LISBON IN A DAY
I don’t necessarily recommend seeing Lisbon in a day – there’s no way you’ll be able to see everything worth seeing. However, if that’s all the time you have, you can make the most of it and see as much as possible in that day! In this post, I will give you a sample itinerary for your very full one day in Lisbon.
First thing’s first – you need to wake up early! Lines get long and you will quickly run out of time if you don’t start your day until 10am. I recommend being ready to head out the door by 830am.
9am: Torre de Belem - 45 minutes
This is definitely somewhere you should stop during your trip in Lisbon. The Torre de Belem is basically a small fort that was built to protect Lisbon. We were staying at a campsite right outside of the city center, so we took a taxi to the Torre de Belem, for about 6 euros. We didn’t go inside because the lines were insanely long. It is for sure worth seeing from the outside, even if you don’t go in. If you want to go in, I strongly recommend getting fast track entrance ticket, otherwise you’ll spend at least an hour waiting in line.
Outside of the Torre de Belem, there are a lot of little shops set up and street vendors walking around trying to sell you stuff. The souvenirs are actually pretty cheap here, so if you’re looking to bring some stuff back to family and friends, it’s not a bad place to buy things like magnets, book marks, bottle openers, etc. Keep in mind that the tower doesn’t actually open until 10am, so if you want to go inside, it pushes your day back a little bit unless you want to go somewhere else first. I’d say 45 minutes is enough time to look around outside, get some nice pictures, and take a look at some of the shops and street vendors. If you plan on going inside, expect to be here far longer than 45 minutes.
10am: Padrão dos Descobrimentos – 30 minutes
Another cool place to visit on your way into the main city center of Lisbon. As long as you’re in good health, you can walk here from Torre de Belem in approximately 15 minutes. This opens at 10am, so if you get here right around that time, I imagine the line won’t be very long. I wouldn’t spend the money on any type of skip the line ticket. It seemed like everyone was at the Torre de Belem, so it wasn’t very crowded when we arrived.
Padrão dos Descobrimentos was built, originally as a temporary piece, to represent adventurers and explores who helped establish Portugal. We paid the 5 euros each to go inside, and didn’t have to wait for more than a minute to get on the elevator. Once you get off the elevator, you walk up maybe 35 stairs and get to the top to see a nice view. I didn’t find it to be anything spectacular, but still thought it was worth the visit. The actual structure from the outside is far more interesting than the view you’ll get from the top. Assuming there’s no line, plan to spend about 30 minutes here.
10:45am - Jerónimos Monastery – 10 minutes - ?? depends if you go inside or not
Another place in Lisbon where we skipped going inside because of the insane lines to get in. Jerónimos Monastery contains the tombs of King Manuel and other Portuguese royalty, as well as other important people from Portuguese history. We didn’t buy a fast-track ticket, and didn’t want to waste our one day in Lisbon standing in line. This wasn’t something I was dying to see, so I didn’t have a problem skipping the inside. We did go inside the church part, which was free and had no line, which for us was a good alternative. If this is something you just can’t leave Lisbon without seeing, I strongly recommend buying a fast-track ticket. Standard tickets for just the monastery are 10 euros, and the combined ticket for the monastery as well as the museum are 12 euros
We didn’t want to spend the money for the fast-track tickets, but again, if Jeronimo’s Monastery ison your absolutely must-see list, then I recommend the fast-track ticket
From Jeronimo’s Monastery, hop on the 15e and get off at Praça do Comércio, which is right in the center of Lisbon – it’ll only take you about 10/15 minutes. It was 2.90 euros per person, and the tram was very clean and comfortable. It even has free wifi.
11:30am – snack/lunch – 45 minutes
There’s a lot to do when you’re trying to see Lisbon in a day, so at this point, we needed to replenish our fuel and get something to eat! We started walking toward the castle and looking for a place to stop along the way. There are plenty of restaurants right in the center where you get off of the tram, but they were very expensive. The restaurants were a bit cheaper once you walked away from the center square.
12:45pm - Castelo de São Jorge – 1.5 hours
After lunch, we made our way to the castle, which you definitely shouldn’t miss. It was a long walk up some very steep hills, but we made it. We passed some cute little terraces with nice views along the way, as well as some cute churches. Just keep your eyes open as you walk because there’s plenty to see along the way. Once we got to the castle, there wasn’t much of a line to buy tickets. Each ticket was about 8 euros, and you can spend a decent amount of time in the castle, so it seems like a fair price. If nothing else, you will get to see some incredible views from the castle, which makes sense since it is situated on the highest hill of Lisbon.
We aren’t big history people, but we still enjoyed the castle and the views. The castle consists of ruins of the former royal palace and part of the neighborhood for the elite, but it’s mostly just walking around open space – there aren’t really any buildings you can go inside. There is also a little wine food truck once you enter if you want to stop and have a drink, and a restaurant/café on your way out if you need a snack. Visiting the castle involves A LOT of walking, so absolutely positively make sure you have on comfortable shoes. As a side note, once we left the castle, we saw some beautiful peacocks – it was a nice surprise!
