15 Day Trips From Lisbon and Exactly How to Get There

Sintra is the day trip to take if you only take one, and the train from Rossio gets you there in 40 minutes for a little over €2. After that the choice depends on what you can reach: five of the trips below are urban trains you can walk onto without booking, six are buses from Campo Grande or Sete Rios, and two now need either a car or a seasonal shuttle because of the roads.

Lisbon sits in the middle of an unusually rich hour. Within 60 minutes of the city there are royal palaces, a walled medieval town, the westernmost cape in mainland Europe, the surf coast, a fossil cliff and one of the finest stretches of protected coastline in the country. This page gives all 15, in the order I would do them, and every entry says how you get there, how long it takes and what it costs.

Two rules make the whole thing cheaper. Buy a Navegante card at any metro machine and load it with Zapping credit, which covers every urban train, bus, tram and ferry in the region at a lower fare than paper tickets. And if you are also sightseeing in the city, the Lisboa Card bundles transport with free museum entry: read here whether the Lisboa Card is worth it for you.

Day trips from Lisbon at a glance

The 15 day trips below are listed with the mode of transport, where you leave from and roughly how long the journey takes one way.

Portugal is a small country, which is why this list is possible at all. Almost everything on it is inside the Lisbon metropolitan transport area, where Carris Metropolitana now runs the buses under four-digit route numbers. Guides written before 2022 still name the old operators, Scotturb, Vimeca, Mafrense and the rest, and those names no longer appear on any bus.

1. Sintra

Sintra is the day trip to take if you take only one, because nowhere else within an hour of Lisbon has this much to look at in one valley. It sits 29 km (18 miles) northwest of the city in the Serra de Sintra, and the whole hillside is a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape.

Getting there: trains run from Rossio station in central Lisbon on the Linha de Sintra roughly every 20 minutes, and the journey takes 40 minutes. The same line also calls at Entrecampos and Oriente if those are closer to your hotel. Fares sit at around €2.50 each way, less on a Navegante card with Zapping credit. Do not drive: the roads inside the park are narrow, one-way and full of coaches, and parking near the palaces effectively does not exist in summer.

The Palácio Nacional da Pena is the one on the postcards, a Romanticist palace in yellow and red on the top of the ridge, mixing neo-Gothic, neo-Manueline, neo-Islamic and neo-Renaissance in a single building. Below it are the ruins of the Moorish castle along the ridgeline, and down in the town the Palácio Nacional de Sintra with its two conical kitchen chimneys.

Two more are worth the extra time if you have a car or the patience for the 434 and 435 buses. Monserrate Park and Palace has a garden planted with species from every continent, and Quinta da Regaleira has the initiation well, a spiral staircase sunk into the ground and connected to a network of tunnels, which is my own favourite. Our guide to the palaces in Sintra covers tickets and the timed entry that Pena now uses.

2. Cascais and Estoril

Cascais and Estoril are the beach day, and the train that reaches them runs along the water for most of its length. Both were royal retreat towns and both sit on what gets called the Portuguese Riviera, 25 km (15.5 miles) west of Lisbon.

Getting there: trains leave Cais do Sodré every 20 minutes on the Linha de Cascais and take 33 to 40 minutes, and a single costs €2.55. Estoril is the stop before Cascais. Sit on the left going out for the estuary and the sea.

Cascais has four beaches within walking distance of the station and a compact old town behind them, with the Cascais citadel, the Parque Marechal Carmona and the Museu Condes de Castro Guimarães, a turn-of-the-century mansion on the seafront. Walk the 2 km (1.2 miles) of coast path between Estoril and Cascais rather than taking the train between the two: it is flat, paved and on the water the whole way.

Estoril is the nightlife end, and its casino is the one Ian Fleming knew when he was posted there during the Second World War, which is where the Casino Royale connection comes from. For surf, Praia do Guincho sits a few kilometres north of Cascais on the exposed Atlantic side, and it is a serious wind and wave beach rather than a swimming one.

Cascais also does very good custard tarts. If you miss them there, our list of the pastéis de nata worth queuing for in Lisbon covers the city.

