famous for, some wine and fridge magnets.

(As told to Arpitha Rao)

----

—Meenakshi Arvind, Managing director of aneco-tourism resort in Dindigul