It’s always interesting arriving somewhere completely new, especially when you don’t know much about it. For the more popular destinations, information is everywhere, and chances are someone you know has already been there. Places like that rarely feel like a mystery.

A few years ago, Lisa and I visited Portugal for the first time, and like many first-time visitors to the country, we spent our time in Lisbon and Porto, the most popular places to visit. Lisbon was everything we expected, but Porto was a different story. It wasn’t that the city wasn’t what we expected; it was that the weather conditions for our time there were less than ideal.

Starting tomorrow, I’m heading to Portugal for 15 days, my first of what I hope will be two trips across the Atlantic to Europe this year. I don’t have any plans yet for the second trip, but I always try to travel at least twice a year, as time and budget allow. Planning this trip to Portugal involved more back-and-forth than I expected.

I’ve been wanting to plan my next adventure for a while. Over the winter, especially, the idea of warmer destinations and better travel timing was hard to ignore. I started jotting down ideas: cities I wanted to visit, then ways to connect them and make the most of my time across the Atlantic.