3. Óbidos

Óbidos is the walled medieval town everyone means when they say Portugal looks like a film set, and it is small enough to see properly in a day. About 3,100 people live inside and around the walls, roughly 80 km (49.7 miles) north of Lisbon on the Silver Coast.

Getting there: the Rápida Verde express bus runs from Campo Grande bus station, on the green and yellow metro lines, and takes 1 hour. There are 26 departures a day Monday to Friday and 16 at weekends and on public holidays, and a single costs €9.45 bought from the driver. The same service continues to Caldas da Rainha.

King Dinis gave Óbidos to Queen Isabel as a wedding present in 1282, and it stayed in the hands of Portuguese queens for centuries afterwards. What you get today is whitewashed houses with blue and yellow trim, one main street, and a complete circuit of walls you can walk. The wall walk has no handrail and a long drop on the inside, so it is not for anyone uneasy with heights or travelling with small children. The castle at the top is now a pousada hotel.

The other Óbidos habit is ginjinha, sour cherry liqueur served in a small chocolate cup, sold from doorways along the main street.

4. Parque Natural da Arrábida

The Arrábida Natural Park has the clearest water within reach of Lisbon, and it now has the strictest access rules of anywhere on this list. It covers roughly 176 km² of limestone ridge and coast on the south side of the Setúbal peninsula, and its beaches, Galapinhos, Galápos, Portinho da Arrábida and Figueirinha, sit under cliffs on a sheltered bay rather than the open Atlantic.

Getting there is the whole problem. Under the Arrábida O2 programme, private cars are banned from the park’s coastal roads from 7 June to 15 September, between 07.00 and 19.00, with fines from €120 to €600. In that window you take the Fertagus train from Roma-Areeiro, Entrecampos or Sete Rios to Setúbal, which runs every 30 minutes and takes about 50 minutes, then a Carris Metropolitana bus: 4474 to Figueirinha or 4470 to Creiro. From the Creiro car park a free shuttle, line 4477, runs on to Galápos and Galapinhos, every 30 minutes, daily through July and August and at weekends from late June. Licensed tour operators are exempt from the car ban and can drive you in.

One more thing to check before you go. The Rua Círio da Arrábida between the Figueirinha tunnel and Galápos has been closed because of rockfall risk, with no reopening announced, so the route between those beaches may not be walkable or drivable when you arrive.

Outside the summer window you can drive the whole coast road, which is one of the good drives in Portugal, with the sea a long way below on your left. The park is also walkable, bikeable and kayakable, and there are wineries on the inland side of the ridge around Azeitão.

5. Setúbal and the Tróia peninsula

Setúbal is the working city at the mouth of the Sado, and it is the launching point for both the Arrábida beaches and the dolphins. It is large enough to have a proper centre and small enough to walk in a morning, and it still gets a fraction of the visitors that Cascais does.

Getting there: Fertagus runs trains to Setúbal from Roma-Areeiro, Entrecampos, Sete Rios and Campolide every 30 minutes, taking around 50 minutes. It is a private operator on the same line as CP, so check which company’s ticket you are buying.

The Mercado do Livramento is the reason to arrive in the morning. It opened in 1876, its current hall is tiled with azulejos, and its fish counters are the strongest argument in the country for eating what was landed that morning. The Avenida Luísa Todi runs the length of the waterfront with parks, fountains and restaurants along it.

From the port you can take a boat out to see the resident bottlenose dolphins of the Sado estuary, one of very few resident populations in Europe. Ferries also cross to the Tróia peninsula, a long sandbar of golden sand and calm water, and Comporta beach further down the same strip is where Lisbon goes in August.

6. Cabo da Roca

Cabo da Roca is the westernmost point of mainland Europe, and standing on it is the point of going. The cape is the seaward end of the Sintra mountains, 140 m (459.3 ft) of cliff dropping into the Atlantic, with a lighthouse, a stone marker carrying a line from Camões and, on most days, a great deal of wind.

Getting there: Carris Metropolitana bus 1624 runs between Portela de Sintra and Cascais by way of Cabo da Roca, about every 30 minutes, with the full end-to-end run taking around 60 minutes. Bus 1253 also serves the cape. There is no train, and the bus is the reason most people pair Cabo da Roca with either Sintra or Cascais rather than making a separate trip of it.

