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When I wrote about Sintra with kids last week I said that if we wanted the coast, we would give it its own day and go to Cascais. I have been thinking about that sentence ever since, because the more I plan this trip, the more I think Cascais is the day that saves it.
Every other stop I have mapped out so far involves a hill, a staircase, or a timed entry slot. Cascais with kids is the opposite. It is flat. It is thirty-three minutes from Lisbon on a train that runs along the water. There is nothing you have to book, nothing you have to climb, and nothing that closes at five and ruins the plan.
I have been four times. Never with Lochlan, who is twenty months old and about thirty pounds, the number I now use for everything. This is what I would do differently.
The short version
Take the Cascais line from Cais do Sodré to the end. Bring the stroller, because this is the one place in Portugal where I would. Spend the morning on Praia da Rainha or Praia da Conceição, both of which are a few minutes from the station and both of which are calm. Walk the Paredão as far as he lasts. Eat at noon. Spend the afternoon in Parque Marechal Carmona, which has playgrounds and peacocks and is the best thing in Cascais that nobody puts on a list. Skip Guincho. Go home when you want, because trains leave every twenty minutes.
The train is the whole reason this works
Cais do Sodré, Cascais line, all the way to the terminus. Thirty-three minutes on the express trains that run between seven and nine in the morning, about forty on the ones that stop everywhere. Midday it is every twenty minutes, peak it is every twelve.
Fares are zone-based so I am not going to quote you a number that will be wrong by the time you read this. You need a Navegante occasional card, which is fifty cents once and then reloadable, and the Lisboa Card covers the round trip if you already have one. Check cp.pt before you go.
Here is the part I had forgotten until I looked at a map again with a toddler in mind. From about Algés onward the track runs right along the water. Carcavelos at twenty-seven minutes, São Pedro do Estoril at thirty, Estoril at thirty-four. For twenty minutes of that ride there is ocean out the left-hand window the whole way. A train with a view and no transfers is the easiest thing I will ask of him on this entire trip.
I would not drive. Not because the parking is as bad as Sintra, but because the train is better and because getting a car seat in and out twice is a cost with no benefit here. More on all of that in getting around Portugal with a toddler.
Bring the stroller. I mean it.
I have spent two posts now telling people to leave the stroller behind. Lisbon is calçada and hills. Sintra is a mountain. Cascais is neither.
The old town is pedestrian and mostly level, laid with stone mosaic pavement that is prettier than it is practical but perfectly rollable. The seafront is flat. And then there is the Paredão, which is the actual answer to the stroller question: a wide, flat promenade running about three kilometres from Praia da Conceição in Cascais to Praia da Azarujinha in Estoril, right along the sea walls. Twenty-five minutes at an adult pace. Considerably more than that with anyone who wants to stop and look at every single boat.
It passes Conceição, Duquesa, Moitas, Tamariz, Poça and Azarujinha, with cafés the whole length of it and a seawater swimming pool partway along. You can turn around anywhere. There is a train station at both ends, so if the afternoon collapses in Estoril you are back in Cascais in four minutes or in Lisbon in half an hour.
That is the thing I cannot overstate. On this walk, quitting is easy. Nowhere else on our itinerary is quitting easy.
Which beach, and why not the famous one
Praia da Rainha is the one I would head for first. It is a small sandy cove right below the town, hemmed in by cliffs and limestone, and the currents do not really reach it, so the water is calm. There are cafés on the waterfront above it. It is tiny, which is a drawback in August and a feature with a toddler, because you can see all of it from wherever you put your bag down.
Praia da Conceição and Praia da Duquesa are the next ones over, east of the centre, bigger and also calm, and they are the start of the Paredão. Any of the three is a few minutes from the station.
Carcavelos, twenty-seven minutes up the line, is the big famous one and it is where the surf is. That is exactly why I would not get off there with him. Big beach, big waves, and a long walk from the station in the sun.
What I would skip: Praia do Guincho
Guincho is the most beautiful beach in the area and I am not taking a twenty-month-old there.
