Lots of extra Portugal pics here: https://youtu.be/Q4Si__V343U
Hello fellow travelers! 👋 We’re Lisa and Mark, aka The Vagabond Dreamers — exploring the world one adventure at a time. In this episode, we reflect on our month-long journey through Portugal, from the lively streets of Lisbon to the colorful tiles of Porto and the golden beaches of the Algarve. 🏖️
This is the first of three Portugal videos — this one includes our personal reflections and commentary. Coming soon: our Madeira hiking adventure and a Portugal photo montage! 🎥
Join us as we share stories of local art and history, biking and hiking trails, beach discoveries, chance encounters, and the warm Portuguese people who made this trip unforgettable. 💬❤️
🕰️ CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro – Welcome to Portugal 🇵🇹
0:18 Reflections on a Month in Lisbon ☀️
1:00 Hiking Adventures near Sintra 🥾
2:00 The Beauty of Lisbon’s Tiles 🎨
3:30 Exploring Parks, Plazas & Pink Street 🌸
5:00 Trying Sardines for the First Time 🐟
6:00 Beach Hopping – Lisbon, Porto & Algarve 🏖️
8:40 The Giant Waves of Nazaré 🌊
9:50 Porto – Our Favorite City in Portugal 🏰
11:00 The Story Behind Port Wine 🍷
12:00 Sailing the Tagus River & Meeting Travelers ⛵
13:30 Solo Women Travelers & Inspiration 💪
14:40 Sunset Cruise in Porto 🌅
16:00 Reflections on Travel & Kindness 💞
17:00 Saying Goodbye to Portugal ✈️
💡 Highlights & Takeaways
Discover why Portugal is perfect for older travelers — walkable cities, friendly locals, and diverse landscapes
Explore the tile culture and colorful artistry of Lisbon 🏛️
See the majestic bridges and riverside views of Porto 🌉
Visit Blue Flag beaches in the Algarve 🐚
Hear stories about connection, kindness, and meaning in travel ❤️
✈️ About The Vagabond Dreamers
We’re Lisa and Mark, a couple of lifelong explorers sharing real-world travel experiences through storytelling, humor, and heart. Our channel inspires baby boomer travelers to dream big, travel smart, and live fully — one adventure at a time. 🌎
📺 Subscribe for more stories and reflections from our 200-day journey across Europe!
👉 Subscribe Here www.youtube.com/@vagabonds-2025
🔖 TAGS & SEO KEYWORDS
#PortugalTravel #Lisbon #Porto #Algarve #Madeira #PortugalForOlderTravelers #BabyBoomerTravel #VagabondDreamers #SeniorTravel #Over60Travel #EuropeanTravel #TravelCouple #RetirementTravel #PortugalRoadTrip #CulturalTravel #SlowTravel #LisbonTiles #PortWine #TravelReflections #TravelInspiration
Hello, this is Lisa and I’m Mark, and
we’re the Vagabond Dreamers. Standing in a park here in downtown
Lisbon, beautiful morning, lots of activity. It’s just a chance to reflect on the
month that we spent here in Portugal. We’re actually going to be doing three
different videos. Only this one with commentary. The rest will be around this trip to
Madeira with your sister. And the other will just be a collection
of all the places we went to that we won’t have time to talk about today. So kick it off. Well, Portugal was kind of a last minute
extension for us. Part of the reason was my sister Marta
and I planned a week plus in Madeira with a group of hiking people. And so we worked our troop around that. And what that meant was Mark was going
to be alone for over a week, which, I don’t know, booyay, depends on who you
ask. Anyway, my sister showed up three days
before we headed to Madeira, and it was so exciting to have her here, hadn’t
seen any family, been with any family in seven months. And we took off from Madeira, and that’s
a whole nother video, but suffice it to say that Madeira is worth visiting. Incredible island. One of the things we did with Marta
before we took off for our hiking trip was we did a smaller bike, a little
outside of the city of Central. And the hike was Calla de Hursa, which
means bear. I didn’t actually see the bear, but the
hike was incredible. It’s another hike that if you’re in the
Lisbon area, it was an incredibly challenging, a little bit, but not out
of our comfort zone. But incredible, incredible vistas. And when you get to the end of the pipe,
it opens up into this just magnificent beach. Not super safe for swimming, but that’s
part of its magnificence. And it was truly, truly a vertical pipe
for so many reasons. Just gorgeous. The landscape was just something we had
real soon from. The giant stats coming out of the water,
the caves, and those really bottom. We spent a lot of time in Lisbon. She mentioned I got to spend a week
alone, which wasn’t as much fun as she makes it sound, but that’s a compliment
to her, I suppose. I did get to play chess. I found a chess club, played the best
chess game we’ve played in many, many years. Beat this Russian grandmaster. It was really incredible. I don’t know where it came from, because
I’m not that good. But it was a lot of fun, and she was
quite shocked when she realized how the number eight. But Lisbon area is just a remarkable
city, a very good city, of course, very well preserved. Just about everywhere you go as you’re
walking around, and we did a lot of walking around, are these squares with
statues to various conquerors of the Portuguese Empire. They are conquering. They were a conquering group. They like to conquer. But they are not understated in any way. They are magnificent. They’re large. They loom over the city everywhere you
go. But there’s a lot of other things that
are worth really enjoying. Everywhere, every building has its own
kind of tile motif, and every corner they can tile has a tile floor, a tile
walkway, signs. It’s just visually super similar. Yeah, it’s just, it’s really hard for me
to even fathom how much important was it to plastering an entire outside of the
building with these smaller tiles.
