'Scoop' in action.

The travel agency positions itself as a Portuguese one, which should cause us, tourists, to be associated with a high European level of service. Unfortunately, in practice, all services were completely "typical" Russian:

at the airport, the extremely thorough passport control of exclusively Russian tourists took more than an hour, our family was at the tail of the queue, as a result, taking the suitcases from the conveyor, they ran to look for the promised representative of Altosol with a sign in numerous passages, then a huge waiting room. It turned out that stationary signs were attached along the perimeter of the fences (they could have indicated the exact place at the Altosol office in Moscow so that we would not run alone in a panic).

The road to the hotel took more than three hours - a long journey from the city of Faro to Lisbon (I think the company saved on the cost of air tickets), stopping an hour before the hotel for lunch in an expensive roadside eatery with one slowest cashier (almost an hour wasted and 12 euros per cutlet with rice and a bottle of bad lemonade).

At the hotel, it turns out that a family of four, drawn up by one contract, according to one last name, rooms are booked on the 6th and 2nd floors. Three hotels, three times repeated begging for rooms on the same floor (loss of half an hour and nerves immeasurably). through 5 floors.

The hotel in Lisbon is a 10-minute drive from the airport, the planes took off and landed directly above us, the path to the metro was through a wasteland, the only way out was from the parking lot (therefore, the guide actively advertised taxi services).

Excursions - a short jog around the city for 20 minutes, then 15-50 minutes of free time in historical centers and one and a half to two hours in paid restaurants, tasting rooms and souvenir shops.

The hotel in Porto was positioned as a four in the city center, turned out to be an old wreck on a hill above the central station (both streets around the hotel, descending to the station, are full of drug addicts and homeless people, the view from the window is on the charred ruins of abandoned houses).

The third hotel (in the city of Tomar) is magnificent in appearance, but made of cheap building materials, has not been repaired for a long time, the taps are flowing, the whispers of neighbors are heard.

I listed the negative so that tourists do not tune in to the European level - the travel agency, I think, is organized by our former compatriots and strictly observes the Soviet traditions of saving on everything (with the price level for us, of course, higher than that of vacationers in Portugal joyfully, numerously and regularly, for example , the same Englishmen).

I liked the country. We are thinking of returning to Portugal on our own and definitely with a holiday on the islands.

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