Lisbon in a week: a seven-day itinerary with two bases

Why you split the week, and where the split goes

Seven nights in one Lisbon hotel means four days of commuting back out to the places people actually remember: Sintra, Cabo da Roca, Guincho, the Cascais seafront. The trains run, but you burn 80 to 100 minutes a day in transit and you always leave the coast at the wrong hour, in the dark, in a carriage full of other people who also left too early. Splitting four nights in the city and three in Cascais costs you one hotel change and buys back roughly five hours of daylight across the week.

Put the split after night four, not night three. The city days are the ones with timed tickets, museum closures and evening reservations, so you want them consecutive and unhurried. Move west on the morning of day five with your bags, using the Cais do Sodré line rather than a taxi — it is 40 minutes and about €2.40, and the Cascais station is a five-minute walk from most of the seafront hotels. If you would rather sleep under the hills than by the sea, swap Cascais for Sintra town and use the same days in reverse.

Day 1: land, drop the bags, walk the eastern ridge

Assume a morning landing. From the airport, the red metro line gets you to Alameda in about 12 minutes, then the green line to Baixa-Chiado; the whole thing is roughly €1.65 on a rechargeable Navegante card, plus €0.50 for the card. Most hotels will hold luggage from 11:00 even if the room is not ready. Do not book anything with an entry time on day one — flights slip, and the first day is for calibrating your legs to the gradient, which is steeper than the photographs suggest and paved in polished limestone that turns slick in drizzle.

By 13:00 eat somewhere unambitious in Baixa, then climb east: Sé cathedral, up through the lanes to Portas do Sol by about 15:00, Graça by 16:30, and back down through Mouraria as the light goes orange. That loop is under four kilometres but about 120 metres of climb. Finish with a drink at a Graça terrace and an early dinner — jet lag plus hills beats most people by 21:00. Sleep in the city base you have booked for four nights; Baixa or Chiado keeps day two and three walkable, Príncipe Real is quieter and about ten minutes further uphill.

Day 2: Belém in the morning, the docks after dark

Take the 15E tram west from Praça da Figueira before 09:15, or the earlier train from Cais do Sodré to Belém, which takes seven minutes and beats the tram queue entirely. Jerónimos opens at 09:30 and the cloister queue is manageable for the first hour; the Torre de Belém queue is not, and on a one-week trip it is the single most skippable ticket in the city. Instead spend the saved hour at the Museu Nacional dos Coches or the Padrão dos Descobrimentos lift, then eat lunch away from the monument strip, up in the streets behind Rua de Belém.

Give the afternoon to the riverside walk back east: the MAAT ramp, the Doca de Santo Amaro under the bridge, and Alcântara, which turns from container yards into restaurants around 19:00. LX Factory is at its best between 18:00 and 22:00 on a weekday, when the terraces fill but you can still get a table without a booking. Get the 15E or a rideshare back — about €8 to Baixa. Second night in the same city hotel; not moving twice in the first half of the week is the point of the plan.

Days 3 and 4: markets, Príncipe Real, tiles and Marvila

Day three is the flat day. Start at 09:30 in the Mercado da Ribeira food hall for coffee, cross to the fish and produce side that most visitors walk straight past, then climb Bica by funicular (about €4.10 return, or €1.65 with zapping) into Bairro Alto. Príncipe Real by noon for the garden and the independent shops on Rua Dom Pedro V, lunch there, and the Jardim Botânico afterwards if the sun is hard. Late afternoon, take the ferry from Cais do Sodré to Cacilhas — ten minutes, about €1.55 — for the only view that shows you the whole city at once.

Day four goes east, where the guidebooks thin out. Bus or tram to the Museu Nacional do Azulejo for opening at 10:00 (around €8, closed Mondays), then walk or ride up into Beato and Marvila: converted warehouses, two or three serious craft breweries pouring pints at €4 to €5, and street-art galleries that keep gallery hours rather than tourist hours. Eat dinner back in Alfama and, if you want fado, book a room with a two-set night rather than a €60 dinner-show. Fourth and last night in the city base. Pack before you sleep.

Day 5: move west, then use the afternoon properly

Check out by 11:00, walk or take a short ride to Cais do Sodré, and get the Cascais train — departures every 20 minutes, 33 to 40 minutes depending on whether it stops everywhere, and around €2.40. Sit on the left for the estuary. You will be in Cascais before lunch, and most coastal hotels will store bags until the 15:00 check-in. Eat by the fishing harbour, not on the pedestrian main street, where the menus in six languages tell you exactly what you are getting.

The afternoon is for the coast road west. Walk 25 minutes to Boca do Inferno, then continue on the seafront path or hire a bike towards Guincho — the paved cycleway runs about eight kilometres along the dunes and is flat until the last rise. Guincho is windy nine days out of ten and the surf is genuinely dangerous, so treat it as a place to look at rather than swim. Back for sunset at the Cascais marina. Sleep in Cascais for three nights; the seafront and the streets just behind the station both work, and the second is cheaper by €30 to €50.

Days 6 and 7: Sintra by train, Cabo da Roca by bus, and the flight home

Day six is Sintra, and doing it from Cascais rather than Lisbon is the whole reason for the base swap. Bus 417 from Cascais station reaches Sintra in about 35 minutes for roughly €4, or the 1624 goes via Cabo da Roca if you want the cliffs first. Book a timed Pena Palace slot for 09:30 or 10:00 — around €20 — and be at the Moorish castle walls by noon when the coach groups have moved on. Lunch in the historic centre, Quinta da Regaleira at 15:00 with pre-booked entry, and the bus back down the hill by 18:00.

Day seven depends on your flight. Anything after 15:00 gives you a slow Cascais morning: the Paula Rego museum, the citadel art quarter, one last plate of grilled fish. From Cascais to the airport, allow 75 minutes door to door by train plus metro, or 35 to 45 minutes by taxi at €45 to €60 depending on traffic on the A5. Earlier flights are the one case for spending night seven back in the city near the airport metro line rather than on the coast.

What the week costs, and where to sleep at each end

For the city half, four nights in a mid-range Baixa or Chiado double runs €140 to €200 in March and October, €190 to €280 in May, June and September. Príncipe Real and Estrela guesthouses undercut that by €30 or so and give you quieter nights; Alfama is atmospheric but means dragging bags up steps, and the tram noise starts at 05:45. For the coast half, Cascais seafront doubles sit at €150 to €230 in shoulder season and easily €260 upwards in July and August, while the residential streets a ten-minute walk inland hold €110 to €160 most of the year.

Add roughly €25 a day per person for transport and entries if you buy the big tickets, less if you skip Pena. Two adults doing this week without extravagance land around €1,400 to €1,900 for seven nights of accommodation plus €400 to €500 of everything else, excluding flights. The one splurge worth making is the Cascais half in shoulder season rather than high summer — the same room costs a third less in early May, the sea is cold either way, and Sintra in May is a hill station rather than a queue.