The Travel Chronicle

PORTUGAL · LISBON · AIRPORT TO CITY CENTER Lisbon’s airport sits inside the city. The metro’s Red line starts under Terminal 1, and a taxi reaches most central quarters without ever leaving town, so arrivals here fail for the opposite reason to most airports: it looks too easy to plan, and then you are standing … Read more

PORTO · 3 DAYS · AN ORDER BUILT ON THE GRADIENT Three days in Porto is a question of order rather than length. The old center is small, and the drop between the quay and the top of the rock is what makes it feel large. Sequenced badly, the visit becomes the same slope climbed … Read more

LISBON · 3 DAYS · ONE HILL PER MORNING Three days is enough for Lisbon, and it is exactly the length that punishes a bad order. The quarters face each other across a valley, so a plan that bounces from Alfama to Bairro Alto and back pays for the same climb twice. Settle the sequence … Read more

THE ALENTEJO · THINGS TO DO · BY ACTIVITY The Alentejo hands out a short list of set pieces with a lot of road between them. Inside Évora’s walls stand a Roman temple, a cathedral you climb and a chapel lined with human bones. West of town, granite stones sit in a cork oak grove … Read more

THE DOURO VALLEY · THINGS TO DO · QUINTAS · RAIL · RIVER Almost everything the Douro offers happens on a slope. The quintas stand above the terraces with their names painted on the roof tiles, the railway runs at water level underneath all of it, the boats work the bends between dams, and the … Read more

PORTO AND THE NORTH · THINGS TO DO · CELLARS · STAIRWAYS · SURF · SERRA The north keeps its attractions in a tight radius. Port cellars stand on the far bank of the river from Porto. A baroque stairway climbs a wooded hill above Braga, with a funicular beside it worked by water. Guimarães … Read more