Spending your free time

Whatever you want to do: the Portuguese Beiras have it all: from naturalswimming in rivers and lakes, lots of restaurants, beautiful nature etc. you name it, the Beiras have it.

The Beiras have a lot to offer, you can take a walk, go swimming and even skiing in the Serra Estrelas: the highest mountains of Portugal.

You can visit old Roman settlements, castles and the many viewpoints that date 1000's of years ago.

The Beiras have all kinds of forests and plains, driving around you see beautiful sights, the mountains of Spain in the east and a huge amount of agricultural land filled with cherry trees, almond trees, corn, vegetables and even tobacco. And if you're lucky you might run into wild boar, deer and even bobcats amongst a lot of other species of animals and beautiful birds.

If you want to do some shopping then you'll find large shopping-malls in the bigger cities like Covilhã and Guarda, but don't skip the center and the smaller villages where lovely little shops sell all kinds of things and the prices are on average very low compared to other countries or the coastal areas of Portugal.

If you like good food or a drink on a terrace, the Beiras are the right place to go: from small villages to large cities you will find cafés, padarias (bakeries), lunchrooms, snackbars and thousands of restaurants where you can have lunch or diner for often amazingly low prices (like 8 euros for soup, main dish with fries and/or rice and vegetables, sometimes a drink is included and coffee and / or desert too).

As for the type of food: everything you can imagine, from typical Portuguese receipes to Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Turkish, Fast-food etc. etc.: it's all there and mostly deliciously prepared. The servants in the restaurants are always very friendly and work very hard to please all the customers.

The largest cities in the Beiras are: Castelo Branco, Guarda, Viseu, Aveiro and Coimbra. They all have a very rich history and very old centres. There are shopping malls and a huge amount of restaurants, bars etc.

The smaller villages almost all have at least one café where you pay the lowest possible prices like 1 euro for a beer or a coffee. These villages often also have a grocery-shop (mostly together with the café) where you can buy almost everything you need, often they also have products from the region like the famous Portuguese chorizo, cheese, honey, wine etc. and the local folks always love to see new people from abroad and before you know it you're talking (with hands and feet) with the population.