The Benefits of Slow Tourism: How to Make the Most of Your Stay

16 April De 2025

Travelling well does not always mean fitting more into the itinerary. Slow travel invites you to stay longer, move at a different pace and pay closer attention to the places, people and routines that shape a destination. In Portugal, where historic cities, local food, nature and the coast often sit within easy reach of one another, this way of travelling feels particularly natural.

It is not about doing nothing or following a strict set of rules. It is about leaving room for a second coffee, returning to a place you liked, walking instead of rushing and allowing te destination to shape the day.

What if travelling better meant doing less?

Some trips come home with us as a list: three cities, five landmarks, the restaurants we had to try and hundreds of photographs on our phones. We saw a lot. But we did not always have time to really understand where we had been.

That is precisely the logic that slow travel challenges. Also known as slow tourism, it does not mean spending a holiday doing nothing or necessarily staying for weeks in the same place. It is, above all, about no longer measuring a trip by how much we manage to fit into it.

Staying for a second coffee. Going back to the restaurant where dinner was particularly good the night before. Choosing to walk instead of looking for the quickest way to get somewhere. Turning down a street simply because it looks interesting, even if it is not marked on the map. Slow travel often lives in decisions as small as these.

And perhaps that is where its greatest benefit lies: when we leave some empty space in the day, we begin to notice the destination itself. The markets where people actually do their shopping, the outdoor cafés that fill towards the end of the afternoon, the food that changes from one region to another, or simply the rhythm of the people who live there every day.

Portugal is a good place to try travelling this way

Portugal lends itself particularly well to this way of travelling. Not because the country needs to be explored slowly, but because there is plenty to discover when we stop moving straight from one landmark to the next.

In Porto, a morning can begin beside the Douro and end around a table where lunch simply carries on into the afternoon. In Lisbon, moving just a few streets away from the familiar routes is often enough to find a different pace. Coimbra deserves time to walk up and down its streets, step inside a bookshop or linger beside the Mondego. In Viana do Castelo, the Atlantic meets the Minho in a city whose everyday life continues alongside those who come to visit.

Then there are destinations where slowing down seems to happen almost naturally. In Madeira, a morning divided between the city and nature can easily turn into an entire day. In Lagos, beaches and cliffs are easier to appreciate when there is no pressure to fit three of them into the same afternoon.

None of these places requires a special “slow” itinerary. It comes down to how we choose to experience them: fewer stops, time to stay in each one and enough freedom to change our plans along the way.

Porto

Slow travel does not need a rulebook

There is something contradictory about turning slow travel into a list of rules. Ten days in the same city, trains instead of planes, local restaurants, no rushing. In practice, there is no formula to follow. It simply means letting go of the idea that every day of a trip needs to be packed from morning to night.

It can start with something as simple as choosing one thing to do in the morning and leaving the afternoon open. Booking a table without already thinking about where to go next. Returning to the café where you had breakfast the day before. Or taking a different street simply because it caught your attention.

There is another idea worth remembering: not every moment of a trip needs to result in a photograph. Buying fruit at a market, crossing a bridge on foot, waiting for a tram or sitting at an outdoor café watching the city go by may feel insignificant at the time. Often, these are the moments that come back to us first.

Some cities take time to reveal themselves

Coimbra is a good example. The University can be visited in a morning and the historic centre explored in a few hours. But leave some space between one thing and the next and the city begins to feel different: walk down towards the Mondego, step inside a bookshop, stop at a café in the Alta or simply let lunch take its course. Our two-day itinerary in Coimbra was created with precisely this idea in mind.

In the Algarve, the temptation is different: trying to fit several beaches into a single day. Lagos shows why doing the opposite can be worthwhile. Choose one, walk along the cliffs, return to the historic centre towards the end of the afternoon and discover a region that extends far beyond its coastline. Markets, small towns and less obvious routes reveal another side of the Algarve. We explore some of them in our article on experiences in the Algarve beyond the beaches.

Travelling this way does not require a long holiday. It can fit into a weekend in Porto, three days in Lisbon or a week in Madeira. The time available may change; what matters is what we choose to do with it.

Funchal, Madeira, Portugal

SLOW TRAVEL IN PORTUGAL

Where should you start a trip without rushing?

Perhaps in Porto, letting the Douro set the pace for the day. Or in Lisbon, where moving from one neighbourhood to another can completely change the atmosphere. Coimbra invites you to linger between the Alta and the Mondego, while Viana do Castelo brings together the Atlantic and the character of the Minho region, rewarding those who are not simply passing through.

Further south, Lagos offers the chance to swap a race between beaches for days with fewer plans. In Madeira, the challenge may be resisting the urge to see the entire island at once. There is no single right destination for slow travel. There is simply the place you decide to give your time to.

DISCOVER DESTINATIONS

In the end, perhaps slow travel is best recognised by the feeling we bring home with us. Some places leave us with a collection of photographs. Others, for a little while, begin to feel almost like our own.