Destinations

Where these houses are

Where the list has reached so far: Portugal, from the mainland out to Madeira and the Azores, and Galicia across the northern border. What a few days in each actually looks like, and which places are worth building them around.

The white manor house of Quinta do Tedo above the terraced Douro

Portugal

The country changes character roughly every hour of driving. Terraced river valleys in the north, schist villages inland where the houses are the same colour as the hills they sit on, and then two sets of Atlantic islands that behave nothing like the mainland or like each other. A few slow days here means choosing one of those and not moving again.

The Douro and the north: The river is walled in by wine terraces the whole way up, and the good houses sit close enough to the vines that the walk before breakfast is the entire outing.
Madeira: The levadas hold their gradient along the contours, so a proper walk can start at the garden gate and end at a waterfall.
The Azores: Volcanic islands where the weather can arrive from three directions in a day, which makes the house you sit it out in the most important decision of the trip.

The region, house by house

If you would rather look at houses than at maps, start here.

Galicia

Across the border the land stays green through August, which tells you most of what you need to know about the weather. The sea runs inland in long drowned valleys, granite sits heavy in the fields behind them, and the western edge takes the Atlantic with nothing in the way. It is a short drive from the Portuguese north and reads as another country, because it is one.

The Costa da Morte: A coast named for what it did to ships, with a lighthouse on most of the headlands and very little in between them.
The rías: The water reaches miles inland here, so a house above it looks over a sheltered arm rather than open ocean, and the shellfish comes ashore within sight of the terrace.
The interior: Granite pazos in quiet farmland, vines on the river slopes of the Ribeiro, and a mill on almost every stream that once had a reason to turn one.

The region, house by house

Galicia

What we have written up on this side of the border so far.

The destination pages follow the places: Portugal and Galicia first, the rest of Europe one country at a time.

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