Guimaraes

Guimaraes trades on a single line of marketing — “Aqui nasceu Portugal”, here Portugal was born — and the 10th-century castle that gives the claim its weight is, honestly, small. You can walk its battlements in half an hour. The real reward is the UNESCO old town below it: a tight, lived-in grid of granite arcades, cobbled lanes and shaded squares where the cafe tables on Largo da Oliveira fill with locals before they fill with day-trippers. Come for the streets, treat the castle as a quick tick, and you will leave happy.

The smart way to do it is from Porto. The CP train from Campanha runs roughly hourly and takes about 54 minutes, dropping you a ten-minute walk from the centre, so this is a half-day to full-day add-on rather than somewhere you need to base yourself. Buy the castle-and-palace combined ticket at the Paco dos Duques desk (around €8, and free on Sunday mornings) rather than pricier separate online tickets, and do the palace — the more substantial of the two — before the castle, since the castle ticket is sold only at the palace office.

If the sky is clear, ride the Teleferico da Penha, Portugal’s first cable car, up the wooded hill for granite boulders, a hilltop sanctuary and views back over the red roofs; in low cloud, save your €10. Staying over is optional and only really pays off for two reasons: the Pousada in a 12th-century monastery on the Penha side, or pairing Guimaraes with Braga the next morning. Otherwise, catch the late-afternoon train back to Porto once the streets quieten — that evening lull, after the coaches leave, is when the old town is at its best. The structured planning below — sights, where to stay, getting in and a realistic budget in pounds — picks up from here.