Combining a few popular tourist cities into one European itinerary is pretty common, especially for Americans and other visitors traveling from farther away. For a lot of those travelers, hiring a driver for a trip between cities is the easiest way to go, rather than carrying luggage through train stations or airports.
But for a growing number of people, those connections between cities are becoming a key part of the trip, rather than just hours wasted in a car. Some of the best sightseeing stops in Europe sit halfway between cities that bookend the continent’s most popular road trips — and one road trip in Portugal has four of the best sightseeing stops in Europe in one 4.5-hour drive. According to booking data from the transfer company Daytrip, a booking platform for city-to-city transfers in Europe, four towns between Lisbon and Porto are among the most-requested sightseeing stops during car transfers.
Portugal accounted for four of the 10 most popular sightseeing stops for travelers booking through Daytrip: Coimbra, Aveiro, Óbidos, and Nazaré. All four are accessible while driving from Lisbon to Porto, a drive that normally takes about three hours without stops. The cities are either on the route that tourism boards market as “the Silver Coast,” or within about a 10-minute detour of it, and accessible whether you’re headed north or south.
