Lisbon is seven hills draining into one river, and nearly everything worth four nights sits on a tram line, a ferry pier or a suburban train platform. The monastery, the castle, a Sintra palace and a swimmable beach all come off one rechargeable card you top up at a machine. A hire car would spend most of the trip parked on a slope while you walked past it on foot anyway.
The card that runs everything
Buy a rechargeable Navegante card at any metro ticket machine when you land and load it with zapping credit. Everything in this piece taps in with it, and the gap between tapping and paying cash is real money over four days.
Elétrico 28 (Carris Tram 28), the yellow line that climbs from Martim Moniz through Graça and Alfama, down through Baixa and out to Campo de Ourique, costs €3.30 if you pay onboard and €1.72 if you tap. The Transtejo Soflusa ferry from Cais do Sodré to Cacilhas is €2.00 on the door and €1.60 tapping. The suburban trains west and the Rossio to Sintra line take the same card.
Tram 28 runs daily 06:00 to 22:30, every 10 to 15 minutes. Treat it as the spine of the trip rather than a sight in itself. Ride it before 09:00 or after 19:00; between those hours it is standing room only and worked hard by pickpockets, and you will see the shoulder of the person in front of you and very little else. There is no booking and no reserving seats. If there are six of you, accept now that you will not sit together, and board at Martim Moniz, the terminus, because joining mid-route means standing the whole climb.
Your first evening, uphill from Baixa
Don't spend day one indoors. From the flat grid of Baixa, the walk up to Castelo de São Jorge (Castelo, directly above Alfama) takes about 25 minutes and gains a bit over a hundred metres, most of it in stepped alleys with no shade. If your knees or your luggage day argue with that, tram 28 drops you within five minutes of the gate.
The castle is open 09:00 to 21:00 until 31 October, last entry 20:30, so it is the one major sight in the city you can do at golden hour instead of spending good daylight on it. Tickets are €15 on the door or about €17 online for a timed slot, free under 12. Book online. The door queue splits parties, so book the same slot for everyone and agree to meet inside the gate rather than outside it.
Come down the western side afterwards for a drink at Park (Bairro Alto, on Calçada do Combro). The entrance is genuinely a multi-storey car park ramp; take the lift to level 5 and keep walking up the ramp, because there is no sign worth the name. Cocktails run €9 to €12 and beer €4 to €5, open Tuesday to Saturday 13:00 to 02:00 and Sunday until 20:00. The roof is full by 18:30 in decent weather and takes no reservations, so arrive as a group before six or split into twos and reassemble at a table.
Dinner the first night should be somewhere that needs nothing booked. Time Out Market Lisboa (Cais do Sodré) is ten minutes downhill from Park and sits inside the station building. Entry is free, plates are €10 to €20 and wine starts around €5; it opens 10:00 daily and runs to midnight Sunday to Wednesday, 02:00 Thursday to Saturday. There are no reservations and the seating is communal, so send one person ahead to hold a table while everyone else scatters to different stalls. It earns its place on a car-free trip because it is the same building you will leave from for the ferry and the beach train.
Belém is a walking day
Belém is four flat kilometres west of the centre on tram 15E, and once you are there you should stay on foot. Go on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday: the monastery is shut on Mondays and the art museum on Tuesdays.
Start at 08:00 at Pastéis de Belém (Belém, a couple of minutes east of the monastery), which opens at that hour daily and closes at 21:00 from October. A tart is about €2 and coffee €1 to €2. The counter queue at midday is the avoidable mistake; the other one is not realising the place seats several hundred people in back rooms most visitors never see. Walk past the takeaway line and ask for a table, which with a group is usually the faster door.
Then Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Belém), five minutes' walk west. The cloister is €18 and open Tuesday to Sunday 09:30 to 17:30, closed Mondays, 13 June and 25 December. The church next door is free and entered separately, which is useful with a group of mixed enthusiasm: half of you can do the cloister while the rest sit in the nave and nobody waits. Buy the timed cloister slot before you leave the hotel. The unbooked queue runs several hundred metres along the river by mid-morning and it does not move.
From there it is about a kilometre east along the riverfront to MAAT — Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (Belém), flat the whole way and shaded in stretches, which matters when you are doing the day on foot. The combined ticket is €16 for non-residents, €12 for residents, with reductions for under-30s and over-65s; open Wednesday to Monday 10:00 to 19:00, closed Tuesdays. The galleries are wide and there is no door policy to speak of, and the public roof ramp outside is free to walk even if you skip the exhibitions.
Carry on east under the bridge, another twenty minutes or so, to LX Factory (Alcântara), a former industrial block of restaurants, bars and shops with no door policy anywhere and nothing to book. Shops run roughly 10:00 to 20:00, bars go past midnight, and the Sunday market is 10:00 to 18:00. Meals are €15 to €35 and drinks €5 to €10. It is the easiest place in the city to land with eight people and no plan, and it fills the awkward gap between Belém closing and dinner. Tram 15E or the Alcântara-Mar train takes you back into town in about fifteen minutes.
Sintra by train and back before dark
Make this your Tuesday. The art museums and the best riverside lunch in this piece are all closed that day, and Sintra is not.
Trains leave Rossio for Sintra roughly every twenty minutes and take about forty, at around €2.30 on the card. Take an early one. Two sights is the honest maximum for a car-free day, and the pair that works is Quinta da Regaleira (Sintra) in the morning and Palácio Nacional da Pena, Sintra in the afternoon.
