I searched old posts so apologize if this is redundant, but all I could find is train travel info. Just booked all my flights and hotels for the springtime, very psyched.

I'll be driving a rental car from Madrid to Lisbon so we can see some countryside. From what I can figure it looks like a 9 hour drive on a straight shot, will have a good car and my wife can alternate driving so it shouldn't be too taxing. I purchased a good road map and I see that I've got a few alternatives.

Do not want to stay overnight anywhere en route. My main concern is getting to Lisbon before nightfall. Would prefer the most scenic route possible, but I realize I'm constrained by time - do I have to stay on the autopista's, or can I make good time taking the back roads?

Just looking at the map it seems like leaving Madrid going north and heading through the mountains on the autopista would be a pretty drive. Will probably leave at 8am, so would also like advise on which town would be best destination en route for a good lunch and a short walk to stretch the legs. Restaurant suggestion would also be appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

I'm sorry to correct you but the straight forward route out of the city for Lisbon is N-V (south-west) and you don't cross the montains. N-V has some scenic areas once in Extremadura, nature wise. From historical and cultural point of wiew, a Visit to Caceres (I'd suggest to stay a night there in the way back) or to Merida is recomendable. Merida wasd the Roman Capital of Iberian peninsula in the imperial roman times and it's worth the detour of the visit.

there is an important point opened.... depending on the day of the week you are travelling you may find (or not) strong traffic that may make your leaving the city a very slow process (1 hour...). It all depends

If you make to the border and you havent'had lunch at that time, Elvas (first city in Portugal on N-V)is a good option for restaurants specially if you are into seafood

Thanks Nativo, but let me get more specific now that I have my map in front of me.

I realize that N-V out of Madrid to Caceres is the most DIRECT route. But I am wondering - is it a more SCENIC (pretty) drive if I first go northwest out of Madrid through the Cordillera Central on N-VI to Villacastin?

From Villacastin I would then go southwest on N-110 to Caceres. I realize it will take longer going this way, but I think it will only add an extra hour.

Thanks again!
Peter

Ok,The route I was proposing (with a Merida or Caceres detour) was scenic "in the middle" sort of speak.

You could do of course do the detour at the beggining, for that an interesting scenic option is taking some parts of the "Ruta de la Plata" (the old silver transportation route from seville to the north) that has been revived as scenic route. That matches with your initial intentions of leaving the city by N-VI. You can use it to go south down to NV.

info http://www.rutadelaplata.com/ you can swicht it into english (a bit hidden though)

I can only stress that if you are leaving the city on a morning of a weekday you need to plan carefully route not to get got in a good hour of rush hour traffic.

Have an excelent trip

Nativo, this is great.

After Lisbon I will be driving to Sevilla, so I will save the Ruta de la Plata for that trip.

I am leaving Madrid for Lisbon early on a Sunday morning. I hope all of the Madrilenos have partied very heavily on Saturday night and are in a deep stupor when I hit the road. Thank you for the warning and the advise!

It sounds like we both like Roman history. Very cool series on HBO in the states, you should be seeing it on DVD in Spain soon I would think:
HBO Rome

Peter

Ahhh HBO and the Scifi channel are some of the things I miss more from my times in the US,talking about romans, www.mnar.es, National Museum of Roman Art, good virtual visit.

Just returned, and the route we finally decided on was northwest out of Madrid with a quick stop to stretch our legs in Salamanca (very cool, the first glimpse of the city crawling up the hillside on the approach is like some dream world), then due west to Portugal to a town called Mealhada, and then due south from Mealhada to Lisbon.

We left Madrid around 10am and arrived in Lisbon at 6:30pm (you gain an hour with a time zone change going into Portugal, which is nice). The countryside getting out of Madrid is scenic with snow-capped mountains in the distance, but there’s quite a bit of urban sprawl till you get a ways out of the metro area and tunnel through the mountains. But northern Portugal is the highlight of this route, just utterly spectacular. I’d read that it was pretty but reading can’t prepare you for how incredible it is. The drive on N-234 south of Viseu is some of the most beautiful landscape I’ve seen in my life. Incomparable, but if pressed for an analogy I’d say it’s kind of like Tuscany - except it’s much more hilly/mountainous and MUCH more densely forested. Parts of the drive winds through eucalyptus forest, so not only do you get the visuals but then you get an olfactory kick too – make sure you roll down your windows.

Then Mealhada will blow away your taste buds. It’s known for the best leitao (roast suckling pig) in the world, so we stopped there for a late lunch. N-234 intersects with N-1 in Mealhada; once you get to that intersection head north on N-1 and you’ll see that you’re in the midst of leitao heaven – there’s leitao joints lined all the way up the road. If you’ve ever been to Lockhart, Texas for the BBQ it’ll be déjà vu. We went to the restaurant “Pedro de Leitoes” (leitoes is the plural of leitao, in case you’re wondering), which is about 1 or 2km up the road on the right side. If you like pork you’ll be in paradise, imo this lunch was definitely worth the time cost of diverting from the most direct route from Madrid-Lisbon.

