A Canadian Driving in Portugal
After making a point of not driving in Europe for decades, we decide to rent a car for four weeks when we visit Portugal.
Taking delivery of a car in December that you store for winter adds up to a strange combination of joy and cruelty. I took delivery of my Porsche 911 Carrera T on December 11th, 2023, drove it that day and the next, then parked it in our garage for the winter season. You can only stand in a cold garage and admire your new car in anticipation of spring for so long, so with tires over-inflated to reduce flat spots and battery trickle-charging, Lydia and I decided to make plans to visit Portugal for five weeks in January and February of 2024.
Our itinerary was to visit Lisbon for a week, drive around the Algarve region for three weeks and spend our last week in the historic city of Evora, located about 100 kilometers east of Lisbon. After flying into Lisbon, we stayed there for seven days and picked up our rental car the day we were to leave for the Algarve.
Lisbon
Choosing not to drive in Lisbon turned out being a good decision. The old part of town where we were staying is very hilly, all streets are paved with cobblestones and some are so narrow, driving a sub-compact car on them is inviting a side-mirror catastrophe. To our amazement, we saw a few Mercedes Benz C 300s, a good-sized car by any measure, maneuvering down what would generously be called a lane. Parking on the street is common in this city and under such hilly conditions, quite a challenge, especially for those backing into a tight spot using a manual transmission. We heard sounds from clutches and gears that I am certain you should not normally hear. This was not the city to reacquaint ourselves with driving in Europe, something we had not done in decades. Walking should be and was our preferred form of mobility.
One aspect of the combination of narrow streets and cobblestones is they seem to naturally keep speeds down making the roads pedestrian friendly. Unless you are crossing town, everyone seems to be on foot and negotiating hilly streets at a relaxed pace among the slow-moving vehicle traffic. An interesting feature of cobblestones is how when roadwork is required, crews remove them, store them in a pile and reuse them when the job is done. How many times have we all seen millions of dollars of public money spent on restoring and repaving a tarmac-covered city street to see it dug up and patched a month later in order to install a gas line, thereby creating more debris in a land-fill and a hurried patch leading to yet another pot-hole? It’s amazing that a paving technology developed by the Romans would be so efficient and environmentally responsible.
We managed very well on foot, rode in some taxis and took a few buses. Walking allows you to discover so many things in large cities that you miss while driving by. It also allows you the time to notice something unusual around a corner often resulting in unplanned route changes leading to even more discoveries.
Those green and black Taxis in Lisbon seem to be driven exclusively by older men wearing caps who, like taxi drivers all over the world, feel they should be in charge of their country’s government, or every country’s government for that matter. The typical Lisbon driver admits to little knowledge of English until he realizes you are friendly and from Canada, then suddenly breaks into Oxford level English, describes his world travels at length, lists his multiple university degrees and reveals the intricacies relating to his complex Lisbon real-estate holdings. In addition to these qualities, this person is also a good driver, maneuvers fearless in tight quarters and knows the city’s every nook and cranny like the back of his hand. After solving geo-political problems, Lisbon taxi drivers are a great source of tips on places to eat and things to do around town.
Lisbon features a subway, which we did not have occasion to use, a tramway system that we did not ride because they are so crowded and a bus system that took us effectively to a few out-of-the-way museums we wanted to visit. You pay directly in cash on the bus and having coins on hand facilitates the process.
Volkswagen Taigo
Our rental car was a Volkswagen Taigo, a small crossover based on the VW Polo chassis, the car that is one size down from the Golf. A first look indicated this vehicle is too tall to be categorized as an estate wagon, but in my eyes too short to qualify as an SUV. Ground clearance seemed more generous than that of a regular car, yet I would never consider taking it off-roading. It was designed initially in 2020 for the Latin American market as the Nivus, then further developed for the European market and renamed the Taigo. It is an attractive little car with the added practicality of sporting a hatchback. We drove around with four adults for a few days when our nephew and his partner visited us in Sagres and it coped well. As with most hatchback designs, you can load a lot of luggage in the back and even more stuff if you lower the rear seats.
We chose a five-speed manual, not an automatic. The transmission takes power from it’s 94 hp, turbo-charged, three-cylinder gas engine to the front wheels. Not exactly a rocket, but once under way, a very competent cruiser on highways. I needed to get used to giving enough gas to engage the clutch, given the three-cylinder’s modest torque. Also, the gear-shifter felt a little vague to me and I kept selecting 5th gear when trying to move into 3rd. After my first day of driving though, I had mastered both clutch engagement and gear-selector spacings.
One aspect of the Taigo we did not get used to was body roll in cornering. The car did not feel competent on those twisty and tight Portuguese rural roads. Turn-in was vague, steering feel nonexistent and combined with excessive body roll the car failed to induce a sense of confidence in these situations.
It’s handling around town was very good. It came with many auditory warning beeps and shrieks which were helpful in constricted spaces and when attempting to park. We did find however, that the car would overdo it at times. During our second day with the car, we encountered a very tall, statuesque woman wearing a large woolly sweater walking towards us on a narrow street in the town of Burgau. We slowed down to a crawl and she gave us room to pass. The Taigo sensed danger and alerted us to the woolly predator with beeps of increasing frequency and volume until it started screaming in a high-pitched whine. This incident led us to name our car Beaker, the Muppets TV show character who suffered from anxiety and was always put in dangerous situations due to scientific experiments gone wrong. Beaker was also suspicious of road-side garbage containers and would give us a few warning beeps when ever we drove by, thereby confirming our choice of name.
