I’m home.
Ten days in Portugal with Collette, twenty new acquaintances, and absolutely nothing on my to-do list. No restaurant reservations to confirm. No driving routes to second-guess. No backup hotels bookmarked in case something didn’t feel right. For the first time in longer than I can remember, my only job was to show up.
Just thinking about it was stressing me out, somehow. And then, somewhere around day three, it stopped being stressful at all.
Here’s what I found.
The pace
This was my biggest concern going in. I’d expressed my skepticism: the fear of being moved through a place rather than moving through it myself, of standing in the sun waiting while someone asks a question the guide has clearly answered seventeen times. I was braced for it.
What I found instead was a Collette Explorations itinerary that’s specifically designed to breathe. A morning in Porto with free time for wandering. A full afternoon in the Alentejo where the schedule simply stepped back and let the place happen. An entire day in Lisbon, day ten, that was essentially mine to do with as I pleased. I spent part of it in a neighborhood I’d been wanting to revisit and part of it doing exactly nothing in a café, which is, as you should know, a completely legitimate way to experience Lisbon.
The itinerary had structure — it was going where it was going — but it gave me room inside that structure. I never felt herded. I felt, more often than not, like I was being guided and then trusted to wander.
The group
Twenty people. Fifty might give me the hives. Twenty was exactly right.
By day two I knew everyone’s name. By day four I knew who liked wine and who I could recruit to sneak off with me for pastéis de nata (okay – no one is passing up on sneeking off for pastéis de nata). The group had its own rhythm, and finding my place in it happened more naturally than I expected. There’s something about moving through a place together — sharing the same moments, reacting to the same things, standing in the Estremoz Saturday market while the countryside comes to town with baskets of fruit and cheese and olive oil — that creates a kind of shorthand you don’t get any other way.
I came in open to the camaraderie and I left with people I expect to stay in touch with. That part didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was how quickly it happened.
The hotels and inclusions
The Monverde Wine Experience Hotel in the Douro Valley had rooms spread across the vineyards, which meant that walking back after dinner involved stars and silence and the particular smell of vines in the evening. The Vila Gale Collection Alter Real in the Alentejo was comfortable and well-positioned for everything the region offered. The Turim Boulevard Hotel in Lisbon was well-located, well-run, with a great rooftop bar and an amazing breakfast. The kind of hotel that handles the logistics of a city stay beautifully so you can spend your time outside of it.
The inclusions — sixteen meals, all the transfers, the entrances, the guides — meant that the mental overhead of the trip was essentially zero. By day five I realized I hadn’t checked a confirmation email in nearly a week. For someone who normally has a running document of contingency notes, that silence was its own kind of luxury.
The access
The reality exceeded what I expected. Which, honestly, wasn’t much. Access is the thing I’m hardest to convince on — it’s easy to promise and hard to deliver. What I found surprised me.
On day four, just outside Porto, we joined a family for a home-hosted dinner. Not a restaurant, not a catered experience dressed up to look like one. A family, a kitchen, recipes passed down through generations, and an evening of stories and cooking and the kind of conversation that doesn’t happen on a schedule. And one of the craziest toasts I have ever participated in. This is not something I could have arranged independently. It exists because Collette has spent years building the relationship that makes it possible.
In Marvão, a hilltop village with views that stretch to Spain on a clear day, we visited an olive mill with a century of family history. The grandfather purchased it. The father modernized it in the 1960s. Now António Melara Nunes continues to produce the oil while honoring what he learned from those two generations before him. In the Alentejo, we spent time with the Lusitano horses at the Alter do Chão stud farm, established in 1748, in a way that felt genuinely unhurried. At a winery, we were warmly welcomed and made to feel like guests. On the last evening in Lisbon, fado — not background music at a tourist restaurant, but a proper performance with artists who understand what they’re carrying.
The local connections on this trip were something I couldn’t have arranged from my laptop back home. I understood that intellectually before I left. I understand it differently now.
The part I didn’t expect
All I had to do was show up.
I know I said that at the beginning. I want to say it again because it landed differently by the end of the trip. I’ve spent years being the person who handles everything behind the scenes so that someone else can show up and be present. I’ve never been on the receiving end of that until now.
It’s a particular kind of ease. Not lazy ease, not checked-out ease. Present ease. The ease of someone who has nowhere to be except exactly where they are.
I came back with a different understanding of what I do for people. And I came back with a slightly different sense of myself as a traveler, which at this point in my life I didn’t entirely expect.
Portugal will do that to you. So, it turns out, will having nothing to confirm, nothing to coordinate, nothing to check.
If a group tour has been on your mind — or if you’re curious whether it might be right for a trip you’re planning — I’d love to talk through it.
