Good day fellow travellers, or fellow traveller ‘want-to-be’s’. This page begins the tale of our planning, travelling, and enjoying Portugal in 2025. This section will be added to regularly so checking back from time to time might be useful as we add new information.
Planning for Portugal 2025
This time around we found that we didn’t have the trepidation we experienced on our first foray across the Atlantic to Portugal since now we had a pretty good idea of what we would experience on the journey and once we arrived in this beautiful country.
After deciding that we would use the same services as last year to find lodging in Portugal 2025, the next decision we had to make was where do we fly to?
Faro or Lisbon?
The north of Portugal is lovely and I expect a lot of visitors decide to stay in there after flying into Lisbon for their visit. For us the better weather in the Algarve is what draws us back to the south, that and we are now familiar with Albufeira town and look forward to seeing new sights there.
Do we fly to upper-mid Portugal – to Lisbon – or do we take advantage of the airport in the Algarve near Faro and bypass Lisbon entirely? Faro is only a couple of hours east of Albufeira, our go to place when in the Algarve.
We know that presently there a far fewer flights to Faro from Canada than there are to Lisbon. Also, flights to Faro seem to be higher priced than flights to Lisbon plus, many of the airlines will fly to Faro, but with a stop enroute.
We know that when we arrive in Europe after an ocean crossing flight we are physically and mentally done. Younger folks likely won’t have this issue, but for this older couple, neither of whom can sleep on an airplane, the time spent at the airport before departing coupled with the flying time, then arriving in Portugal in the morning without a good night’s sleep behind us, is very arduous. So having two or more legs on the journey rather than one would make us more fatigued by the time we arrived. No thanks!
We decide to go to Lisbon first again to spend three days there to acclimatise ourselves to Portuguese time and to get rested before journeying on to Albufeira. Besides, Lisbon is such a beautiful city we wanted to spend time there. Faro might be more convenient in terms of the location but there’s places in Lisbon we have yet to see, so that’s our choice for Portugal 2025.
Now that we’d decided upon our flight destination and the dates of our travel it was time to decide on which airline we’d fly.
Those of you that have read our travel pages about our trip to Portugal in 2024 will know that out of the many airline websites and flight consolidators we looked at then, TAP airlines came to the top in our search for best value and best comfort.
All of our criteria considered, TAP was not the best choice for us in 2025. It turned out to be Air Transat.
During our trip to Portugal 2025 we experienced and enjoyed flying on a TAP airlines Airbus A321LR. Since Air Transat were using the same model and make of airplane, we were doubly happy to book Air Transat, hoping that the journey of 2024 would be replicated in 2025.
Unfortunately, not so much.
About the flight to Portugal 2025
Departure from Pearson Airport in Toronto late January didn’t go smoothly, no fault of Air Transat. A snow squall with fine blowing snow made aircraft de-icing necessary. With that lengthy process – all jets departing in similar time slots during that snowstorm were in the queue, we were about 45 minutes late departing. By this time we had already been on board for about an hour, so adding in the de-icing time and our upcoming 6+ hour flight to Lisbon, our on-board, overnight time will have been about eight hours.
Once airborne, the Air Transat flight crew made up time and we arrived in Lisbon only about twenty minutes late.
Again, through no fault of Air Transat, we endured almost constant turbulence once we’d left mainland Canada until we reached Lisbon. The pilots were always changing altitude to try and find smoother air which, unfortunately, wasn’t to be found.
Thank you weather change!
Seating space on Air Transat A31LR
I used to be 6’3″, but I seem to be shrinking in height as the numbers of my years grows, so now I’m 6′ 2″. 🙂
Being taller than average meant that I was really cramped the whole journey. To ameliorate this I try to stand up much of the trip – when the turbulence allows – but not long after I started doing so on this journey I was told that standing in the aisle wasn’t permitted. I complied with the order of the cabin crew and stayed seated except for bio-breaks but was taken aback. When flying TAP airlines I was welcomed to stand in the aisle as much of the trip as I wished and I wasn’t alone in so doing.
Part of the reason for the Air Transat attitude may have been that on their plane the aisle seems to have shrunk widthwise. Less than the TAP airlines aisle? Don’t know for sure but it sure felt like it. Since I had to stay seated my knee, which doesn’t fit straight out in front of me because of the shrunken seat to seat space on their aircraft, protruded into the aisle just a little meaning I encountered legs, luggage and cart impacts during the trip.
It’s a sad state of affairs that in the drive to maximize profits airlines have taken the comfort and joy out of flying, unless one has a significantly higher budget for travel than we and can afford to pay the usurious fees to book what is euphemistically called “comfort seating”. That used to be the norm. but now, unless rich as Croesus, travellers will always be relegated to the “cattle class” of air travel.
If you wish to tell us about an international flight you took – good, bad or indifferent, please feel free to leave a comment below.
But enough on that. We landed safely in Lisbon, and for that we are grateful.
Next page we will write about Lisbon Portugal 2025. Click here for that page.