• Horseback Riding Along the Coast: The Atlantic Ocean is the livelihood of many Portuguese and the inspiration for a number of rides along its beaches. An American company, Equitour, offers these trek. In addition to beach riding, there is trekking through olive groves, vineyards, pine forests, and lagoons. Seeing this beautiful country from the back of a well-trained, eventempered Lusitano is a rewarding experience.

For generations, much of what the English-speaking world knew about Portugal came from the reports that wine merchants brought back to Britain from the wineries of the Douro Valley. Today Portugal is famous throughout the world for its port wines, and many parts of central and northern Portugal are covered with well-tended vines sprouting from intricately laid-out terraces that descend verdant hillsides.

• Port: Known for decades as the Englishman’s wine, port was once the drink uncorked for toasting in England. In gentlemen’s clubs, vintage port (only 1% of all port made) was dispensed from a crystal decanter. Later, when the English working classes started drinking less superior port in Midland mill towns, they often spiked it with lemon. Today the French consume almost three times the amount of port that the British do. Some 40 varieties of grape go into making port. Made from grapes grown in rich lava soil, port today is either vintage or blended, and ranges from whites to fullbodied tawnies and reds. The latter is often consumed at the end of a meal with cheese, fruit, or nuts. You can visit a port-wine lodge to learn more about port—and, more important, to taste it. The best lodges to visit are concentrated in Vila Nova de Gaia, a suburb of Porto across the Douro from Porto’s commercial center.

• Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Belém): More than any other ecclesiastical building in Portugal, this complex represents the wealth that poured into Lisbon from the colonies during the Age of Discovery. Begun in 1502 in Belém, the seaport near the gates of Lisbon, it’s the world’s most distinctive Manueline church. Richly ornate and unlike any other building in Europe, it has, among other features, columns carved in patterns inspired by the rigging of Portuguese caravels laden with riches from Brazil and India.

• Museu da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon): Its namesake was an Armenian oil czar, Calouste Gulbenkian (1869–1955), whose fortune derived from a 5% royalty on most of the oil pumped out of Iraq. His eclectic collections of Asian and European sculpture, paintings, antique coins, carpets, and furniture are on display in a modern compound in a lush garden.