From Spain to Portugal

Today, we took our next journey of the holiday. It was a day of Coach travel, a gentle and relaxing day, but one in which we travelled from Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain to Lisbon, the capital of Portugal.

It was the story of two buses with the first, above, taking us from Santiago de Compostela to Porto and the second, below, taking us from Porto to Lisbon

In planning the holiday today was the last day to get sorted. From the first day I looked at this journey Alsa, the Spanish Coach company, only showed one journey on their website, a direct one from Santiago de Compostela to Lisbon, but arriving in the late evening. But I had the patience to wait before booking and finally two weeks ago the option of a change between providers at Porto, getting us into Lisbon at 4.30pm became available to book. I suspect I could have booked the two elements separately, but I have experience of Spain's long distance coach company and not Portugal's (calle Rede Expressos).

With that background let's get on with the day itself.

Morning

I woke up even later than the day before, at 5.30am, I start to set the blog post for yesterday up, but don't make much progress, as I've not had time to load photos from Drew's camera onto the web. So, that process keeps me busy until I begin my ablutions at 6.00am that done I put the final items (toothbrush and paste, plus razor and shaving gel into the case.) Drew gets up at 6.15am and does the same.

Breakfast 

We are down for breakfast at 7am as usual, the pattern for breakfast is familiar to us now. Drew begins with his sausage, egg and bacon.

and I with my yogurt, nuts, seeds and oats.

Today my second plate was a salad, there is so much to choose from here I had to try a bit of each. It came served with small balls of Mozzarella and a taramasalata with paprika

Drew moved on to his second plate with Pilgrim's Cake and Galician Cheesecake and hazelnut and raisin bread with some of the amazing blue cheese.

I finished with treats from the Galician table, this delightful food will bring lovely reminders of Galicia back to me, every time I see or use paprika.

Heading off

We get back to the room at 7.50pm. We check we have everything with us and use the toilet before clicking on the online checkout to depart the room at 8.25am for the walk to the Bus Station. 

This walk is the reverse of the one we did on Saturday when we walked up from the Train Station.

Because this is Santiago de Compostela and there are always something new around the corner, today's walk led us into a group of horse-riders.

Not the kind of thing you expect to see on an average morning.

I also stopped to post our postcards - I'd bought Spanish stamps after all, and we were about to go to Portugal. 

Alsa from Santiago de Compostela to Porto

We arrive at the Bus Station at 9.05am 

for the 9.30am Alsa Coach to Porto (or Oporto as the British strangely called it). The bus departs right on time. We are on the upper deck in seats 44 and 45. 

The bus has WiFi and a toilet, not as plush as the Norwegian Vy buses but a long way up from National Express in both space and comfort. 

This is our route for the day

We pass through lush green valleys

We arrive at our first stop Pontevedra at 10.15am.

 we are due to depart at 10.30am and do just that. 

We then cross the mighty River Minho the border between Galicia and Portugal.

A minute or two later we arrive at Valença at 10.05am. We have crossed the border into Portugal and while Galicia and Portugal are on the same longitude, Galicia keeps the same time as the rest of Spain (and lots of Europe) while Portugal is on the same time as the UK. So, the clock goes back an hour. 

Having missed the welcome to Valença signs I did get the signas we left the town.

I make good use of the Bus' WiFi to catch-up with emails and Google reviews etc while Drew sits and reads his Kindle. The hills and valleys are still as lush as earlier, but now the churches take on a new and distinctive look.

We arrive at Porto Airport at 11.30am 

and depart at 11.40am. 

Then we are on to Porto Campanhã Bus Station where we arrive at 11.55am. 35 minutes before schedule. 

We have a scheduled wait of 45 minutes for the bus to Lisbon making the wait now 1 hour twenty we head up stairs to the cafeteria area.

