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I have been to Portugal six times and never once thought hard about how to get from one place to another. You pick up a rental car at the airport, or buy a train ticket the night before, and you go. That was the entire plan, every time. Now I am working out getting around Portugal with kids, and the same country looks like a completely different problem. Lochlan is twenty months old. He travels with a car seat, a stroller, and a nap schedule that does not negotiate.
Danny and I are planning this trip for next spring. I assumed the hard part would be picking where to stay. It is not. It is transportation, because Portugal is a country of hills, cobblestones, narrow one-way streets, and a train system that is genuinely good but does not go everywhere I want to take him. So I sat down and worked it out properly.
The short version
Rent a car for the Algarve and for Madeira. Take the train for Lisbon to Sintra, Lisbon to Porto, and Lisbon down to the Algarve. Do NOT rent a car for the Lisbon part of the trip, it will sit in a garage costing you money while you walk and ride the metro anyway. Bring your own car seat from home instead of renting one. And build every driving day around one nap in the car instead of pretending you will get two.
That is the plan. The rest of this is why.
Where I’d rent a car, and where I’d refuse to
Portugal is not a country where you need a car the whole time, and not one where you can skip a car entirely. It is both, in different places.
A car earns its keep in the Algarve. The beaches I love there are not on a bus route in any useful way, and the good ones require a walk down from a parking area at the top of a cliff. When I wrote my Lagos travel guide I was getting between coves on foot and by boat, which worked fine when it was just Danny and me with a backpack. With a stroller it does not. The car means naptime happens on the way to the next cove, and that one fact reorganizes the whole day in our favor.
Madeira is the same answer, more strongly. Everything worth seeing is spread around the island and the drives between them are short but steep, with tunnels and switchbacks. My Madeira travel guide says to rent a car and I would say it louder now. The buses are cheap, but the timetables are built for people who live there, not for people trying to get a napping toddler back to Funchal.
Lisbon is where I would hand the keys back. The streets in Alfama and Bairro Alto are narrow, one-way and often cobbled, and parking is expensive and a real hassle. I have walked that city for days at a time. A car there is a liability you pay for daily. Same answer for Porto.
So the shape of it is: fly in, no car for Lisbon, train out to the day trips, pick up a car heading south, drop it to fly to Madeira, pick up another there. I go through how that fits together day by day in our 10-day Portugal itinerary with kids.
The car seat question, which is really the whole post
Portuguese law is stricter than I expected, and I am glad I looked it up instead of assuming. Children under 12, or under 135 cm, whichever comes first, must be in an appropriate restraint in a private car, rental cars included. Under three means a proper rear-facing or forward-facing seat, not a booster and not a belt. The fine runs €120 to €600 per child.
Here is the part that surprised me. Taxis are exempt. A child aged three or over can legally ride in a Portuguese taxi on the adult seatbelt, and a child under three can ride unrestrained if no seat is available, as long as they are in the back. Uber and Bolt fall under the same exemption. That is a legal exemption, not a safety recommendation, and I am not comfortable with it. The law will let you put Lochlan in a car with no seat. I am not going to.
Which leaves renting a seat or bringing your own. Rentals run about €6 to €10 per day, so maybe €60 to €100 for the stretch where we have a car. That is not the problem. The problem is you have no idea what you are getting until you are in a parking garage at Faro with an overtired kid.
So I am bringing ours. It costs an airline fee each way and it is one more thing to carry through two airports, and I will complain about it at some point. But I know the seat, I know it is installed right because I installed it, and it covers the airport transfer on both ends. Most airlines check a car seat free with your baggage allowance, so check before you assume the fee.
🛒 A few things I’m packing for this
- A lightweight travel car seat, because the everyday one in our car weighs as much as Lochlan does
- A car seat travel bag with backpack straps, which is the single thing I’d tell anyone to buy first
- A compact-fold travel stroller that goes in an overhead bin and handles a cobblestone street
- A toddler carrier backpack for Sintra and anywhere with stairs
- Window sun shades, since the whole nap-in-the-car plan depends on the car being dark
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Trains, and where they actually work
Portugal’s trains are run by CP, Comboios de Portugal, and they are the part of this that gets easier with a toddler rather than harder. No car seat. Room to stand up. A window. Lochlan can be a person on a train in a way he cannot be in a car seat for three hours.