It’s really Remarkable. We went to the Tile Museum and got to
look at some of the history. That’s kind of cool. They do also tile work. They maintain something. It’s an important part of the industry. It’s an important part of what they do. And you’ll see big pieces of floor
missing. When I say floor on the streets and
sidewalks, and they repair it so that it’s actually like a bus. It’s a pretty cool process. There are parks everywhere. We go spend a lot of time hike to the
park. We took some photos. in a number of parks that overlook the
city. It’s really, really interesting the way
they laid out the city to be so human friendly. Down at the river edge, the sand
sculptures, really, really cool stuff. I don’t know how they do it, but they
maintain these sculptures and they add to them and the tarens that are next
door. all celebrating various countries all
decked out in various flags and colors. Again, it’s just art, art, art, and art
everywhere that you want. We did some tourist things, which of
course were tourists. So a lot of our time is spent figuring
out which pieces we want to do. And Pink Street was cool, I think
overrated, but we had to check it out and had some of the best smash burgers
on Pink Street. It was really overrated. Pig Street is known for being the old
red-light district of Portugal, where all the rich people went down to hide to
have illicit relations with prostitutes. But the remnants of that, would have
been much more fun to kind of memorialize that. You leave her alone for a week. But it was all right. I guess it was really, really
overstated. And then the fish culture in this town
is everywhere too. And Lisa got to try sardines. I’m not a fish fan in general,
especially fish would have all their body parts of catch, but I was brave. She was brave. It was the old college try. It was gross. It was gross. I like it. Oh my goodness.
But I’m brave.
You’re brave. You are brave. That’s true. But maybe next time, well, if you decide
to… Actually, try to buy skinless and
boneless. It’s less and it’s more like tuna. If you want, you have napkins. If you don’t want. No, I’m going to pop it out. And it does taste fishy. I’m going to say it’s very fishy. So speaking of fish, the beaches.
The beaches. So we traveled from. Lisbon, to Porto, and then down to the
Algarve area. And of course, we explored beaches in
all of those areas. And I will tell you that they are all so
unique. The landscape in all of those areas is
unique. And Portugal, for such a small country,
has such amazing diversity, both culturally, but also physically. So the beaches, we went to, in the
Algarve, we went to Obixis. I think that’s how I say it. which is a blue flag beach. And we went there because the beaches we
went to in the Algarve that were highly rated, which were gorgeous, were covered
with a sea and they really weren’t, they weren’t years ago. So we saw pictures, we picked to them,
and then we went to the blue flag beach off the coast up from the Algarve. What’s a blue flag beach? A blue flag beach is a sustainable,
eco-friendly, really well taken care of. There are quite a few of them around the
world. There are blue flags. That’s how they recognize the Portugal. This was not an understandable. I think it was super cool. Fed right up the river. We spent an entire day surfing. We didn’t surf but watched them. Big waves, lots of lifeguards, huge
undertones. but an incredible afternoon. And an entire cove of nudists. Oh, yeah, and we just didn’t make it
down there, so I didn’t hit that bucket list. It was unfortunate, so I’ll keep it on
my list. But anyway, moving on. We also went up to Porto, and the Porto
beaches were also very, very surprised by the weakness of the beaches in Porto. We could have explored so many more
having had more time. And down from Porto, between Porto and
Lisbon was the Lazar, which is the surfing capital of Portugal, almost of
the world. They have reported up to 90 meter waves. At times, we didn’t get to see those,
but we saw the beach. We hiked down to the coast. It was another incredible visual, great
little city. It did look up realistic because it’s
cool. Saw a resting Someone hurt their knee piping down. She wasn’t in single, so that’s what
they say. But they had to rescue her off the
beach. That was interesting. And again, the beaches off Lisbon. We had some incredible beaches off the
coast of Lisbon. Juana, across the bridge close to Elmo. So the beaches were, they were
wonderful. Loved them. And I rarely correct Lisa, but it’s, 30 meters, not 90, 90 feet, 30 meters. it’s this, we know this the map. I just sent a lot of people to think. I appreciate it. 90 meters is massive.
