Portimão, Portugal

[Kerfos]

We dockin Parimao on the Sirena for the day....trying to find a tour to Sagres and Lagos.  Any suggestions??  Do you think we could just grap a cab and have them do a small tour for us?

Thanks

Kerfos

[IWantToLiveOverTheSea]

On 5/8/2023 at 4:53 PM, Kerfos said:

We dockin Parimao on the Sirena for the day....trying to find a tour to Sagres and Lagos.  Any suggestions??  Do you think we could just grap a cab and have them do a small tour for us?

Thanks

Kerfos

Hi.  Hopefully you haven't left yet, as I just saw this.  We were on Sirena in Portimao last month.  My spouse has a cousin who lives outside Lagos, so we hooked up with her in Portimao and she and her boyfriend drove us to Lagos and around.  There isn't much in the port at Portimao.  There was a free shuttle offered that took us to what was described as "Avenida Guanare in town."  Shuttle ran every 30 minutes starting a half hour after our arrival time, which was 8.  Our cousin told us to meet her at the train station in Portimao.  We had no idea where the shuttle was, or the train station, but said OK.  We took the shuttle, but then had no clue where to go.  From what I could tell, on a map it was around the waterfront area called Largo do Dique.  There wasn't much around, but we walked around a little, asked the few people we could find who spoke any English, and managed to find a cab stand.  If we had loaded Bolt or Uber before getting to Portugal, things would have likely been easier.  But we made it to Portimao's small train station (still with a cigarette machine inside!) and met our cousin.

 

Lagos is definitely not far from Portimao (maybe 30 minute drive?), but I'm not sure how often a train or bus may go there.  I had originally planned to rent a car in Portimao at one of the car rental places in Praia da Rocha, which is the beach just south of Portimao.  But I ended up just forgetting my plans for seeing some places both east and west of Poritmao.  Our cousin took us to Lagos, her place, and Ponte da Piedade, where there are cliffs and a lighthouse.  If you want to do some exploring on your own outside of the city (i.e., no Oceania excursion) I would definitely arrange something before you arrive in Portimao.  It's not exactly a city that seems to be well set up for promoting tourism, or at least not for tourism that takes people OUT of the city!   You may want to check Viator, Get Your Guide, shorexcursions, and that kind of site for excursions.  For car rental, I think I was looking at Auto Rent, which has a good website and is also very responsive to questions.  But of course car rental is not for everyone.  The cousin thought I was crazy to consider it.  But we've done it in other countries before with no issues, so I was game. I wanted to see the Benegil Cave for one thing; Oceania had an excursion but it was a whole half day and I didn't want to spend that much time.  

 

If you happen to be going to Porto or Lisbon or Gijon or Bilbao or up that way in Spain, or Bordeaux, I may have useful info. Our cruise was fabulous.  I loved that part of the world, and loved Sirena.