The fares help. On CP, children up to and including three travel free as long as they are not taking up a seat, and a seat for a child under four is half price. Ages four to twelve are half price. So Lochlan is free.
The routes I would actually use:
- Lisbon to Sintra. About 40 minutes from Rossio station, running frequently. This is the one that makes the Sintra day trip work without a car, and it drops you in town instead of in a queue for parking.
- Lisbon to Cascais. The suburban line along the water out of Cais do Sodré. Flat, easy, and the ride itself is nice.
- Lisbon to Porto. Around three hours city center to city center. Alfa Pendular is the fast one with a café car and power outlets. Intercidades stops more often and costs less.
- Lisbon to the Algarve. There is a line south to Faro and on to Lagos. It is long, so this is the one I am still arguing with myself about versus a short flight.
Book Alfa Pendular and Intercidades ahead on cp.pt or the CP app. Promotional fares open well in advance and can run up to 50% off, and a reserved seat means you are not standing in a vestibule with a stroller. Regional trains you can buy same day.
The honest caveat: station access is not uniformly step-free. Some have lifts, some have stairs and a very old ramp, and you will not know in advance. A stroller you can fold with one hand matters more than one with good suspension.
Lisbon without a car
The metro is the backbone and it is clean, cheap and fast. Children under four ride free on the metro, buses, trams and funiculars. Get a rechargeable Navegante card at any metro station, which is cheaper than single tickets and faster than fumbling for coins with a kid on your hip.
What my Lisbon travel guide does not tell you, because I did not need to know it then, is that the hills are the real transportation story. The city is built on seven of them. Walking up and down them is listed as an activity in half the guides, including mine. With a stroller it is work.
So I would use the vertical shortcuts on purpose. The Santa Justa Elevator from Baixa up to Chiado. The Glória and Bica funiculars, short rides that save a real climb. And the metro, which is often the flattest route between two points even when the map makes walking look shorter. More of the on-the-ground stuff is in my top 10 things to do in Lisbon and the Lisbon restaurants post.
What I’d skip: Tram 28 with a stroller
I love Tram 28. It is a beautiful ride through Graça and Alfama on an old wooden tram and I have done it more than once. I would not do it with a stroller and a toddler, and I want to say so plainly, because every Lisbon list on the internet puts it near the top.
The cars are small and they fill completely. By the second or third stop people are standing pressed together, and there is nowhere for a folded stroller to go. Drivers often cannot break a €20 note. If you board mid-route in high season you may simply not get on, twice in a row, with a kid who is done.
If you want the ride, board at the first stop at Praça Martim Moniz, early, with a carrier instead of a stroller, and go for the ride rather than to see anything in particular. Otherwise skip it without guilt. Tram 15 out to Belém is modern, roomier, and goes somewhere you want to be.
The Algarve, where a car stops being optional
Faro airport to wherever you are staying is a car ride, and once you have the car the Algarve opens up. The distances are short. Lagos to Albufeira is well under an hour on the A22. You can be at a different beach every morning and back for a nap.
Two practical notes. The good beaches usually mean a staircase down a cliff, so the stroller stays in the trunk and the carrier comes out, and my things to do in Lagos post is full of places where that is true. And parking near the popular beaches in summer is its own event, which is one reason I am aiming for May instead. I get into that in the best time to visit Portugal with kids.
Albufeira is flatter and more built up, with easier pavements and more places where a stroller is fine, so read the Albufeira guide alongside the Lagos one before you pick a base. Where you sleep changes how much you drive, which is the whole argument of where to stay in Portugal with kids.