Which was hectic but we found a table for two and I ordered a cheese, tomato and onion slice for Drew and a cheese, broccoli, peppers, onion and parsley one for me. With a sparkling water for me 'salgadas' in Portuguese not agua con gas and Coke Zero (not the Spanish Cero) for Drew 

Porto to Lisbon

We went to the Rede Expressos ticket office and turned our Alsa ticket to a Rede Expressos one (they had hard copy ones pre-printed for us in the office, not sure why this couldn't have been done online like the main ticket! 

As I mentioned above, this trip, though booked through Alsa is a joint one between the Spanish and Portuguese providers.

 

This bus is a single decker but with better air-con than the last one. The seats are comfortable and I get back to my blogging while Drew gets back to his Kindle. 

We leave at precisely 1.15pm. These bus times have been perfect. There is only one stop between Porto and Lisbon on this route - Fatima (from Shrine to Shrine, though we don't intend to stop at this one) where we arrive at 3.15pm exactly as the timetable says. My parents visited this City on two or three occasions and really enjoyed the experience. 

We arrive at the bus stop at Lisbon Oriente at  4.35 on schedule. Lisbon Oriente (Lisbon East) is an integrated tranport hub with coaches, underground and mainline rail all in the same area. The bus station is made up of five platforms and each of them has stairs down to the level below for access to the Rail Station or Metro. 

We go down one and then one more level to the metro 

and are in the platform by 4.47pm. The next train is at 4.50pm and is on time. 

It is 7 stops on the Linha Vermelha (Red Line) to Saldanha station. 

and a gentle walk from there to the Holiday Inn

We choose this hotel because we stayed here when Drew was running the half-marathon in 2023. We had enhanced status having stayed for almost a week in a Holiday Inn in 2019 in Alaska, due to Covid the points were extended and we had an executive room at no extra cost. The hotel proved to be high class accommodation with a wonderful breakfast service and was convenient for underground, buses and other facilities. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to make Holiday Inns our hotels of choice on the European holiday we did later that year and we adopted the same approach in Australia in 2024. It was less practical in Norway in 2025, as the brand isn't available there.

We checked in and were settled in our room by 5.20pm. Having written the blog post about Monday on the journey all I needed to do when arriving in the hotel was upload the pictures to the blog and make any weblinks and then I was able to publish that extensive post at 6.50pm. A perfect time for dinner. 

Dinner

Two blocks from the hotel is a small Vietnamese Restaurant called A Cozinha Vietnamita. We had eaten here on our previous visit to Lisbon and, while small, it has really high quality authentic Vietnamese tastes. 

At the time I described it like this:

It might have looked like it was a hole in a wall and it quickly became clear that the staff were a husband, wife and their two children (well they weren't really staff, but were sent out to buy fresh ingredients as they were needed), but the quality of the food was excellent.

Well the two children have now grown up and the boy is now a stocky 18 year old and his bossy sister is 15 or 16 and does the orders. The mother still appears occasionally from the kitchen. It is a friendly place, with great food. 

We shared Nem Viet Nam, the crunchy pork spring rolls which are common throughout South East Asian cuisine. Here they are crispy and delicious and have a vinegar and vegetable sauce - we liked it so much we even eat the veg. 

and this was followed by Banh Bot Loc, a prawn and chicken dumpling cooked in rice paper. The dumplings are so tender and the rice paper lets you see the prawn (whole) chicken and herbs inside. The flavour of the meat and fish is beautifully complemented by the generous amount of lamb leaves in the dish. The sauce is a sesame seed and soy mix.

We had a third starter a Japanese Gyoza with a sharp tangy sauce made up of Soy Sauce, Rice Vinegar and Japanese Chili Oil . Like all these dishes they arrive when they are cooked, but in this case they arrived when I was eating one of the other dishes, so didn't make it onto the camera.

We than had our mains Pho for both of us Pho Ga (chicken) for Drew

and Pho Bo (Beef for me)

Both Phos were delicious, full of fresh vegetables, herbs and chillies with the broth clearly made from a stock of bones boiled for hours, so, so good.

We walk back to the hotel, I check the photos from today, ready to be writing this and adding them this morning, and we go to bed at 10pm, remembering that for our bodies this is 11pm, as we woke up in a different time zone.