Bring a windproof layer whatever the forecast says. From the cape you can walk to Praia da Ursa, a beach reached by a steep unmarked path down the cliff that is genuinely dangerous in the wet, or take the easier route to Praia da Adraga a little further north. Our guide to the westernmost point of Europe covers the cape itself in detail.

7. Évora

Évora is the one long day trip on this list that is worth the extra half hour, because it is a complete walled Roman and medieval city rather than a single monument. It sits 130 km (80.8 miles) east of Lisbon in the Alentejo, and the whole historic centre is UNESCO-listed.

Getting there: Rede Expressos coaches leave Sete Rios bus station one or two times an hour and take about 1 hour 35 minutes, with tickets around €12.50. CP runs trains from Oriente, also about 1 hour 30, but with only five services on weekdays and three at weekends, so the coach is the more flexible option. Book ahead at weekends.

Inside the walls are a Roman temple with fourteen granite columns still standing in the middle of the city, a 13th-century cathedral you can climb for a view over the Alentejo plain, and the Capela dos Ossos, a chapel lined with the bones of more than 5,000 people, arranged by Franciscan friars in the 16th century when the city’s graveyards filled up.

8. Ericeira

Ericeira is the surf town, and it is the only World Surfing Reserve in Europe. It sits about 50 km (31.1 miles) northwest of Lisbon on the exposed Atlantic coast, and it is a working fishing village with white and blue houses that happens to have competition-grade waves at the end of the street.

Getting there: Carris Metropolitana bus 2801 runs from Campo Grande in Lisbon and takes 45 minutes. From Sintra, bus 1633 takes the same 45 minutes with more than 15 departures on weekdays.

There are dozens of surf schools in Ericeira renting boards and wetsuits and running lessons at every level, and the breaks run from beginner beach sand to the reef at Ribeira d’Ilhas. If you would rather watch than paddle, the beaches immediately north and south of the town are better for lying on than the ones in the centre, which are small and shaded by the cliff for part of the day.

9. Mafra

Mafra is where you go for the single most excessive building in Portugal, and one room in it is worth the trip on its own. The Palácio Nacional de Mafra is an 18th-century baroque palace, basilica and convent built on Brazilian gold, added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2019, and it has 1,200 rooms.

Getting there: Carris Metropolitana buses run from Campo Grande and take about an hour. If you are already in Sintra, the same corridor of buses connects the two.

The library is the room. It runs the length of the upper floor, holds some 36,000 volumes, and is patrolled at night by a resident colony of bats that eat the insects which would otherwise eat the books. The basilica in the centre of the palace has six historic organs built to be played together, and there are two carillons in the towers.

Behind the palace, the Jardim do Cerco is a walled baroque garden of about 8 hectares with an aqueduct running water down from the hills. The Tapada Nacional de Mafra, the former royal hunting park, is next door, and the Iberian Wolf Recovery Centre is nearby if you want to see the animal rather than the palace.

10. Costa da Caparica and Fonte da Telha

Costa da Caparica is Lisbon’s own beach, a single strip of Atlantic sand running roughly 15 km (9.3 miles) south from the Tagus mouth, and it is the easiest sea to reach from the city. The northern end is busy and built up, and the further south you go the emptier it gets.

Getting there: take the ferry from Cais do Sodré to Cacilhas and pick up a bus on the far side, or take a direct Carris Metropolitana bus from Lisbon. The whole trip takes about 45 minutes. In summer a small open train, the Transpraia, runs the length of the beach from Costa da Caparica town to Fonte da Telha, stopping at numbered beaches along the way. It is a seasonal service, so check it is running before you plan a day around it.

Fonte da Telha, at the southern end, sits under the Arriba Fóssil da Costa de Caparica, a protected fossil cliff of layered sediment that goes gold at sunset and has birds of prey nesting along the top of it. There are marked trails through the pine woods behind the cliff.

11. Sesimbra

Sesimbra is a fishing town wedged between a cliff and a sheltered bay, and it is where Lisbon goes to eat fish. It sits on the south side of the Setúbal peninsula, on the far side of the Arrábida ridge from Setúbal itself.

Getting there: Carris Metropolitana buses run from Sete Rios in Lisbon and take about an hour. By car it is a 45-minute drive, over the Ponte 25 de Abril from the western side of Lisbon or the Vasco da Gama bridge from the east.

