Housekeeping: Final Portugal Blog

Our trip to Portugal would not be complete without me giving advice. I can't help myself.

Visa and Mastercard

We discovered that these are not widely accepted. It cost a Portuguese merchant 10% of each sale so many chose not to accept it. So bring cash or be able to use your debit card. Small restaurants and markets give more of the flavour of the country and they just do cash and debit. ATM machines are different from North American ones. They don't always have letters on the key pad. So if your pin is a word know the # version. We only had access to our chequing account.

Language

Portuguese is not easy, but "Thank you" "Please" "Good day" and Hello are. The older generation knows French so if you know a bit of French try that and mime is always good not matter what the situation.

view from our apartment in Lisbon

Holiday Rentals

Love them, much better then any hotel. But I find they do lack a few things, like spices. I love to cook the wonderful things I buy from the markets. A month in restaurants is just not a option when you travel with kids. So I bring salt, pepper and a bunch of other fresh spices in a container. That way you don't have to have a bland dinner or boring eggs.

The homes usually have a clothes washer but hauling around a jug of clothes washing liquid is a drag. Bring a couple of pods from home. I figured 2 per week. As well as a small amount of dish washing liquid. When a home says it has a clothes dryer it generally does not mean a tumble dryer.

Ziploc bags are the best things ever. Forget those fancy toiletry bags, we packed everything in Ziplocs and brought extras.

Soft sided luggage

The cars are small and if you have more then 2 people on your trip soft sided luggage packs into the back of a car way easier then the hard shell.

We were on the beach most of our trip, and you only get 1 set of bathroom towels per person and the humidity is high. We each brought a micro towel from Sea to Summit. They worked like a dream and took no room at all.

Airlines

We flew KLM out to Amsterdam and had a 10 hour layover. Plan to leave the airport. We dropped our hand luggage in the lockers and spent some time in the city.

Air France was our airline to Canada. This airline was like old fashion travel. We had a 747 large seats and leg room. The staff start your trip off with champagne followed by the menu for dinner. The dinner was wonderful and served with your choice of wine. Dessert follows and so does a cognac. The refreshments are available throughout the flight and your don't need your purse or wallet. This airline gets 5 stars

Car Rentals

Make sure you have the extra deductible insurance in addition to CDW for when your car gets damaged. It seems that everyone you meet has had a issue.

Phones

Don't leave home without one. We had android phones and purchased a sim card for each when we got to Lisbon. They were 10 euros each and we could text just within Europe.

My phone didn't always work well, it is a Sony. Sean's and Philippa's were fine (Moto G & Blu) Mariah had a iPhone and we did not turn it on as it was locked and would have cost a fortune to use.

GPS

GPS we had TOM TOM, it was fine but Garmin is better. Turns out that TOM TOM's maps are not accurate and you are not always going to have a nice English speaking Portuguese man to help you.

Rentals

I thought the holiday rental in Peniche was 5 stars

It was clean, all the appliances were top notch and full-size. The kitchens supplies were not from jumble sales, they were excellent. I went out and bought the same pots and brought them home.

The Lisbon rental was also 5 stars for the same reason.

Our beach home in Azenhas do Mar may have lacked a few things, but it made up for it in location. Goncalo has a couple of larger rentals and I will consider one of them for our next trip.

Bring a Friend.

And finally bringing a friend. Our daughters friend did amazing she was a real trooper. It is not easy to join another family for a trip to Europe and she was wonderful. She was game to try almost everything. I am pretty sure I could not have joined another family with a completely different lifestyle for a month when I was 13 so I take my hat off to her.