Tolls, and the transponder I’d just pay for
Portuguese motorways are tolled, and on some, including the A22 across the Algarve, there are no booths at all. Overhead scanners read your plate and you settle up afterwards, which in a foreign rental car means a post office, a five day window, and a lot of regret.
Rent the Via Verde transponder from the rental company. It is a few euros a day, it clips to the windscreen, and the tolls go straight onto the card on file. I have watched people try to save that money and then spend an evening of their holiday working out what they owe.
The toll roads are in good condition and well lit. The toll-free N and EN roads are the pretty ones, and also often narrow, winding and dark. In daylight they are the nicer drive. After dark with a tired kid, pay for the motorway.
If you want to see what all of this adds up to, I broke the numbers down in what I’m budgeting for our family trip.
Everything in this post is in my Portugal for Families guide too, if you would rather have it in one place than in eleven open tabs. It is a 13-page PDF with the full 10-day itinerary and a “with kids” section for every stop, Lisbon through Madeira.
Sintra is a transportation problem disguised as a day trip
Sintra deserves its own warning. The train gets you to the town easily, and the town is not where the palaces are. Pena Palace and the Moorish Castle sit up a long, steep hill above it, and the walk through the woods is genuinely lovely and genuinely long.
I have climbed to Pena three times without a stroller and I have no idea yet how we are doing it with one. The current plan is the 434 bus, which loops from the station up past the palaces and back, and a carrier instead of the stroller. Everything I know about the town is in the Sintra and Óbidos guide and the things to do post. I would read both and then cut the list in half.
Cascais is the easy one by comparison. Flat, on the water, reachable by train, and a good recovery day after Sintra. The Cascais guide has the details. For somewhere quieter, Ericeira is up the coast and is a car trip rather than a train one.
How I’m planning to break up the driving days
This is the part no transportation guide mentions, and the part that will decide whether this trip is good or hard.
Lochlan naps once a day, for somewhere between an hour and two. That is a driving window and it is the only reliable one. So every drive longer than about 40 minutes goes on the schedule at naptime, and nothing we would be sad to miss gets scheduled on either side of it. One transfer day per leg, not two.
I also have an autoimmune disease, so my own rest is not optional, and I have learned not to plan a day that only works if everyone is at their best. If we lose an afternoon, the plan should still hold. I wrote more about the pacing in how many days in Portugal with kids, and about whether the country is the right call at all in is Portugal good for families.
Questions I get about getting around Portugal with kids
Do you need a car in Portugal with kids?
For the Algarve and for Madeira, yes. For Lisbon, Porto, Sintra and Cascais, no, and a car there is a cost and a hassle rather than a help. The trip that works is a mix, with the car picked up when you leave the cities.
Do taxis and Ubers in Portugal have car seats?
Generally no, and legally they do not have to. Taxis and rideshares are exempt from the car seat requirement in Portugal. There are private transfer companies that will send a car with a seat fitted if you book ahead, and for an airport transfer that is worth the money.
Do kids travel free on trains in Portugal?
Children up to and including three years old travel free on CP trains as long as they are not occupying their own seat. If you want a seat for a child under four, it is half price. Ages four to twelve are half price.
Can you take a stroller on Lisbon trams and the metro?
On the metro and the modern trams like the 15 to Belém, yes. On the old small trams like the 28 it is a real struggle and I would not plan on it.
Is it hard to drive in Portugal?
The motorways are easy and in good condition. The old town centers are the hard part, where streets are narrow, one-way, often cobbled, and sometimes not really wide enough for the car you rented. Park on the edge and walk in.
Should I bring my own car seat or rent one?
Bring your own if you can manage it. Rentals run about €6 to €10 a day, quality and availability are unpredictable, and you cannot inspect one until you are standing at the rental desk. Your own seat also covers the airport transfer at both ends.
Where I’ve landed
Trains in the north, a car in the south, our own seat in the hold, one nap-shaped driving window a day. I will find out next spring how much of that survives contact with an actual toddler, and I will come back and tell you which parts I got wrong.
If you are planning your own version of this, the rest of the Portugal posts are all here. Pull up a chair.