Incorrupt. You get it once today. I don’t think you. Lisbon’s a great town, but for my
money, Porto is the best city in Portugal. I really, really love it. Much more quaint, but still so much to
do and so much to see. Magnificent buildings. Oh, the buildings. It ranks next to Bennett. Different, different variants, but the
buildings were in full. And it has bridges. There’s 6 bridges across the river, and
some of them are really spectacular bridges. We want to cross this two-hundred bridge
or there back. There were trains running right next to
us. You could see down the river and all the
way out to the ocean. The portal was really spectacular. And when you look at, I mean, the pork
line is really where it comes to this region, one side of the river, where all
the famous pork manufacturers, if you were a pork person, they’re all right
now. And we found out that they’re all there
because when they wanted to build them, There was a provision in Porto, the city
itself, on the one side of the river, you had to pay a tax to every church in
Porto in order to open the business. There were 52 churches. So if you wanted to open a business, you
had to pay 52 different churches a tax. So they just did what every other good
capitalist would do, and they went on the other side of the river where it
wasn’t. All the wines and Madeiras and ports
are… It was a really great tower. I could see myself as we have on this
whole trip saying, okay, where could I end up being if it was in Portugal from
Portugal? We got to see Porto in Lisbon from some
unique perspectives. We took some boat rides. We took two boat rides. One boat ride was in Lisbon, and we
really just, it was an evening ride, a sunset ride, and we sailed under motor. Up the wind, back down the road. So we got to see Almada and we got to
see Lisbon from the day. Say hi. Hi. You’re on video.
What? You’re being videoed. Say something smart. Say something smart. You want to buy a sailboat? Hey, there’s a story. And then here’s Giuseppe. Oh, he’s writing a song. He looks like an angel. Captain Antonio, and then there’s Lisa. We’re in the Tagus River in Lisbon. We also met Chelia from Italy, who was a
darling woman, really, really clipped with her, and I can see me connecting
with her if we take more trips, and if she decides to ever come to the United
States, we talked about that as well, but told her to hold on. One of the coolest things about Chelia
is that she’s one of the many women that we’ve run across that are solo friends. And that is empowering from the
standpoint of a woman. And I think Mark was also super
impressed with women that we found that are doing this on their own. Yeah, I mean, I had to ask her, how
difficult it was. She just was all about it. She travels all the time by herself. And we met other women throughout. So she was really fun. So that empowers me for next year,
figure out where I want to go and we’ll see. There we go. The other boat ride we took was just
Mark and I up in Porto. He took us on another sailboat. And it was the flight. There was a Doris served and drinks
served and little snacks. And we took a ride all the way through
the river and then into the sea at sunset. And it was. The Doris River here in Porto, all by
myself, checking out things. Oh, wait, there’s a hot woman. Hi there. Hi there. How are you videoing again? What’s that? It’s pretty close to my face. It is. Well, it’s a good face. Yeah.
Did I see you in Rome earlier? You might have.
Yeah. Are you following me? I feel a lot. Are you following me around? I’m feeling like I need to report you. Okay. Seagulls in their natural habitat. Lovely, lovely. The remarkable thing about it, we get
all the way out to the ocean. We’re in the Atlantic Ocean. It looks calm and flat. Oh. But the swells.
Yeah, it was really cool. I just can’t even imagine sailing on the
ocean if there was any. And they’re really, they weren’t big,
but they felt big. Well, that covers the highlights of our
weeks here in Portugal. Again, we’re going to release another
video with a bunch of pictures with captions to see how they went. We just can’t talk anymore. Nobody wants to listen to us talk that
long. Remarkable, remarkable country. Lisa mentioned the diversity. And there’s a lot of diversity of
geography, of people, of feed. If we’re a really small country, it’s
very different as you move up and down the coast. One of the reasons we went on this trip
was to get away from the US for a while and to get a chance to look at our
country from a different perspective. We also wanted to be ambassadors for the
country that we know the United States can be. We wanted to make sure that people knew
not everybody was okay with what was going on back in the States. So how did we do? I think we did exceptionally well. In all 20 countries, we were met with
open arms and kindness for the most part, and I feel like we displayed that. But I’ll tell you, yesterday in Lisbon
on our final conversation with someone, it really, it
really was an amazing moment. So we stopped in a tile store and we had
lots of little conversations with this woman about the tiles we were looking
for and where we were from. She shared a little bit about the
diversity in Portugal and so on and so forth. And it was really a lovely conversation. And at one point she stopped and she
looked at us and she said, how are you Americans? You’re so sweet. And For me, that is like exactly, exactly
the perfect moment because we were just being us and nothing was forced. And it was a great way to end our stay
here in Lisbon as well as globally. And our stay is over. 204 days, heading back tonight on an
overnight, well, kind of an overnight flight. Long flight, 8 hour flight. Long flight. And then we have to figure out what we do when we
get back. We’ll have more videos on our overall
thoughts on the trip, the things we liked, the places that were special to
us, and we look forward to putting those together. This is Lisa and I’m Mark and we’re the
Vagabond Dreamers. And take a vagabond dream of vagabond
fool. I ain’t too proud to beg, but I’m
playing it cool. Wonderful ride. We have to pass. I need my papers. Oops, sorry. No, no, not cool. My papers. Thank you. Thank you. It’s all nice. It may have hopes. We’ll take care of it. Thank you. It’s ours. We will take care of it.