Regaleira is a ten-minute walk downhill from the town side of the station area, no bus needed, which is what makes it the sane half of the day. Slots run every 30 minutes from 10:00 to 17:30 last entry and carry an hour's grace. It is €20 an adult in 2026; the price went up in January, so older guides quoting €15 are wrong. Groups get round it fine, but the initiation well staircase is single-file and slow, so take the 10:00 slot or anything after 15:00 and you skip the worst of the queue for it. Remember that the walk back up to the centre is the same hill in reverse, and it is steeper than it felt going down.
Pena is €14 for palace and park, €10 for park only, free under 5, and the bus 434 loop from the station is the way up. The timed slot is enforced to the minute with no grace period and no refund if you miss it, so book days ahead and build in a buffer for the bus. The old Pena Ramp approach is disrupted; walk up via Largo de São Pedro and Calçada da Pena, or stay on the 434 loop and let it deliver you to the gate. If anyone in your group struggles with a sustained uphill, take the bus.
Crossing the river to Cacilhas
The ferry from Cais do Sodré is the most group-proof thing in the city: no booking, no limits, tap in and walk on. Boats go every 15 to 20 minutes, the crossing is under ten, the first is 05:35 and the last back from Cacilhas is 01:20. At €1.60 it is also the cheapest way to see the city from the water, and it is how you reach Almada's Cristo Rei and the Ginjal waterfront.
From the Cacilhas pier, turn right along the water and walk fifteen minutes on the flat to Ponto Final (Cacilhas, on the Ginjal waterfront). It is family-run and small, €30 to €45 a head, closed Tuesdays and otherwise 12:00 to 23:00. Groups must email [email protected] one to four months ahead; turning up with six people unbooked will not work, and no amount of charm changes that. Time the booking for sunset, when the city opposite goes copper, and do the walk in daylight on the way out, because the path back is flat but quiet after dark.
Half an hour to the sand
Praia de Carcavelos (Carcavelos, on the coast line west) is a five-minute walk from its own station and about 25 minutes from Cais do Sodré, roughly €2 each way. It is the largest beach on the Lisbon coast, with volleyball nets, surf schools and bars open year-round. There is no constraint on numbers, it is free, and sunbed hire is around €10.
One honest caveat for an autumn trip: lifeguards cover it June to September. An early-October swim is at your own judgement, and the Atlantic here has a shore break that deserves respect even in flat weather.
An afternoon for heat or rain
Keep Museu Calouste Gulbenkian (Avenidas Novas) in reserve for the afternoon the weather turns or the hills win. It is €10 an adult, free for under-18s and free on Sunday afternoons, closed Tuesdays, and no reservation is needed. The Founder's Collection galleries reopened in July 2026 after a full climate and lighting refit, so the Egyptian, Islamic and Lalique rooms are back alongside the modern collection at the CAM. Two buildings and a garden absorb a group easily, and you can lose two hours here without anyone queueing for anything.
Two dinners worth booking before you fly
Cervejaria Ramiro (Intendente) is the seafood beer hall, €40 to €70 a head with beer, closed Mondays and otherwise 12:00 to 00:30. Book. Walk-ins still queue an hour or more, and the online booking holds your table against a €25-per-person deposit that comes off the bill. Parties over six have to be arranged by email at [email protected], and that is not a formality: the room is laid out in fours and sixes. Order the prego steak sandwich last, the way the regulars do.
Café Luso (Bairro Alto) is the fado room that actually works for numbers: €65 a person for a three-course menu with the show, running since 1927, open nightly with music from around 20:00. Long tables under the vaults take large parties, and the acoustic under that ceiling is the reason to choose it over the tiny Alfama tascas, which cannot seat a group at all. Book three to seven days ahead for Thursday to Saturday. If you are two, the small houses are still the better room; this one is for four and up.
Where to sleep so the plan works
Stay within a ten-minute walk of a metro station or Cais do Sodré and the whole itinerary above stays honest. Baixa is flat, central and noisy. Alfama and Graça are beautiful and stepped, lovely to wake up in and punishing with a wheeled suitcase and a 06:00 flight. Avenidas Novas is quieter, near the Gulbenkian, and on the metro. Start with the Lisbon hotel search, and if you want the wider picture of the districts before you commit, the Lisbon guide covers what each one is actually like to sleep in.
The practical bit
One Navegante card per person, loaded with zapping credit, covers trams, metro, ferries and the Sintra and coast trains. Budget €25 to €30 a head of credit for four days including both day trips. Nothing above needs a taxi except a late airport run.
Cards work almost everywhere, including the pastry counter and the market stalls. Carry €20 to €30 in small notes anyway for tips, the odd tasca and a beach bar.
Book Jerónimos, the castle, Pena and Regaleira slots before you fly, Pena especially, since it is unforgiving to the minute. Put Sintra on a Tuesday, when MAAT, the Gulbenkian, Ponto Final and Ramiro are all shut. Keep Monday for the castle, tram 28 and the market, when the monastery is closed.
Sights come to roughly €95 a person if you do all six ticketed ones. Add €25 to €30 of transport, €20 to €30 a day for casual eating, and two booked dinners at €65 and around €50. That is about €350 to €400 a head for four nights before the room, and not a euro of it on parking.
