Portugal Tours with Flights from €1,325

The route most trips follow runs Lisbon-Sintra-Obidos-Coimbra-Porto-Douro, in either direction. Seven days is tight but doable: two nights in Lisbon (with a day trip out to Sintra's palaces and Cascais), a night in Coimbra or Fatima to break the drive, two nights in Porto, then a full Douro Valley day with a short river cruise and two or three quinta visits for port tastings.

G Adventures' 'Highlights of Portugal' is the trip to measure others against, from around €1,655 for 7 days land only, taking in Lisbon, Sintra, Obidos, Nazare, Coimbra, Porto and a Douro day trip. Portugal Travel Center runs a shorter 5-day Lisbon-focused version from around €1,050 that adds Sintra, Evora and Cascais but skips Porto altogether.

Ten days is the sweet spot. You keep the same spine but swap the Douro day trip for two nights in the valley itself, then add either a coastal detour to the Algarve or the walled town of Evora in the Alentejo. Reckon on €1,800-€2,400 for a 10-day small-group tour with flights.

Be honest with yourself about the pace. These trips move by coach or minibus, and while Portugal's motorways are quick, the mountain roads into the Douro are slow and winding. Allow two hours Lisbon to Coimbra, 90 minutes Coimbra to Porto, and a full 90 minutes from Porto into the Douro proper. If you are going independent, the Lisbon to Porto train is faster (the Alfa Pendular, 2h50m).

The Douro has quietly become Europe's answer to the Rhine and Danube for river cruising, and the offer splits cleanly into two camps.

River cruises sail roundtrip from Porto, usually 7 to 8 nights, calling at Regua, Pinhao, Barca d'Alva and a bus run across the Spanish border to Salamanca. A-ROSA leads on value: its 'Douro Experience' 8-day sailing runs around €1,405 a head in shoulder season, full board, with a French-balcony cabin. Uniworld and AmaWaterways sit at the plush end, where €2,800-€4,500 buys the same week with more shore excursions thrown in, better wines on board and butler service in the suites. Viking runs a similar product in the €2,400-€3,200 band.

Land tours give you the Douro as a one or two-day stop inside a fuller Portugal trip. You sleep at a quinta, a wine estate like Quinta da Pacheca or Six Senses Douro Valley, take a boat trip of an hour or two from Pinhao or Regua, and call in at three or four port houses for tastings. Wanderful Holidays runs a 10-day 'Lisbon, Algarve + Douro cruise' hybrid from around €3,495, which clips a short Douro sailing onto a broader Portugal trip.

Go for the cruise if unpacking once appeals and you do not mind missing Lisbon. Go for the land tour if this is your first time in Portugal, because the cities are half the joy of it.

Three styles dominate, and they court very different travellers.

Coach tours, 40 to 50 passengers, from Expat Explore, Trafalgar and Insight Vacations are the budget pick for anyone who likes the comfort of a big bus and a guide on the microphone. Reckon on €900-€1,400 for 7 to 9 days before flights, breakfasts in and two or three group dinners thrown in. You will hit every postcard stop but linger nowhere. Good for first-timers who want the full sweep without doing any of the planning.

Small-group tours, 12 to 16 passengers, are the sweet spot. G Adventures, Intrepid and Exodus Travels all run Portugal trips in the €1,600-€2,200 range for 7 to 10 days. You get smarter hotels (3-4 star boutiques rather than motorway Mercures), more free time, and guides who sit down to dinner with you instead of slipping off to a staff hotel. Explore!'s 'Walking in Madeira', from around €1,970 for 8 days, is the one if you want the islands.

The food-and-wine specialists are where it gets really interesting. Click Tours, Portugal Travel Center, VPT Tours and Schultz Portugal are local outfits running small groups of 8 to 12 with vineyard stays, private tastings at the top quintas, Lisbon tasca crawls and cooking classes. Click Tours' 'Treasures of Portugal' is around €2,060 for 8 days, while Portugal Travel Center ranges from €865 to €2,050 depending on the itinerary. If wine is the whole reason you are going, book local.