The seafront is a line of restaurants that all do the same thing well, which is whatever came off the boats that morning, grilled. Above the town is the Castelo de Sesimbra, a Moorish castle taken in the 12th century and rebuilt since, with a view down over the bay. The Fortaleza de Santiago on the seafront is the 17th-century one, built to defend the coast, and it houses the local maritime museum.

12. Queluz

Queluz is the shortest day trip on this list and the one you can do in half a day. The Palácio Nacional de Queluz is a pink rococo summer palace 15 minutes outside Lisbon, built in the second half of the 18th century and often called the Portuguese Versailles.

Getting there: take any Linha de Sintra train from Rossio to Queluz-Belas, about 20 minutes, then walk roughly 15 minutes to the palace. It is on the way to Sintra, so you can do both in one day if you start early.

The interiors are the draw: the Throne Room, the Ambassadors’ Room and the Music Room, all mirrors, gilding and painted ceilings. Outside are formal gardens with statuary, fountains and a tiled canal that was once flooded so the court could be rowed along it.

13. Caldas da Rainha

Caldas da Rainha is an inland spa town with an unusually good daily market and three museums worth an afternoon. It is about 90 km (55.9 miles) north of Lisbon, close enough to Óbidos to combine the two.

Getting there: the same Rápida Verde express bus that serves Óbidos continues to Caldas da Rainha, from Campo Grande, taking about 1 hour 15 minutes. The train takes considerably longer.

Queen Leonor founded the thermal hospital here in the 15th century after stopping to watch locals bathing in the sulphurous springs, and the hospital’s own museum covers both the springs and the history of Portuguese medicine. The Museu José Malhoa holds the work of the naturalist painter, the Museu de Cerâmica covers the town’s pottery tradition, including the famous and rude Bordallo Pinheiro pieces, and the Museu do Ciclismo is free.

14. Torres Vedras

Torres Vedras is a day trip for military history, and the thing to understand about it is not medieval. The Lines of Torres Vedras were a network of forts, earthworks and signal stations built in secret across the hills north of Lisbon in 1809 and 1810, on Wellington’s orders, to stop Napoleon’s army reaching the capital. They worked, and the French turned back without attacking.

Getting there: Carris Metropolitana buses run from Campo Grande and take about an hour.

The Museu Municipal Leonel Trindade in the town covers the Lines and their signalling system, which relayed messages the length of the defences in minutes. The Castelo de Torres Vedras sits on the hill above with the Igreja de Santa Maria do Castelo inside its walls. The surrounding region is one of Portugal’s larger wine areas, and the town’s Carnival is the biggest in the country.

15. Alcácer do Sal

Alcácer do Sal is a white town on a river with a castle on the hill and a pod of dolphins in the estuary below it. It sits about 90 km (55.9 miles) south of Lisbon on the left bank of the Sado, and it is the quietest destination on this page.

Getting there: Rede Expressos coaches run from Sete Rios and take about 1 hour 15 minutes.

The castle has been fortified since the Iron Age and holds a museum with subterranean galleries showing the layers underneath. The waterfront below is a row of cafés and restaurants looking across the river. Alcácer sits in Europe’s main pine nut producing area, and pine nuts and honey run through the local cakes; the rice-growing history is covered in the Museu do Arroz, in a converted husking factory with a restaurant attached. In summer there are river cruises down the Sado to the Tróia beaches.

Not a day trip: Belém

Belém is not a day trip from Lisbon, it is a district of it, about 6 km (3.7 miles) west of the centre and 20 minutes on tram 15E. It gets listed as a day trip constantly and it is worth half a day, so here is what is in it: the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, built during the age of exploration as a place for sailors to pray before leaving, with a monument to Luís de Camões inside; the Torre de Belém standing in the river; the Padrão dos Descobrimentos; and the pastry shop that has been making the original custard tart since 1837.

Both the monastery and the tower have long queues and both reward a guide, because the Manueline carving is a coded record of the voyages and it means nothing without someone to read it. Consider a guided tour of the Belém area if you want the buildings explained rather than photographed.

