HOW WE CHOOSE
Every property on a Comara itinerary is one I have stood inside. Below is what I am standing there looking for.
I did not always have this written down. When I started, I had photographs, long email threads, and instinct. In May 2026, I flew to Portugal to see two properties I had already built trips around, and neither one held up in person. I came home and wrote this. It is now the thing a place has to pass before it goes on an itinerary.
I publish it for two reasons. It tells you what you are buying. And it lets you hold me to it.
One Table
Can everyone eat in one room, in one conversation. This is the first thing I check and the one that disqualifies most often. When a group is split across two tables, people pick a side on the first night and stay there — and the person who came alone ends up on an edge. A Comara group eats at one table, indoors, in any weather, or the place does not work.
The Single Room
We do not charge a single supplement, which means nothing if the room a solo traveler gets is the one nobody else wanted. I look at every room a property is selling and ask which one I would give to someone traveling alone. If the answer is uncomfortable, the property is not right.
The Bodyand the Quiet
I walk the real route — car to bed, bed to dinner, room to bathroom in the dark — and count the steps, the surfaces, the distances. I am not looking for certified accessibility; I am looking for a truthful account of what a place asks of a body, so you can decide for yourself whether it is the right week for you. And I sleep there, because slow travel that does not permit rest is just travel.
The Welcome
I inquire twice: once as a general group, once as who we are — a group of queer women traveling together. The gap between those two replies tells me most of what I need to know. I am not looking for a flag in the email signature. I am looking for no gap.
The Place
Who owns it, who works there, where the food comes from, whether the building has a history or was assembled to look like it does. I would rather have a working estate with imperfect plumbing than a property that could be lifted and set down in a similar country without anyone noticing.
Ours for the week
For the countryside stay, I want the place to ourselves. A group that has been together for four days behaves differently when there are strangers at the next table — and that difference is the whole thing I am building.
A property does not need to be perfect. It needs to clear every line above, and where it cannot, I need to be able to tell you plainly what it asks of you before you decide.
I return to Portugal in October 2026 to run it all again.
Come along. We saved you a seat.
* Last Revised: July 2026