We booked our bus tickets through Flixbus to travel to Faro from Seville. It worked well, the app was accurate and it was the cheapest way to travel. Make sure you know read the drop-off location in the app! We thought we would arrive at the bus station in Faro but that was not the case! We used the cheapest mode of transit to arrive,  and then we splurged on our accommodation.

We successfully used our eSIM purchased from Airalo. For $7USD we had 2G of data for our time in Portugal, including the Azores. It was a convenient way to stay in touch.

We stayed at the beautiful  Hotel Faro and Beach Club. It’s in the middle of the town with an amazing rooftop restaurant where we ate our included buffet breakfast and watched the storks nesting on the adjacent building’s rooftop.

We booked via Viator, a great boat tour. The tour group is called @Islands4You and Chico was an excellent guide. He understood the ecological system in the Ria Formosa Park and he explained things clearly. We travelled in a group of 10 which was an ideal size! We toured the nature park and visited two of the islands. We saw storks, egrets, terns, spoonbills, gulls, fiddler crabs and a seahorse sanctuary. Barriera Island is also called Deserted Island. It actually has one remaining resident from the 1980s, when it became a park. Farol Island, also called the lighthouse island, has full-time residents. It was a beautiful day to enjoy the vistas and flowering succulents! We had time to explore on our own and time for a beverage and snack at a beachside bar.
When we got back to town we had an early dinner of a traditional seafood set dinner. I sampled some sardines.

Lisbon (Lisboa)

We travelled by train to Lisbon from Faro. We bought first-class tickets for $30 each and it took about 4h with 8 stops. We travelled through a national park and it was an old train. Like in Spain, first-class meant a comfortable seat but no additional perks. The CP app worked well to identify our car and seat assignments. We used public transit to arrive at our booked Hotel Marquis de Pombal which was only a 5min walk from the metro and a 15-minute walk to the historic centre. It was an older hotel but in a great neighbourhood. We enjoyed the included breakfast buffet each morning. The staff were helpful and attentive.

We enjoyed a free walking tour by Maria on our first full day in Lisbon. I booked the tour via the Guruwalk app which was easy to navigate and there are several cities on the app. It’s a free walking tour, and you tip the tour guide at the end. Maria was an excellent tour guide. We toured many areas of the city in the 3.5h tour and sampled the famous pastel de natal a custard tart and a locally made Ginjinha-made from sour cherries. She provided a lot of historical facts about the neighbourhoods and the people who lived there through the years. The city’s architecture and ability to build on the hilly landscape is amazing. She also gave us tips such as not paying more than 1.50 Euros for a coffee! She also shared how the earthquake and tsunami in 1755 affected the city and those who rebuilt the city afterward. We enjoyed all of our meals in Lisbon but found most of them were in the tourist areas and so they expensive compared to Faro. We had an excellent Indian meal at Royal Spice that we highly recommend. All of our TripAdvisor suggestions were quite good!