Where to stay in Lisbon for day trips

Where you stay in Lisbon decides how easy these day trips are, and the answer is to sleep near a station rather than near a sight. Rossio and Restauradores put you on the Sintra line; Cais do Sodré puts you on the Cascais line and the Caparica ferry; Saldanha, Entrecampos and Campo Grande put you on the metro line that reaches the bus terminals for Óbidos, Ericeira, Mafra and Torres Vedras. Anywhere in Baixa, Chiado or Avenida works for all three.

Compare places to stay in Lisbon on that basis. For a pool after a day on the road, we have a list of hotels in Lisbon city centre with pools, and our Portugal trip guide covers the rest of the country if you are building a longer route. If you are arriving from elsewhere in Europe, compare train and coach fares into Lisbon before you fix your dates.

Two days in the city is enough for most people, which is the argument our account of three days walking Lisbon makes at some length.

Don’t forget travel insurance

Travel insurance covers what a day of trains, buses and cliff paths can do to a trip: cancellation, illness or injury abroad, and sometimes stolen or broken electronics. I make sure I am covered on every trip.

SafetyWing offers flexible plans you can sign up for when you are already travelling, which most policies do not allow. They were the first travel insurer to cover COVID, and when I caught it they reimbursed my expenses without an argument.

Day trips from Lisbon FAQ

What is the best day trip from Lisbon?

Sintra is the day trip to take if you take only one, because the palaces, the Moorish castle and the gardens are all in one valley 40 minutes from Rossio station. Óbidos is the pick if you would rather have one complete town than four monuments, and Arrábida if you want the water.

Can you do day trips from Lisbon without a car?

You can reach 13 of the 15 places on this page without a car, using CP and Fertagus trains and Carris Metropolitana buses. The two that are awkward are the Arrábida beaches, which need a train, a bus and a seasonal shuttle, and Alcácer do Sal, which has one coach route and few onward connections.

How far is Sintra from Lisbon?

Sintra is 29 km (18 miles) northwest of Lisbon, and the train from Rossio takes 40 minutes and runs about every 20 minutes. Driving takes about the same time and then costs you an hour looking for parking.

Is Óbidos worth a day trip from Lisbon?

Óbidos is worth a day trip if you go early or stay late. The walled town is small, and between about 11am and 4pm it fills with coach groups. The Rápida Verde bus from Campo Grande takes an hour and costs €9.45, so an early departure is easy to arrange.

Which day trips from Lisbon are best for beaches?

Cascais is the easiest beach day by train, Costa da Caparica has the most sand, and Arrábida has the clearest and calmest water. Arrábida is also the only one with a car ban in summer, so check the shuttle timetable before you go.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 5 tips below come from re-checking every route, fare and access rule on this page in September 2026, and none of them appears on the official tourist pages.

1. Check the Arrábida car ban before you plan a beach day. Private cars are barred from the park’s coastal roads from 7 June to 15 September, 07.00 to 19.00, with fines of €120 to €600. The free 4477 shuttle from the Creiro car park is the way in, running every 30 minutes and daily through July and August.
2. Ignore any guide that names Scotturb, Vimeca or Mafrense. The Lisbon region’s buses were reorganised into Carris Metropolitana with four-digit route numbers, and the old operator names are gone from the stops, the apps and the timetables.
3. Buy the Óbidos bus ticket from the driver and take an early departure. The Rápida Verde runs 26 times a day on weekdays from Campo Grande, costs €9.45 and takes an hour, so leaving before the coach groups arrive costs nothing but an alarm.
4. Take the Cabo da Roca bus as a leg of a Sintra or Cascais day, not as its own trip. Route 1624 runs between the two roughly every 30 minutes and stops at the cape, so the cape is 40 minutes from either end rather than a separate journey out of Lisbon.
5. Book the Évora train days ahead, or take the coach. CP runs only five services from Oriente on weekdays and three at weekends, and they fill up. Rede Expressos leaves Sete Rios one or two times an hour for about €12.50 and takes the same 90 minutes.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, who has travelled Portugal from Lisbon and Sintra to Cascais, Porto and the Douro. The team covers Portugal for independent travellers, including the trains, buses, hotels and guided tours worth booking, and re-checks the routes, fares and access rules on this page against the operators when they change.