Porto-Lisbon

Total trip cost: 639 Euros for two.
Number of days: 7
Month: December
Weather: Sunny and cloudy. You must carry an umbrella.

Flights and Trains:

You can book London->Lisbon and Porto->London flights. Those are generally cheaper and trains from Lisbon to Porto are very comfortable. We booked a bus to Stansted airport from East London. You can book the return ticket for the bus anytime until a month of the journey. We flew from the Stansted airport as the flights are comparatively cheaper.  For Ryanair, please check the size and the weight of your cabin only bags on the RyanAir website to avoid the penalty of excess luggage at the airport. You can carry one cabin bag and one small backpack. Check the conditions for carrying liquids with you. The visa check process is mostly before the security checking. Read the instructions behind the boarding pass for the same.

Local transport in Portugal: Buy the Viva Viagem card and charge it every time in any subway station one p/person. At some places, the entry fee can be covered with this card too. Uber is cheaper in Portugal.

Supermarket: Mini Preço. We generally buy eggs, bread, bananas and milk for breakfast.

My favourite souvenirs: A magnet and a Portugal tile.

Note:  Here bread as starters are served by default. If you don't want, don't eat, as they charge for them.

   1. Lisbon:

• Time out market is a bit expensive and hyped food court which I found ordinary in taste.
• The Santa Rita Restaurant is famous for serving authentic Portuguese meals. You can try the famous octopus dish.
• Drinks: Espresso and Ginjinha - cherry liquor served in the chocolate cup which we tried out at a small wooden kiosk at the corner of the Praca Do Comercio. Pub crawl at Bairro Alto and listen to Fado.

   2. Sintra:

• Visit https://www.piriquita.pt/ to know the local variety of desserts. You can buy some mini Queijada from the supermarket.
  

   3. Porto:

• Cafe Santiago, famous for Francesinha, which is a Portuguese sandwich originally from Porto, made with bread, wet-cured ham, linguiça, fresh sausage like chipolata, steak or roast meat,  covered with melted cheese, a hot thick tomato and beer sauce. Eat full between two persons.
• Bakery and pastry shop, Bolhão, for sweets. 
• Churrasqueira Lameiras Restaurant - Try the chicken barbeque with fries and Rice and Beef steak with onions and fries. 

Airbnb:

1. Lisbon: Piedade apartment

One of the best Airbnb apartments I have stayed so far. The beauty of the apartment is that the host has taken care of every single element needed for the travelers. It is a budget stay with everything you need in an apartment. It is clean with all the necessary cutleries in the kitchen including vegetable oil, salt, and all the spices. She has kept magazines and books to read. You can walk to the nearby supermarkets.

2. Porto: The Porto Concierge

A nice and cozy place to stay with a balcony with particularly no view.

Complete itinerary:

Lisbon Day 1:
Take Airport metro(red line)-> change at Alameda to green line-> Rossio. Then walk to tram station Praça da Figueira. Catch 15E tram and get off to Largo da Princesca. Walk 4 minutes to reach Belem Tower. Belem is popular for historical monuments including 2 UNESCO sites. Visit The Torre de Belé, Padrão dos descobrimentos, and Jerónimos Monastery. In Lisbon, most of the walks are uphill.

Lisbon Day 2 and 3:
A free walking tour is recommended. The walking tour I have linked to has three free walking tours of Lisbon - Center Lisbon, Alfama and Sintra. I recommend visiting all these places on a walking tour. All these 3 cities have their own beauty. In the Center Lisbon tour, you can listen to the history of Portuguese and about their greatest poets, Sebastiantism and Moorish era. If you are an Indian and moreover, a Maharashtrian, then you will realize that some of the words are like Marathi. Place will remind us of Goa. If you see grandmothers hang laundry from lines, narrow graffiti lanes and building showoff gorgeous tilework, then you are in the heart of Alfama. In Alfama, you will visit places - São Jorge Castle, Santa Luzia Viewpoint and Baixa. In Sintra visit The Palacio Nacional da Pena, which is one of the finest tourist attractions of Portugal and exemplifies the 19th century Romanticism style of architecture. You can visit this place after your free walking tour as the tour never includes the place being far from other places and you can take the private taxi up till the entrance. You need the internal transport to the palace entrance if you have difficulty walking uphill. It is a must visit place and if you are short of time then skip other places for this one.
 
Porto Day 4 and 5:
You can start your own walking tour as soon as you arrive at The São Bento Railway Station. It is the 20th-century railway station in the civil parish of Cedofeita. Walk from there and visit the monument church of St Francis, Clérigos Church and nearby places like Ponte Dom Luis I bridge. Taylor port wine's 2 hours tasting tour is the full audio tour. If you have never been to any vineyard then it is worth visiting for €15 pp. We liked the port wines in the tour. You can smell the fruity wines from the tawny at every stop of the tour. Taylor port is one of the oldest one.

Forget about driving in Lisbon as roads are narrow and very few options to park. Best way to walk and explore the places or you can use funicular. You can spend your evening at Via Catarina shopping center. If you are a book lover, do visit Livreria Lello, the world's oldest bookstore. The neo-Gothic building features a stained-glass ceiling, gorgeous wood carvings, ladders, and rails to move the books around, and a special room to protect the bookstore's oldest and rarest books. If all this sounds like a scene from a "Harry Potter" story, you'd be forgiven for thinking so. J.K. Rowling lived and taught English in Porto from 1991 to 1993.