The Healing waters of the North Portugal, Self-drive

Reviews from other tours by Destination Services Portugal

• Kevin

  April 2nd, 2026
  We had a wonderfully immersive and scenic 8 days throughout Portugal! However there are 2 very important details...
  We had a wonderfully immersive and scenic 8 days throughout Portugal! However there are 2 very important details that were not provided to by Tour Radar. 1. Being previously unfamiliar with being in Europe it would have saved us a lot of initial stress if we were given some basic instruction on the car’s operation, for example: how to get the gear shifter into reverse. There was zero information that you needed to pull up the shifter knob before getting it into reverse. The car rental stalls are so narrow it’s impossible to pull out of your stall and turn onto the parking garage path without having to pull ahead and back up multiple times in order to get out. I blocked traffic and had car horn blowing at me until a good samaritan came and showed me what to do. 2. Once on the road I became immediately aware that listening to Google Maps telling me the names of the roads I needed to drive on was almost useless. There are very few, if any, road/street signs in Portugal. Driving the highways was much better identified with road signs but they are heavily tolled. Once you exit the highway's you are left completely without any signs to indicate what road you need to follow because Google Maps most often only provides you the long Portuguese street names to follow however, there are no street signs to tell you what the road names are and there’s often multiple roads branching out from your exit. The only way I succeeded was to follow which way the arrow was pointing along the bard blue line on the Google Map on the car screen. This was truly the most annoying and continuously stressful part of the self driving experience in Portugal. Aside from these 2 experiences the rest of the trip was wonderful! 3: we were given a final itinerary of where each night’s hotels were located however, the only information provided on what to be sure to see or do was only provided in the initial travel description on the site when your looking for places to travel. Without that initial travel site information we would have been left with nothing. As it was I also had to Google a lot on what to see or experience in the areas we were in. So all being told, we saw many wonderful things and loved Portugal!! Lastly, absolutely buy the rental car insurance because Avis came up with 5 or 6 dings or scrapes that were never initially tagged prior to our rental and wiuld have cost us nearly $1,000 to repair. But our insurance covered all if it. By the way, I was an extremely careful driver and never encountered any of the issues Avis Rental Return noted upon our return.Show more
• Jodie

  January 19th, 2026
  If was great everything was organised. Accommodation was good too, I highly recommend this tour for those who want...
  If was great everything was organised. Accommodation was good too, I highly recommend this tour for those who want flexibility but you need to enjoy drivingShow more
• Barry

  November 2nd, 2025
  -Getting the car was easy! -Eurostars Hotels in Porto and Lisbon are rated 5 star but in my opinion are not really 5...
  -Getting the car was easy! -Eurostars Hotels in Porto and Lisbon are rated 5 star but in my opinion are not really 5 star. They are clean, have good beds and breakfast but are bland. If we ask for 5 star hotels we would expect some local class not simply a hotel that all the big tour groups use. A smaller, boutique type hotel with large rooms would be good. -The Cascade Wellness Hotel in Lagos was a great way to finish the trip. -The Duro River Cruise was great! -Whenever I had a question I always received an answer withing 8-10 hours!! That was good.Show more