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  Lisbon is not a difficult city in which to find something great to eat. There are pastry shops on almost every corner, humble tascas where locals go to frequently, seafood restaurants with incredibly fresh options displayed by the window, cafés where people sit down to hang out with friends or where they quickly sip on…

  Just on the other side of the Sado estuary, Comporta is about an hour south of Lisbon on a good traffic day. It has some of the best beaches in Europe, genuinely good food, and a natural setting that is hard to find so close to a capital city. People who go there tend…

  August is one of the busiest months to visit Lisbon, but it is also when many Portuguese people take their summer holidays. Curiously, while the city is full, above all in the historic center and near the beaches, some small local businesses close for a few days or weeks. But this certainly doesn’t mean…

  Olive oil is omnipresent in Portuguese cooking. Most savory dishes in the country start with a refogado of onions and garlic sweated in olive oil. We toss our greens in the pan with it, we use it over boiled potatoes, grilled fish, to dress salads or on bread, as well as drizzled over a bowl of soup for…

For such a geographically small country, Portugal’s cuisine has a lot of regional variety. However, Portuguese food is often represented by a relatively small circle of famous dishes. For many travellers, the first encounters with local foods involve eating a pastel de nata, a famous salt cod recipe, grilled sardines while visiting Lisbon in the summer, or perhaps tasting the local…

When people imagine connecting with local culture in Lisbon or elsewhere in Portugal, they tend to picture the obvious things first. That could include learning a few words in Portuguese, eating traditional dishes, and maybe wandering into neighborhoods that feel less touristic. All of that matters, but the real connection tends to happen in other more ordinary ways as…

  Batalha is close enough to Lisbon to inspire a day trip there, particularly for those into history. Most travelers go there for the Monastery of Batalha, because it is a UNESCO World Heritage site built to commemorate the Portuguese victory over Castile at the Battle of Aljubarrota in 1385, and it is one of the most important monuments in Portugal….

  Lisbon is often described as the city of the seven hills, so this naturally creates a lot of wonderful viewpoints. Lisbon is indeed popular thanks to its miradouros, which include small lookouts to broader balconies over the city, from which you can enjoy views not only of our city itself, but also across the Tagus…

Lisbon is a capital city where finding local food is easy, but finding an authentic Portuguese restaurant isn’t always that straightforward, depending on the area where you are. Thankfully, the city still has a lot of authentic establishments and even old-school tascas, but there are also a fair share of copycats trying to replicate the genuine Portuguese experience, probably focusing on…

Fátima is Portugal’s most famous pilgrimage destination, but it’s not a place we should reduce to faith alone. There’s no doubt that religion sets the tone around there, but this is also an easy day trip from Lisbon for travelers interested in architecture, public art, the tranquil landscapes of central Portugal, and regional food culture as well.  You can pair a…

Wild ingredients have long been part of the Portuguese kitchen, even if most people today do not think about them in those terms. Before supermarkets and refrigeration, as well as access to foreign markets, which translated into having access to a variety of vegetables all year round, people relied much more on what was available…

  People who grow up in Portugal would be familiar with the practices of zero-waste or, at the very least, low-waste, before modern day sustainability concerns made these concepts popular. Usually, we would learn what making the most of things meant inside the kitchen. Watching your older family members turn bones into broth, or enjoying…