A Seafaring Story
The history of Portugal’s ground-breaking association with the seas spanned a hundred years from 1415-1515. Widely labelled as the Age of Discovery, this epoch-making period saw Portuguese navigators sail across uncharted […]
The Prince of Tides
Spurred by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), the Portuguese discovered precisely what Columbus was seeking – the fabled Indies. They also charted new sea routes halfway around the world to […]
The Seaside Town of Porto Moniz
Set high on a hill looking over the seafront, Porto Moniz is a remote coastal town located at the north-westernmost point of Madeira, well sheltered by a narrow peninsula that points […]
The Exuberance of Youth
One of Portugal’s lesser-known but much-savoured wines is vinho verde, so called because the grapes are picked young and the wine is mostly drunk just a year or two after […]
Vasco the Visionary
One particular household name that has stood the test of time is Vasco da Gama – intrepid explorer, world tradesman and Portuguese national hero.
A Language of Longitude
With as many as 260 million speakers around the world, the majority of whom are native speakers, Portuguese is by far the most widely spoken Romance language after Spanish.
Cottage on Flores
This pretty stone cottage with its lovely garden is in fact a restaurant located in the idyllic seaside hamlet of Fajãzinha on the west coast of Flores Island in the Azores, right […]
The Seaside Town of Calheta
A pleasant town on Madeira‘s southern shoreline, Calheta (also known as Estreito da Calheta) is the island’s main centre of banana plantations, vineyards and sugar-cane production. It is also a […]
Overland to Lisbon
For independent visitors travelling under their own steam, there are several routes to the Portuguese capital from the Spanish frontier and other outlying areas of the country, each offering a wide variety of […]
Visiting the Berlengas
The Berlengas form an archipelago of extraordinary red rock formations located twelve kilometres off the coast of Peniche in central Portugal.