Toll Roads
We worried about toll roads and had been told by Lisbon natives that there are numerous tolls on major highways. When we picked up our car, the rental car representative mentioned our Taigo carried a transponder and highways have transponder-designated lanes at toll booths which allow you to drive through. See Via-verde sign shown above. We found this to be the case on the A2 autoroute which took us through the midlands of the country down to the Algarve region. Along the A22, the highway crossing the Algarve from East to West (the Atlantic coast to the Border of Spain) overhead cameras and transponder sensors charges a toll electronically as you drive by. We paid for our tolls at the end of our trip when we brought the car back to the rental company in Lisbon. The A2 tolls were quite expensive but the A22 tolls were less than 1€ per section of highway. In total we amassed about 40€ during our four weeks of driving.
Road Signs
To a Canadian driver, many of the Portuguese road signs appear similar to our own. Most European countries have agreed to using common signage symbols and because of the multitude of languages spoken in Europe, many signs that are shown as text in North America are presented as pictograms. For example, a common North American sign instructed the driver not to park is shown verbally while the Portuguese sign is a pictogram:
They even eliminate the “You are leaving … ” and “Come and see us again” verbiage when you are driving out of a city or town by showing you the same sign you saw when you were driving into the community with a diagonal bar crossing out the name of the place as you are leaving.
This is a sign that is famous around the world, especially for those who like to drive fast. It signifies that you are entering segments of the German Autobahn with no speed limit.
Those multiple diagonal lines serve a different purpose in Portugal and other European countries with fixed speed limits. For example, let’s assume the speed limit on a rural highway is 70khr. You then enter a populated area marked as a 40khr zone. A sign showing 40 with those multiple diagonal lines means that the 40khr ends and you can resume driving at 70khr.
When you are driving in rural areas you will often encounter the Roundabout Ahead sign. It’s not unusual to come across a whole series of them spread out 1 to 2 kilometers apart helping you familiarize yourself with the concept pretty quickly. They are very effective at keeping traffic moving with the added benefit of controlling speeds. No matter how quickly you accelerate the next rotary is coming soon and you will be slowing down.
When I was driving down a multiple-lane highway I came across this type of sign for the first time, shown here using original artwork because I was unable to find a usable one on the web. It looked something like this:
When I encountered it, there were four lanes on this particular stretch, with multiple exits in close proximity and one lane closed for construction further ahead. The large complicated sign baffled me and of course it is presented to you on busy sections of highway where you are concentrating on the traffic, (usually heavy) and ensuring you continue along your planned route. After coming across a few I began sorting them out realizing they indicate the different speed limit for each lane ahead of you. In the case of the sign illustrated above, the right lane’s speed limit is 50 and is also an exit lane, the next lane has a 70 limit, presumably in preparation for the lane closure ahead and the two left lanes were marked with a 100khr speed limit.
Thank goodness I spent some time studying Portugal’s road signs prior to our trip. Anyone driving there should have a look at the Wikipedia page called Road signs in Portugal illustrating its road signs with captions. That review proved useful as we came across one sign in particular, that shows a wind sock surrounded by a triangle warning about potentially strong sidewinds. We were driving down the narrow peninsula leading to the town of Sagres, the country’s south-west tip and there is plenty of ocean on both sides. When we saw the sign, my wife Lydia thought it was a sideways lighthouse. I remembered seeing the sign on the Wikipedia page so I was able to clarify.
Using Logomakr software, I accessed a lighthouse illustration, turned it sideways and inserted it in a triangle. Turns out Lydia was not that far off in her interpretation of the windsock. We have since been discussing what purpose a sideways lighthouse might serve and have yet to find one.
So, How was Driving in Portugal?
Based on our experience, it was great. If you want to familiarize yourself with driving in Europe, I recommend using Portugal as the place to get your feet wet. The highways and rural roads were in good condition, the signage clear if you spend a little time familiarizing yourself with it, traffic is rarely heavy or frantic, but most importantly, native drivers are patient with tourists. Our car had a sticker indicating it was a rental and whenever we were hesitant the locals usually backed off and gave us time to work through our confusion.
Driving was a consistently enjoyable experience until our last full day when we stayed at a hotel right by the Lisbon International Airport, where we were to drop off the car and board our flight back home. While the atmosphere in old Lisbon was relaxed, the neighborhood around the airport is filled with intersecting highways, off ramps and three-lane boulevards. After exiting the highway, the hotel we were aiming for was right off a four-lane roundabout. I had dealt confidently with quiet rural roundabouts but was not prepared for dense multiple-lane traffic spinning around in circles. It took me a few attempts before finding my way to the correct lane leading to the hotel without dangerously cutting off other drivers. Given that the entrance was a few feet from the Roundabout, I had to be in the second lane from the right when steering through the rotary. No other lane worked.
Parking was also a little hair raising. Being in close proximity to the airport, parking lots are rare and complicated, and given you are following the flow of traffic it is difficult to determine which lots are private, employee parking, designated for long-term or hourly parking. All the details are written in Portuguese, no attendants are to be found and the only way to understand whether you actually should be in a parking lot is to drive in and approach people on the street to help you with translation.
Our experience by the Lisbon airport was further proof that you should keep your city driving to a minimum and use the car to explore the wide-open spaces and small towns where driving adds a whole new dimension to your trip.