It sits northwest of town at the foot of the Sintra hills, and the entire reason people love it is the wind. Surfers, windsurfers and kitesurfers go there because the Atlantic comes in hard and the air never stops moving. Fine white sand and dunes, which in that wind means sand in the eyes, sand in the snacks, and sand in every fold of a child who can now lie down wherever he likes.
It is also a drive or a taxi, not a walk, so you are committing to it. Praia da Crismina just south is the same. If Danny wants a surf morning, he can take one on his own and I will be on the Paredão with a coffee.
The other thing I would downgrade rather than skip is Boca do Inferno, the sea arch west of town where the water surges into a hole in the sandstone. It is genuinely worth seeing and it takes about five minutes. It is also an unfenced cliff edge in places, and the viewing areas are exactly the kind of spot where a toddler wants to be put down. Five minutes, held, then leave. It is not an afternoon.
Parque Marechal Carmona is the real answer
If you take one thing from this post, take this one. Everybody writes about the palaces and the museums and the cliff, and nobody tells you that Cascais has a large shaded town park with multiple playgrounds for different ages, ponds, fountains, and peacocks and roosters and ducks wandering around in it.
A twenty-month-old does not care about a lighthouse museum. A twenty-month-old cares, deeply and completely, about a duck. There is a palace in the park too, the Palácio Condes de Castro Guimarães, if one adult wants twenty minutes inside while the other one does laps with the stroller.
This is where our afternoon goes. Not because it is the most interesting thing in Cascais for me, but because it is the thing that buys us the rest of the day. He runs, we sit, nobody is carried, and we are ten minutes from the station when it ends.
The old town, the marina, and how much history to attempt
The historic centre is small and walkable and genuinely lovely to be in, with the Fortaleza da Nossa Senhora da Luz and a tangle of restaurants and shops. The Mercado da Vila has been going since 1952 and what is in it changes by the day of the week, so check before you count on it.
Then there is the museum quarter, which is mostly restored noble houses: Casa de Santa Maria, Casa Sommer, which is also the municipal library across three floors, Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, and the Conde Castro Guimarães museum. Next to Casa de Santa Maria is the Santa Marta lighthouse, which still works and is also a museum, with the beacon and the lens and a film about Portuguese lighthouses.
I used to do several of these in a day. Now I would pick one, and I would pick the lighthouse, because it is short, it is outside as much as inside, and a striped tower by the water is the one piece of history on this list that a small child might actually look at.
The Cidadela is the other option. King Luís turned the governor’s house inside the fort into a summer home in the late 1800s, which is the decision that turned Cascais from a fishing town into a resort, and it later became the summer residence of the President. It is a courtyard you can walk into, which makes it easier than it sounds. I wrote about all of these in more detail in top 10 things to do in Cascais and the Cascais travel guide, back when I had the whole day to spend on them.
This is all in the guide too
The full version of this day, with the Estoril variation and the two-kid version and a map of where the playgrounds actually are, is in my Portugal for Families guide. It is a thirteen-page PDF with the whole ten-day itinerary and a section written for small children at every stop. If you would rather have it in one place than in eleven open tabs, it is there.
Where the nap goes
Lochlan naps around one. In Sintra that is the hour that wrecks the day, because one in the afternoon is when the tour buses land and the queues double.
Cascais does not have that problem, and it is the first stop on this trip where I am not building the entire day around a sleep window. He can nap in the stroller on the Paredão. He can nap on the train in either direction. If he skips it, we go to the park instead of a museum and the day is still fine. There is no timed entry to miss and no hill to climb while he screams.
That is why I keep calling this the easy day. Not because there is more to do, but because almost nothing here can go wrong in a way that costs you the afternoon.
Eating with a toddler, and the slipper lobster problem
Cascais is a seafood town. Octopus, prawns, oysters, mussels, and slipper lobsters, which are the local specialty and take both hands and a lot of patience. Beautiful food. Not a one-handed lunch.
