How to see Portugal by Train: 8 day itinerary

Visiting Cascais, Lagos, and Faro. What to do and where to go in winter.

Welcome to the closest thing to an itinerary we’ve ever written. There is so much to share with you about Portugal that I’m sure we can’t cover it properly in one blog post. So in this first of two installments of Mountains2Seas in Portugal, we are going to cover where we went and how we got there for two weeks and which place turned out to be our favorite. Read on for our steps to visiting as much of a country as possible in two weeks or less with carryon luggage only!

Let us start by saying that when we say we like to travel without an itinerary, we mean it and this trip truly tested and showcased that! There is something liberating about landing a new place with your carryon and just going with the flow of what sounds fun. Enough preamble, let’s jump into the first week of our stay!

Day 1 | LISBON

Upon landing, we immediately hopped on the airport WiFi and split up tasks. Ashley downloaded the Bolt app which is the regional equivalent of Uber and I hopped on Hotel Tonight and found us a place to stay in downtown. We knew we wanted downtown because we wanted to be close to the northbound train lines in the morning. Bolt has to be one of the best apps we have downloaded and turned out to be SUPER useful for just hopping around. It was safe, easy to use, and much cheaper than Uber. The trade off is that there’s a solid chance your driver may not speak English, but that’s not really a problem for this. 

After a hilarious 20 minutes of aimlessly wandering around the Lisbon airport looking for our Bolt pick up, we finally found our driver and got dropped off in downtown Lisbon, just up the street from Pink Street and Time Out Marketplace. Hotel Tonight came through for us and got us a simple and clean room, decorated in a more modern style, but overlooking the city street and the architecture while being very close to food and entertainment.

 We explored the night life of Lisbon to force ourselves to stay awake so we could acclimate to the local time and proceeded to rack out after one of the best dinners we’d had and a stroll through Lisbons equivalent of Temple District in Dublin Ireland. 

Day 2-4  | CASCAIS

The next morning we booked train tickets on the regional metro that went north to the costal city of Cascais. To be honest, we had never heard of Cascais except for a reference made our hotel check in the night before. We had thought we were going to go inland a little bit and stay in Sintra, but we rolled the dice on decent weather and figured one night in Cascais wouldn’t hurt. 

Disembarking the train in Cascais, we started the walk into town. It was like walking through a postcard. The architecture and cobblestone streets invoked a sense of warmth, relaxation and happiness. We emerged in the town square and were greeted with a Ferris wheel, markets, a fishing fleet and a church. Overall, first impressions here wowed both of us. 

We walked just up the hill to where we were staying for the night and realized our hotel was actually a renovated military fort that had been built in the 1500’s for coastal defense. This hotel was the Pestana Cidadela Cascais.

What was supposed to be one night in Cascais turned to two as we walked and explored this quiet little city by the ocean, finding hidden little gems dotted throughout the town. One of our favorite things we did was walk through the regional park just up the hill from the water and hiked to the top of the town to play cards and have a quick beverage. 

On the morning of Day 4, we packed our bags and grabbed another Bolt ride back into Lisbon but this time to the main train station so we could catch our ride south to the Algarve region. Trains run very much on time in Portugal, so we needed the Bolt to be sure we got to our train on time. The metro would have been cutting it just a little close.

TRAVEL TIP
If you don’t have your tickets ordered in advance/ downloaded on your phone and you need to purchase tickets there, be sure to give yourself 20 or so minutes so you can find the ticket agent and buy your tickets. Have your location and desired train saved to your phone so if you have a language barrier, you can show them your phone. This is virtually never a problem in Portugal, but better safe than missing a train. 

Day 4-6 |  LAGOS

Lagos is a sleepy little historic city on the south coast of Portugal, with marinas and stunning coastlines that go as far as the eye can see. During the summer months, you can do boat trips, caves, hiking adventures and zip lines too! This comes with the obvious increase in crowds as well. Since we visited in the winter, we had Lagos almost to ourselves aside from the locals, but didn’t have the plethora of activities to do either. 

So we spent our time walking the historic city, checking out the shops and the original medieval wall that encompassed the city too. We took a day hike out to the Lagos lighthouse and saw the rugged Algarve coastline for ourselves, making a mental note to come back when we could do it by boat. 

The food in Lagos is eclectic, with fare from all around the world. There is a marina in Lagos with a pretty large cruisers group that quadruples in the summer during sailing season so you can find a little bit of everything. English is spoken fluently almost everywhere here, so if you don’t take to new languages quickly, getting around Lagos wouldn’t be a problem. 

The highlight of Lagos was our last night there when we went out for some live music and ended up on stage with the musician doing karaoke! We may (or may not lol) share that footage with you soon. 

Day 6- 8 | FARO

We woke up and headed back to the train on the morning of day 6 to grab our ride east along the coast to the southernmost part of Portugal, the Town of Faro. 

Faro is an amazing town that honestly, we weren’t sure about when we got there. Little did we know or even appreciate how pivotal Faro has been in Portugals history, and how many events it has been witness to over the centuries. It is so close to the border of Spain, and also one of the last major Portuguese towns on the Atlantic before you pass through the Straight of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. 

We explored Faros historical district that first day, and made notes of the places we wanted to see while we were there. Our lodging for the first night was simple and located right on the main square with avenues into every direction of Faro. 

The next day, we woke up and moved across the street to our next nights accommodation which incidentally ended up being the nicest place we had stayed so far. They were incredibly kind and accommodating and treated us to a room that was unreal.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the Monastery’s and Churches, even a place called the bone temple. (Not one of Ashley’s favorites lol)

Then we were treated to a private rooftop where we sipped beer and wine and gasped out over the marina and the historical rooftops of homes that had once stood inside the fortress walls.

Our dinner on our last night was at Há Pátria – SABORES COM ALMA PORTUGUESA and honestly was out of this world. The owner was incredibly friendly, and we chatted with him for almost an hour while we dined. Our food was incredible, the service was stellar, and we wished we had another night in Faro so we could eat there again.

We could have stayed in Faro for two more days easy, but we had some history to uncover up north.

Stay tuned next week for part two of our Portugal adventure. It starts with an early bird train ride, and a town that holds so much history for Ashley, we couldn’t even believe it. 

See you out there!