You earmarked Sintra as a day trip from Lisbon. But, you can’t do it all in one day. Now what? Sintra is a fairytale setting. As a green oasis on a mountain, Sintra has been the summer retreat for royalty and their hangers-on for centuries. Now, it is the most popular day trip destination […]
PRIORITIZING THE SIGHTS IN SINTRA Read More »
Porto is a great city to play “Guess How Many Steps?” at dinner. You can cover a lot of ground (and elevation) in a day walking around this magical city, so a guess northwards of 20k steps isn’t crazy. Central Porto is pedestrian-friendly with sidewalks, promenades and squares-a-plenty. Most of the major sights are clustered
If you only have a few short days to visit Porto, you may be tempted to automatically target the universally accepted top sights. 50 million Elvis fans can’t be wrong, right? No offense to the legacy of ‘The King,’ but his fans can be a little overzealous. Maybe some of the hits deserve some critical
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION Read More »
First of all, Porto is a sneaky great food city. All the ingredients of a culinary scene are there: a splash of coastline, a pinch of river valley, an overflowing cup of wine country and two millennia of traditions. Sure, Porto has Michelin starred restaurants and a bounty of classic, unchanging neighborhood tascas. But, where
THREE SNEAKY SENSATIONAL RESTAURANTS Read More »
Porto is made for wandering. It’s romantic that way. You can set out on foot to see a sight like Clérigo Tower, and pass half a dozen other places that catch your fancy along the way. Porto is a mid-sized city so most of the major sights aren’t too far from one another. Besides, lots
POPPIN’ IN & POPPIN’ OUT IN PORTO Read More »
Hey, do you like seafood? See food. That old child lunchroom joke probably wouldn’t go too far in Portugal. The joke would die at the setup. To not like seafood is unthinkable. It’s woven into the national heritage and identity. You will have no trouble finding fish, mollusks and cephalopods on menus. If your family
THE PORTUGUESE TABLE: A PRIMER Read More »
The Romans had a knack for selecting places to settle that were both strategic and beautiful. It’s as if they knew that someday Segovia would be a mere half hour train ride away from Madrid. For madrileños, Segovia is a place to beat the heat. For day-tripping families, Segovia offers the Spanish town trifecta: an
Felipe II had a compulsion for building new things in inconsequential places. In 1561 he upped and moved the capital of Spain from Toledo to the tiny village of Madrid. Two years later he selected a remote mountain foothill to build The Monastery of St. Lawrence of El Escorial (El Escorial for short) – a
The entire city is a UNESCO world heritage site – the entire city! There isn’t a single modern structure to be found within the city walls. If you could transport a Toledan from 500 years ago and drop him or her off in Plaza de Zocodover, the time traveler could find his or her way
TOLEDO: THE LAUNCH Read More »
When walking around Toledo, don’t blink, because you might miss another church. The number of churches in Toledo is a point of city pride and integral to its history. For the visitor, the sheer number of churches, 15 active, can be, dare I say, dispiriting. Include temples, synagogues, old mosques and ruins of other assorted
HOLY TOLEDO, BATMAN Read More »
Toledo can be a tricky dining scene to navigate. Tourists looking for the nearest thing, college students looking for the cheapest thing and government officials looking for the most reliable thing makes for any interesting tangle of dissimilar interests. There’s also the fact that many places observe the siesta and close for several hours in
“My name is Doménikos Theotokópoulos, but everybody calls me El Greco.” You know you have a cool nickname when you’re still referred to it 500 years after your death. El Greco, was in fact born in Greece, on the island of Crete. From there he spent time in Venice and Rome on the heels
Toledo is a medieval walled city on a hill. The three major modes of transportation to Toledo will only get you so far. The bus terminus, train station and public parking are all located below the historic city center, to the north and northeast. All this is to say, you will get a look at
THREE WAYS TO SEE TOLEDO OUTSIDE THE CITY WALLS Read More »
Madrid keeps removing vehicular access to its city center so it just keeps getting more and more walkable – in short, more family friendly. You can get to lots of the top sights and top restaurants on foot or by a short Metro ride. Walking around while eating, what more could you want from the
MADRID: THE LAUNCH Read More »
After a day or two touring the nexus of sights around Sol, you might be feeling a little cooped up. It might be time to shake your wings. It might be time to get out of the city and into the ‘countryside.’ It might be time for ‘The Chicken Walk’. When we ran a