So I would do it in the right order. Seafood once, early, somewhere with outdoor tables where a dropped fork is not a crisis. And then for the actual day-to-day eating, prego, which is a steak sandwich that Portuguese people will cheerfully order after a full seafood meal as though it were dessert. It is bread and beef and it arrives fast. Carne de porco à alentejana, the pork and clam dish, is the other one worth getting.
I would eat at noon rather than one, for the same reason I would anywhere. My picks are in best restaurants in Cascais.
A few things I use for this
🛒 What goes in the bag for a Cascais day
- A pop-up beach sun shelter, because the coves have cliffs but not much shade
- Reusable swim diapers, which I wish I had bought before our first beach day anywhere
- Toddler water shoes for the rocks at the edges of the smaller beaches
- A small silicone sand toy set that packs flat and does not rust
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The rest of it, including what I decided to leave at home, is in what I am packing for Portugal with a toddler.
Day trip, or base here instead of Lisbon?
This is the question I have gone back and forth on more than any other part of the trip.
Cascais is a half hour from Lisbon and has a real case for being the base instead of the day trip. It is flatter than Lisbon. It is on the water. Estoril is less than three miles away, the Sintra line is reachable, and you are sleeping somewhere quiet with a beach at the end of the street. If I were doing this trip with a newborn I think I would base here and take the train into Lisbon on the two days I wanted a city.
What is stopping me is that Lisbon is where most of what we want to see is, and commuting forty minutes each way with a toddler to see it undoes the advantage. For a first trip I would stay in Lisbon and come out here for a day, and I would book the historic centre if we ever did stay, which is what I said in the Cascais travel guide and still think. The full reasoning is in where to stay in Portugal with kids.
Questions I get about Cascais with kids
Is Cascais worth visiting with kids?
It is the stop I would protect if we had to cut something. Flat streets, calm beaches a few minutes from the station, a park with playgrounds and peacocks, and a train every twenty minutes. For a family travelling with a small child it is easier than Lisbon and much easier than Sintra, and easy is worth a lot on day five.
How do you get from Lisbon to Cascais with a toddler?
The Cascais line from Cais do Sodré, to the final stop. Thirty-three to forty minutes depending on whether you catch an express, every twelve to twenty minutes through the day. You need a Navegante occasional card, which costs fifty cents, and fares are zone-based so check cp.pt. The track runs along the ocean for most of the second half.
Is Cascais stroller friendly?
Yes, and it is the only place on our itinerary I would say that about without hedging. The old town is pedestrian and level, the seafront is flat, and the Paredão promenade to Estoril is three kilometres of wide flat path with cafés and a train station at each end. The stone mosaic pavement in the centre rattles, but it rolls.
Which beach in Cascais is best for small children?
Praia da Rainha, for the calm water and because it is small enough to see all of at once. Praia da Conceição and Praia da Duquesa are the larger calm alternatives and both sit at the Cascais end of the Paredão. I would avoid Guincho and Crismina with a toddler, and Carcavelos if the surf is up.
Is one day in Cascais enough?
One day covers a beach morning, a long lunch and the park, which is honestly the best version of Cascais with a toddler. Two days lets you add the lighthouse, Boca do Inferno and the walk to Estoril without rushing. Our 10-day plan gives it one, and I keep being tempted to make it two. I worked through the arithmetic in how many days in Portugal with kids.
Can you do Sintra and Cascais in the same day?
You can and I would not. They connect by bus, and on paper a morning of palaces and an afternoon by the sea sounds wonderful. In practice it is two long transit legs and one very tired child, and you end up doing both of them badly. Give them separate days. That is the single firmest opinion I have about our 10-day Portugal itinerary with kids.
One more thing I have changed my mind about
The first time I came to Cascais I treated it as the filler day, the thing you do when you have run out of palaces. Planning it with a toddler has turned it into the day I am looking forward to most, and I do not think that is a compromise. I think I was just wrong about it before.
If you have done Cascais with a small child and I have missed something, tell me. I would rather know now.
We are aiming for May, for the same reasons I gave in the best time to visit Portugal with kids. More of what I am working out: is Portugal good for families, what I am budgeting for our family trip, Lisbon with kids, and everything else in the Portugal archive.
