Switching my holiday from Village Cascais Suite to Four Seasons Vilamoura

[Conan]

I hope I made the right choice.
This is our first trip to Portugal, July 2009. The plan is to spend a week on the mainland and then a week at Pestana Madeira Beach Club, Madeira

Booked Village Cascais Suites Hotel 1-BR (outside of Lisbon on the rail line) a while ago via RCI Weeks for the mainland, and the Madeira week 1-BR also in RCI Weeks.

Now at the 10-month date Four Seasons Vilamoura (studio) became available in RCI Points for the same July mainland week and I've booked that, meaning I'm out my exchange fee for Village Cascais and maybe the Wyndham points I used for its RCI Week deposit (I think they come back in some restricted way).

So we'll be renting a car for the mainland week, driving Lisbon to Vilamoura and return, then the weekend at a hotel in Lisbon (to be determined), then to Madeira.

What do you think about Cascais vs. Vilamoura?
Any good Lisbon hotels for a July weekend?

Thanks as always

 

[Blues]

You'll love Four Seasons Vilamoura. It was our favorite place on our 3.5 week trip to Spain & Portugal last September. Check out my review in TUG reviews. Be aware, though, that you'll need a car. It's 1-2 miles from the marina & town (as are almost all the timeshares there).

Here's an earlier response I wrote about Vilamoura (post #2 in the thread). I also responded to a general inquiry about the Algarve here.

As far as Lisbon, we stayed at Clarion Suites Lisbon, and were very pleased with the accomodations. It's a little far from the downtown tourist center (20 minute walk or quick subway ride), but there's the subway, and taxis are very cheap in Lisbon. But the large suite that you get for the price is well worth it. Here's another TUG response I wrote about that.

Here's a picture of DW & I having dinner overlooking the marina in Vilamoura. We loved spending time by the marina.

Here's a picture of Four Seasons Vilamoura at night. Two of their 3 pools are in the foreground. If you look carefully through the palm trees, you can see the third pool. There's also an indoor pool, which we never used.