DO ‘THE CHICKEN WALK’ Read More »
Echoes of formative trips to Europe can add an extra, dynamic layer to your experiences. We go to Chocolatería San Ginés every single time we visit Madrid, so memories of churros past are part of the allure. The first time I had churros at Chocolatería San Ginés was 2003. It was a happy detour
CHURROS CON CHOCOLATE Read More »
All the travel series show the host eating tapas. All the guidebooks illuminate the tapas experience. All your friends who previously visited Madrid won’t stop talking about tapas. You finally get to Madrid and there seems to be tapas everywhere. Where do you begin? With children in tow, the best strategy is to find
Did you ever take a humanities class in high school or an art history elective in college? Well, lots of the pieces you remember from the slide show on the overhead projector permanently live in Madrid. A short walk from Puerta del Sol and you can be at three of the most important art museums
Queuing up for the Bernabéu Stadium Tour, it becomes apparent that THIS is the highlight of some people’s trip to Madrid. For a few, THIS is the highlight of some people’s lives. Clad in Real Madrid jerseys (I mean kits) and donning Christmas-morning-wide smiles, the anticipation of museum goers is palpable. If you were only
Part of the reason you’re bringing your family to Madrid is to engage in the Spanish lifestyle. This looks great on paper, but in practice families can have difficulty negotiating the timing of that lifestyle. Nap Times, jet lag and children’s squirreliness can all lead to your day not matching up with the city around
Travel burnout is a real thing. So is fear of missing out – FOMO. Throw in some uncooperative children (or partner!) and you can feel your trip grinding to a halt. But, don’t forget it’s your vacation. There’s no reason you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can slow down the tempo
TAKE IT EASY (AND STILL DO STUFF) Read More »
Tortilla is a traditional potato and onion omelet that exists all over Spain, except nobody makes it quite the same way (or as good as abuela makes it back home). It’s a simple yet divisive dish: potato and onion sauteed in extra virgin olive oil, drained of its oil, added to slightly whipped eggs in
CHEERS TO TXIRIMIRI Read More »
If you only had one day in Madrid, what would you do? This is the kind of dinner table query somebody might offer as a conversation starter. We don’t recommend Madrid at breakneck speed, but it is an interesting thought experiment. If jet lag and nap time were no object, could you experience the
ONE WHIRLWIND DAY IN MADRID Read More »
Lisbon is the sunniest capital city in Europe. You can expect bright sun and clear skies over 300 days per year. This means that even the dregs of winter can be punctuated with sunny afternoons. But, it also means LOTS of people are finding their way over to Lisbon for a double dose of culture
LISBON: THE LAUNCH Read More »
Lisbon has an appealing, timeless aesthetic. With so much of its historic core intact, it can give the impression that everything has been there forever: tiles on building façades, the intricate calçada sidewalk mosaics and the ubiquitous quiosques de refrescos (refreshment kiosks) that pop up in plazas and gardens. The kiosks serve beer, wine,
CUCKOO FOR QUIOSQUES Read More »
Sometimes you have to tell travelers what they don’t want to hear. So forgive me as I grab you by the lapels, look you in the eye and tell you that you may want to reconsider taking a ride on Lisbon’s most famous trolley, the #28 tram. How can the opening scenes of every
THE FOLLY OF THE TROLLEY Read More »
I often overhear tourists kicking around the idea of going to Belém, as if it’s some place to go on a whim. Sure, technically you can go there whenever you like. But, EFTF has a plan to get you in and out of Belém before most people have thought about going for the day. Kids
A BIG DAY IN BELÉM Read More »
Admittedly, we at EFTF can get so caught up in vetting a tourist site’s appropriateness level for children, that we can forget to investigate the inverse scenario. What about the places explicitly designed for children that adults will like too? In the case of Parque das Nações your family can spend an entire day in
FOR THE CHILDREN IN ALL OF US Read More »
When we first set foot in the Time Out Market Lisboa in 2017, our jaws dropped to the ground. Here was a curated round up of all the best restaurants and food purveyors from Lisbon all under one roof. Our first thought was, why doesn’t every city do this? (This is where Singapore might chime
It’s hard to resist falling in love with the azulejos (tiles) adorning the buildings of Lisbon. It seems cliché and obvious, but those tiles are ubiquitous and will overwhelm you with the sheer number of façades. Only a cold heart is impervious to their charm. And, most can be easily viewed from street level while
THE MAGNIFICENT TILE Read More »