“Hi Sofia,

As promised, some follow up after our trip.  As we said, it was absolutely great.  Your choices, itinerary, guides, everything were top notch.

Some specifics:

The GPS – Worked very very well.  Your programming was great.  The comment that the wine tasting/lunch in the winery in Evora was a bit off.  The directions in the book you sent us talked of the big white building.  That was not the place to go.  Rather one continues on the road another km or so and turns right to several minimally marked low white buildings where the tour and tasting occur.  The GPS was actually correct though said it might not be.  The whole day was superb. Excellent lunch and charming tour. The rental car was fine though the chap was late delivering the car to the hotel (traffic) and the young fellow who brought it and signed us up was brand new on the job (he admitted) and had no idea what the insurance and other extras were about.  Fortunately you prepared us well in the booklet.

The Travel Kit – Thanks for the soap, cookies and Porto!  Your personalized day by day guidebook was excellent though it required a lot of cross referencing as the directions (which we really didn’t need) were mixed in with the daily advice, schedule, and restaurants.  That is a quibble however.  We used it daily.  I kept a copy on my iPhone and used that when we were walking around or when I did not want to carry the book in my backpack.  The printed book you supplied was ok but I also used Lonely Traveler which was quite useful.  We also used the Green Michelin guide for walking itineraries.  An area where you might consider adding a bit more detail is for the small towns you suggest visiting (e.g. Marvao).  You suggest stopping in the local tourist office to get a walking map.  This worked when the office was open but the bigger problem was finding where the tourist office was located.  Almost no city maps anywhere on the streets (as the French do).  Paris is full of maps particularly near metro stops showing the local neighborhood and “you are here”).  You might consider, especially when you suggest parking in a particular parking lot (e.g. outside the walls) to say specifically where to go to either get to the tourist office or where to walk.  We used the Michelin guide for this as they give several suggested one hour or so walking tours. Hotels – All excellent except Marvao which was OK but nothing more [El-rei Dom Manuel]; it was satisfactory. I gather that there are not too many hotels there and this is one of the better onew. The rest were wonderful, particularly the Belmonte Pousada and Casa do Visconde de Chanceleiros (which probably was the best one of all).  The Cascais hotel (Gale) was great to relax in with a wonderful pool.

Driving – Except for the day we drove from Porto to Pinhao with several stops along the way, the driving was not excessive.  You had noted in the book that one should arrive at the hotel in Pinhao during daylight as the ride up along the mountain can be…interesting.  Indeed it was and we sort of rushed to get there but still missed the wine tasting. Traffic and construction. We also stayed in the hotel for dinner both nights as we did not want to drive back up and down that road for dinner (with wine…) or risk doing it in the dark or if there was rain (which there wasn’t).  Dinner at the hotel was fine those two nights though you had to eat the one dish they were offering with no other choices available I think.  Not a problem as we eat everything.

Cascais – Delightful way to end the trip (though we did do another 2 days in Lisbon where I had some business to tie up).  Lovely hotel, town, museums and we had some superb meals.

The Itinerary – Perfect, we were not overtaxed (we’re in our 60s but still very active) but saw an enormous amount of things in your beautiful country.

The guides – All were excellent, knowledgeable and charming!

Restaurants – We followed a few of your suggestions but did a lot of experimentation both upscale and downscale including little “holes in the wall” in tiny little family restaurants all of which were fine.  We tend to avoid recommendations of hotel concierges.  If we do ask the concierge we’ll look at the reviews in Yelp and Trip Advisor. I think the Lisbon Plaza recommendations were a bit off.  Suggested a touristy expensive restaurant which was not well reviewed.  We are adventuresome eaters and don’t mind local joints with menus not in English.  (This method does not work in China however though we did go into busy local restaurants and ordered by pointing to other diners’ dishes and saying we want that.  Almost always works well).

So in summary, I can’t think of anything you could do to make it better !  We’ve mentioned this to our friends and family here and perhaps they will go through Portugal does not seem to be high on the current bucket lists of many folks which is a shame.

Do you do other countries (e.g. Spain) or have affiliates in other countries (e.g. Italy)?

I will drop a lovely note in Trip Advisor and anywhere else you might wish.

Thanks again!

Bart & Josiane”