230pm – Alfama District - 2.5 hours
After we visited the castle, we made our way to the Alfama District, which was by far one of the best parts of Lisbon. We just looked at our map and started walking toward Alfama. As we started walking to Alfama, we went from being in the big, crowded city of Lisbon, to what felt like a small town where everyone knew each other; there were women selling homemade liqueur out of their living rooms! We didn’t have any specific destination in mind, we just wanted to see why everyone recommends going to Alfama, and we definitely understand it now.
We walked around, went in the shops, had some samples of wine and liquer, and sat down and enjoyed some homemade sangria. Then we made our way to what appears to be the main center of Alfama, and there are locals who have set up shops all over the main square. There are shops with homemade bags, homemade shoes, homemade bookmarks – basically anything you can think of and they’ll be selling it there. The prices were reasonable, also. We bought a homemade bag and homemade shoes from one of the shops! It’s definitely still touristy, but it feels quieter and less crowded than around the castle area and other parts of Lisbon. We probably spent a couple hours walking around Alfama, and it was something we really enjoyed, so don’t miss it!
530pm – Santa Justa Lift (or the secret cheaper alternative) - 45 minutes
By around 530pm, we made it to Santa Justa Lift. This was on my list of things to do from the very beginning, but for some reason it didn’t even occur to me to either buy tickets ahead of time or to see if there were skip the line tickets or something like that. When we got there, the line was incredibly long, and there was a sign next to the line that said the wait time would be 1 hour and 30 minutes. At this point, we had been out all day, we were tired, and there was no way we were going to spend the last 2 hours of our vacation waiting in line. We decided to skip it, not knowing that there was another way to see the same views without waiting in line for the lift.
As we were walking by the elevator, we passed a nice young man who started speaking to us, asking if we spoke English. I didn’t really want to engage because I didn’t know what he wanted, but eventually we realized he was trying to help us. He told us if we walked just a couple feet straight ahead of us, we could go into a store, get in the elevator for free, and then walk to the observatory deck where the Santa Justa Lift takes people.
We weren’t sure if he was trying to mess with us or what, but we figured we had nothing to lose by checking. Low and behold, we walked into the store, got on the elevator, and ended up on some sort of rooftop terrace with a bar and an outdoor rooftop movie theater. We looked around and saw some other stairs, so we kept walking. Once we walked up some more stairs, we ended up on some sort of metal platform that seemed to be part of the Santa Justa Lift. We were met by an official looking person, who told us we had to pay 1.50€ each to continue up the spiral staircase (tickets to take the lift are 5€ each), where we’d get to the top, exactly where the Santa Justa Lift would’ve taken us. We paid the money, walked to the top, and were met by some phenomenal views!
We were quite excited because we didn’t think we were going to get to see these views without waiting in line for 2 hours! In the midst of all of the excitement, I forgot to write down the name of the store we went into – but here’s exactly how to get there.
Looking at elevator, walk past it to R. Do Carmo.
Look in front of you/to your right. One of those first two stores has an elevator you can use to go most of the way up to where the elevator takes you. When you get out of the store elevator, you’ll come out on a little terrace/bar area. When we were there, it was being used as a rooftop cinema. Look for the stairs and just keep walking up. Then you’ll get to a platform where you have to pay the €1.50 to take the spiral staircase all the way to the top. Then you are in the exact same place that the elevator would’ve taken you!
After the views from the lift, we just walked around Lisbon for a bit before we were too tired and had to head back to the campsite. We went to Rua Augusta and walked up and down there for a while. It’s very touristy and crowded, but it was still enjoyable. There are a lot of people in the streets doing magic tricks, singing, playing instruments, and all sorts of other things so we stopped a lot to watch, which was cool. We also stopped for a snack and a glass of wine, though I wouldn’t recommend getting dinner here as it’s definitely more expensive than if you just walk a little bit away from all of the crowds.
Another thing you shouldn’t miss is trying some of the porto wine. You can get a small shot glass of it in the center of Praça do Comércio, or by the castle. I’m sure there are places all over the city where you can get tastes of it. It’s definitely worth trying!
Overall, I definitely don’t recommend seeing Lisbon in one day – it’s tiring, and there’s way too much to see! However, if all you have is a day, you should definitely make the most of it. The itinerary I’ve given you is a good one, though you can certainly tweak it as you see fit. Figure out what you want to do the most and just get started. Start your day early so you can make the most of your day in Lisbon!
If you have any questions about visiting Lisbon in a day, feel free to contact us and we can help you plan your day!
See the interactive map below for some of the main attractions in Lisbon– some of them we visited and I talked about in this post and some of them we didn’t get a chance to visit. There’s always next time!
This is so great! I am going to Lisbon and this is exactly what i was looking for
Thank you , a great insight to Lisbon
Jen
Thank you, a great insight