Planning an itinerary and need help

Hi.

By way of introduction, my girlfriend's oldest son is getting married in Israel in June. We're flying there from Los Angeles. Then we'll fly to Frankfurt for a couple days, then to Lisbon and finally, about two and a half weeks later we'll fly back to LA from Madrid. The flight path was cobbled together to avoid lengthy layovers.

Originally, I'd wanted to head south from Lisbon, through the Algarve, then to Seville, then back up through Portugal to Coimbra and Porto and finally to Madrid. I was advised that the travel times were unwieldy and that it'd be hot in Seville and extremely touristy in the Algarve. So I modified our trip even though I loved Sevilla when I was there on my own a few years ago.

I'm at a fork in the road as to where best to enter Spain from Portugal that fits with the route I'm looking at so far.

So far, it's land in Lisbon, spend a few days there, then up to Coimbra for another few days, through Obidos. Here's where the question is. From Coimbra we can either head to the Castelo Branco area, visiting Parque Natural de Serra Estrela and Sortelha and into Spain from there. Or we could go back to Coimbra and on to Porto and into Spain going east. Or we could go north from Porto to Santiago de Compostela. We're both Jewish atheists so Santiago de Compostela doesn't have a religious appeal for us, even though it's a great town from what I've read.

From Porto there seems to be two main routes, one through Salamanca and one through Zamora. Don't know anything about either city as so far I've only been investigating Portugal.

I realize this post bridges Portugal and Spain. However, there's no heading for these two countries together here at Thorn Tree. And a post I had for Western Europe about this has seemed to reach a dead end. So I figured it couldn't hurt to try here, too.

Thanks in advance. :-)

Hi Anjru,

You said:

"So far, it's land in Lisbon, spend a few days there, then up to Coimbra for another few days, through Obidos. Here's where the question is. From Coimbra we can either head to the Castelo Branco area, visiting Parque Natural de Serra Estrela and Sortelha and into Spain from there. Or we could go back to Coimbra and on to Porto and into Spain going east. Or we could go north from Porto to Santiago de Compostela."

To me the decision is about going to Parque Natural de Serra Estrela and Sortelha or not. If you really want to go to the park, then enter Spain on that route. Otherwise head to Porto and then head East.

You don't say how you intend to travel. Going via Santiago de Compostela to Madrid will add a lot of travel hours by either train or bus, as compared with going through Salamanca, or entering Spain further South. If you hire a car there will be an expensive repatriation fee involved in getting that car back to Portugal.

If you are choosing between Zamora and Salamanca, then Salamanca will have the greater number of historical or art gallery sights to visit.

Yes, Stav_ros, quite right. I was struggling with which way to go and looking for local insight. On my own, I decided to head from Coimbra to Porto, spend a couple nights there. Rent a car and drive to Amarantes, spend a night there, back to Porto for one more night and then on to Salamanca. So, I think I've got the big plan ironed out. Thanks for your help.

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