best places to go in Portugal

Put a note in your diary, June is the month of the Festas de Lisboa when the city explodes into life with merrymaking in the streets and sardines sizzling on every corner.

Portugal is a land of pageants, processions, lively country fairs and other joyful folklore-based festivities where tourists who happen upon them by accident can expect the unexpected.

With its colourful vistas, wide-open roads and dazzling whitewashed villages, the great expanse of the Alentejo is perhaps the most vivid of Portugal’s landscapes.

Named after St Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, Santana is a village of hedgerows and flowers on the north coast of Madeira Island.

Distilled from the fruit of the arbutus tree (also known as the strawberry tree) which grows abundantly in the Monchique and Caldeirão mountains, aguardente de medronho – or simply medronho – is the firewater of choice for many people living in … Read more

Located at an isolated spot high in the Sintra hills, the Convento dos Capuchos is an extraordinary hermitage comprising just twelve tiny cells hewn from the living rock above a wooded dell in a densely forested setting.

Once a thriving farming centre in Roman times, the ancient town of Lourinhã (besides being one of the jewels of the Silver Coast tourist region) is the undisputed dinosaur capital of Portugal.

A small place of Roman origin situated right in the heart of the verdant Upper Alentejo region, Alter do Chão is a pretty town with a long equestrian history.

This pretty stone cottage with its lovely garden is in fact a restaurant located in the idyllic seaside hamlet of Fajãzinha on the west coast of Flores Island in the Azores, right on the western edge of Europe.