N-1 south will take you to Lisbon, but if you get back on N-234 and go west about 5-10km you can get on the A-1 toll road. We took A-1 and you can make some pretty impressive time if you have a lead foot, it’s downhill and we were going at least 150kph most of the way but were getting passed by plenty of cars. The toll from Mealhada to Lisboa was about 12 euros.

Our next leg was Lisbon-Seville. We took the Vasco de Gama bridge out of town, then caught the A-2 toll road south and then headed due east on N-121, the toll was maybe 10 euros. Not as scenic as northern Portugal, but a nice drive. BUT BEWARE BEJA – I’m still trying to figure out what the hell happened, but this was the only time we got seriously lost on all of our driving. The terrain was pretty flat so we must have gotten a little complacent on the navigating. Looking at the map looks like you’re supposed to simply bypass the city on the north, but we must have taken the wrong spoke out of a roundabout and ended up in the city center. All the streets spiral around a hilltop with nary a right-angled intersection, and it was overcast so you couldn’t use the sun as reference. Once you’re in the city center there’s no signage telling you how to get out of town to the east, so we inadvertently made two full circles and kept getting to the same roundabout that gave you options on getting highways out of town to the north, south and west but NOT east. Finally went south just to get the hell out of Beja, and clawed our way back northeast to the highway using the back roads. An excellent way to sharpen up whatever Portuguese you might know is to ask for directions from a toothless seventy-year-old man sitting on a bench in a six-house village. Amusing upon hindsight, not so funny at the time. This unplanned adventure cost us at least two hours.

Rest of the drive to Sevilla was uneventful, pretty much a straight shot. We stopped for lunch in Jabugo, maybe 50km over the border in Spain. This is where they make the famous jamon iberico bellota. There’s only one well-marked road into Jabugo, and it’s only 2km off the highway. If you like jamon, this is ground zero. We got there at 2:30 so a few of the places were closed, but we walked into one of the open places (forget the name, sorry) and had an excellent lunch. A generous plato of the gran reserva jamon was only 15 euros, a bargain – in Madrid I saw it on menus and they wanted at least double. The jamon was just melt in your mouth tender and delicious, a real treat. My wife isn’t a huge fan of cured hams, but she loved this.

Our original plan was to shoot past Sevilla after Jabugo and stop in Cadiz for a bit, but Beja put the kibosh on that plan. We went straight to our hotel in Sevilla, and got there at 5pm. So leaving Lisbon at 9am and losing an hour on the time zone change, it wasn’t too bad. The drive was pleasant and through mountainous terrain in Spain, but it was a misty day so the visibility wasn’t very good.

Sevilla to Madrid has probably been written about plenty here so I’ll spare you the details. Definitely the dullest stretch of driving, but its 4-lane highway all the way and it’s fast. The mountains around the northern border of Andalucia are pretty spectacular, but that’s about it on the scenery. I would definitely prefer doing this leg by train.

Couple words of caution: make sure you have a good attentive navigator and some very good maps, and do NOT try to navigate solely by highway numbers. Spain and Portugal are still in the process of converting their road numbering systems, so some of the road signage will have the new numbers and some the old. The only constant is the name of the waypoints, so you have to know which major (and even minor) cities/towns are ahead on your route because your road changes will come up on you pretty fast and you have to be ready to pull the trigger when you get to the roundabouts or autopista exits. Another major annoyance for me was the “Mapa Oficial de Carreteras” for Spain. This is the main highway map issued by the government, and it cracks down each part of the country into minute regional detail, and gives you blown up detail of cities. But when you transition on the map from region to city, it leaves you hanging in a purgatory of zero detail when you’re on the outskirts of a city. You’re basically feeling your way from highway into city by Braille, which is not exactly fun. You have to trust your gut and just pound away in the direction you think is correct until you finally hit a major thoroughfare that’s on the city map and get your bearings again.

Other than that the driving’s not particularly taxing. Some minor road construction in Portugal between Guarda and Viseu – getting out of Viseu and finding the road to Mealhada was tricky, but we did it on the first try. We had a small Mercedes A-170 with a diesel engine, and I was worried about it having enough oomph to pass on two-lane highways. But even loaded down with some heavy luggage it had enough power to pass going uphill without making your hair stand on end. Fuel costs weren’t that bad, the whole trip cost maybe 100 euros total. All in all it was a very enjoyable ride with some great food and some beautiful countryside, I’d definitely recommend it.

Is this the big green fold out book map? If so I totally agree ... it is great for what ir covers but leavs these big gaps right when you most need it!


"Another major annoyance for me was the “Mapa Oficial de Carreteras” for Spain. This is the main highway map issued by the government, and it cracks down each part of the country into minute regional detail, and gives you blown up detail of cities. "