April through June and mid-September through October are the windows to aim for. The mainland sits at 20-26°C, the Douro is either green and flowering or golden with harvest, the Algarve beaches are swimmable, and tours run 15-25% below the summer peak.

Late September is the sleeper choice. The Douro vintage harvest, the vindima, runs roughly September 10 to October 10, and the quintas throw open their fermentation rooms to visitors. A handful of operators, Click Tours and VPT Tours among them, run harvest-themed departures where you genuinely stomp grapes at the likes of Quinta do Seixo. They fill up 6 to 9 months out and cost 10-15% more than the standard shoulder trip; well worth it if the timing works.

July and August are hot, crowded and pricey on the Algarve, where beach towns like Albufeira and Lagos treble in size, hotels hit €250 a night and up, and tours climb to match. Lisbon and Porto stay bearable in July, but the Douro creeps into the high 30s. If summer is your only option, head north.

November to March turns wet in the north and stays mild in the south. Tours drop 25-35%, Lisbon rarely dips below 10°C, and you can have Porto's Livraria Lello and Sintra's palaces almost to yourself. The trade-off is a dormant Douro, with most river cruises tied up from December to early March.

Easter and the Santos Populares (Lisbon in June, Porto's Sao Joao on June 23-24) are the festival highlights to target if you like your streets packed and your grilled sardines plentiful.

There are three ways in. Lisbon (LIS) is the default: the biggest airport, the best connections, and the natural start for a Lisbon-Porto-Douro run. Porto (OPO) is the better bet if your tour starts in the north or you are heading straight for the Douro. Faro (FAO) only really makes sense for an Algarve-focused trip.

From the US, Portugal is the closest corner of Europe and one of the easiest long-hauls there is. TAP Air Portugal flies direct to Lisbon from more than fifteen US cities, including New York (JFK and EWR), Newark, Boston, Washington, Miami, Chicago and San Francisco, with United and Delta adding their own nonstops; the East Coast hop is just 6-8 hours, short enough that a red-eye out has you in Lisbon for breakfast. Reckon on US$500-$850 return in the shoulder months, US$900-$1,300 over the summer peak. From the West Coast expect one stop (or TAP's nonstop from San Francisco), 11-14 hours all in, at US$700-$1,200. Book three to five months out for the best fares.

From Australia, Portugal is about as far as Europe gets, so it is a genuine haul: no nonstop, and usually two connections, one through a Gulf or Asian hub (Emirates, Qatar, Singapore Airlines) and then a European leg into Lisbon, for roughly 24 hours door to door from Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. Return fares run around A$1,900-$2,700 in the shoulder and A$2,700-$3,600 at peak. Most travellers build in a stopover, and pairing Lisbon with a few nights in Dubai, Doha or Singapore on the way through takes the edge off the distance.

From Canada, Air Canada and TAP fly Toronto and Montreal direct to Lisbon in summer (about 6-7 hours), with one-stop routings off-season and from western Canada; budget roughly C$750-$1,300 return depending on season.

From the UK and the rest of Europe, the low-cost carriers make Portugal properly cheap. Ryanair and easyJet fly into all three airports from dozens of European bases: Dublin to Faro for €60 return in May, London Stansted to Porto for €45, Berlin to Lisbon for €80 are all typical. The catch is the baggage fees and the awkward slots (3am departures out of some secondary bases). TAP and the full-service lines run €90-€180 return from London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Madrid in shoulder season. For a short Algarve week the budget carriers are unbeatable.

Porto and Faro both sit on TAP's domestic network, so flying into LIS and home from OPO, or the reverse, usually costs nothing extra and can even save you money on an open-jaw ticket. Bundle on Multiday.tours and you will see live Kiwi fares next to the tour price, in your own currency, so you can weigh the full trip cost before booking either side.