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I have written a lot of Portugal itineraries over the years, and all of them were built for two adults who did not mind walking fifteen miles a day. This is the first Portugal itinerary with kids I have ever had to plan, and it is for us.
Lochlan is twenty months old. Danny and I have been going back and forth on this trip since the spring, and what finally made it click was giving up on the version where we see everything. We are seeing less of Portugal than I ever have, in more days than I ever took. Three stops in ten nights. That is the whole trick.
Here is the actual plan, as it stands in my notebook right now.
The short version
Ten nights, three hotels. Three nights in Lisbon, four in Cascais with a day trip to Sintra, three in Lagos. We fly into Lisbon and out of Faro so we are not backtracking. No rental car for the first week, then we pick one up to drive south.
That is it. No Porto, no Óbidos, no Madeira. If you have been reading my Portugal posts for a while you will notice this leaves out some of my favorite places in the country, and I will get to why.
Days 1 to 3: Lisbon, and staying somewhere flat
We land in the morning, which means day one is a write-off and I have stopped pretending otherwise. The plan for the first afternoon is a park and an early dinner and nothing else.
We are staying in Baixa. This is a change for me. In my Lisbon travel guide I pointed people toward Alfama for the boutique hotels, and Alfama is still the part of Lisbon I love most. It is also essentially a staircase with buildings attached. Baixa and Chiado are flat, they sit right on the metro, and you can walk to a surprising amount without climbing anything.
Day 2 is Belém. It is a tram or a bus ride west along the river and it is the flattest, most stroller-reasonable part of the city. Jerónimos Monastery, the Belém Tower from the outside, the big open riverfront where a toddler can run in a straight line for as long as he wants. Pastéis de Belém is there, and the custard tarts come out warm.
Day 3 is the Tile Museum and the squares. The National Tile Museum is quiet, indoor, and almost empty compared to everything else, which makes it the single most underrated thing on my list of things to do in Lisbon for this age. Then Praça do Comércio and Rossio Square in the late afternoon, because they are flat and open and there are pigeons, which as far as I can tell is the entire itinerary a toddler actually wants.
We are eating lunch out and dinner in. Almost every place on my Lisbon restaurants list is easier at one in the afternoon than at nine at night, and nobody in Portugal blinks at a child at a lunch table.
Two things I have cut from my own old Lisbon routine. Tram 28, which is standing room only and packed and a well-known pickpocket route, and which I would not board holding a child. And the miradouros, the hilltop viewpoints, which are the best part of Lisbon and all require going up a hill to reach. We will get one of them, probably São Pedro de Alcântara because the Glória funicular goes to it, and I have let go of the rest.
Day 4: the train to Cascais
This is a short day on purpose. The train from Cais do Sodré runs along the water the whole way and takes about forty minutes, and you can see the ocean out the window for most of it. It cost us a couple of euros each the last time I did it.
We check in, we find the grocery store, we go to the beach. That is the day.
I have moved Cascais from a day and a half to four nights, which is the biggest single change between this itinerary and every other Portugal trip I have taken. Everything in my Cascais travel guide still holds: you can see most of the town on foot, the center is mostly flat, and the beaches in town are small and sheltered rather than big and windy. Praia da Rainha and Praia da Ribeira are a short walk from the old center. The restaurants in Cascais are the kind of places where a high chair appears without you asking.
We are renting an apartment here rather than a hotel room, specifically so I can cook. I have an autoimmune disease and ten days of restaurant food has a cost I feel for weeks afterward, so having a kitchen for the middle stretch of the trip is not a nice-to-have for me. It is the thing that makes the trip possible.
Day 5: Sintra, in one morning, and only one palace
Sintra is a thirty minute drive or a bus ride from Cascais, which is a much better arrangement than coming out from Lisbon and back.
We are going up early, taking the 434 bus from the station rather than walking, doing Pena Palace, and coming back down before lunch. One palace. That is the whole day.
In my Sintra and Óbidos travel guide I wrote that the attractions sit on the slopes of the mountains and are accessible by foot. That is true and it undersells it considerably. I have climbed up to Pena three times and I have never once done it with a stroller, and I still do not have a confident answer for how that goes. The plan is a carrier and no stroller at all for this day.
The rest of what I would normally insist on, the Moorish castle walls and Quinta da Regaleira with its tunnels and wells, is off the list. Those are the two best things to do in Sintra and they are both built around unprotected drops and dark passages. We will do them when he is six and I will be glad to have waited.
Days 6 and 7: nothing
I am writing these two days into the itinerary deliberately, because every trip I have ever planned fell apart at exactly this point and I used to blame the destination.
Beach in the morning, apartment in the afternoon, dinner early. Maybe the Boca do Inferno walk, which is flat and right along the coast from town. Maybe the marina. If the jet lag is still bad, and six hours ahead of Chicago it probably will be, these are the days that absorb it.
If you take one thing from this Portugal itinerary with kids, make it this. Two empty days in the middle is not wasted time. It is the reason the rest of the trip works.
Day 8: south to Lagos
We pick up the car in Cascais and drive to Lagos, which is somewhere around three hours on the motorway. This is the longest drive of the trip and it is the only one, which was the whole point of flying out of Faro.
Portuguese law requires a proper car seat for any child under three, and rental agencies charge roughly six to ten euros a day for one. We are bringing our own and checking it, because I would rather carry it through two airports than find out at the counter that the one they have is not the one I want.
Everything else I have learned about the country is also in my Portugal for Families guide, if you would rather have it in one place than keep fourteen tabs open. It is a 13-page PDF with this full 10-day itinerary laid out properly and a “with kids” section for every stop, Lisbon through Sintra and Óbidos, Cascais, Ericeira, Lagos, Albufeira and Madeira.
Days 9 and 10: Lagos
Lagos is the Algarve town I would pick for this, and I thought hard about it. Albufeira is the bigger name and the old town end of it is genuinely family-friendly, as I said in my Albufeira travel guide, but the Strip is a different world and I do not want to be steering a stroller around it at nine at night. Lagos is smaller and the whole town is walkable.
The beach choice matters more than the town choice. Praia do Camilo, which I called one of the best things to do in Lagos, is at the bottom of a long wooden staircase down the cliff. It is as beautiful as anywhere in Europe and I am not carrying a toddler, a cooler and a beach bag down two hundred steps to get to it. Meia Praia is the opposite: flat, wide, long, walkable from town. That is where we will be.
The restaurants in Lagos are the easiest of the trip. Grilled fish, rice, bread, and kitchens that are used to families.
Then we drive an hour to Faro and fly home.
What I cut, and why
Óbidos. The thing you go for is walking the top of the medieval walls, and those walls have no railing on either side. I was uneasy up there in my twenties. It is a sixty mile drive north from Sintra and without the walls it is a gate and a bottle of ginjinha.
Porto. It is three hours north of Lisbon and it is every bit as hilly. Adding it would mean a fourth hotel and two more travel days, which is the exact arithmetic that ruins trips like this.
Madeira. A separate flight to a mountainous island where the entire appeal is walking. My Madeira travel guide is one of my favorite things I have written and I would love to go back, but it is its own trip.
Ericeira. This one I am actually sad about. Ericeira is a surf town up the coast and it would fit beautifully between Sintra and the Algarve, except that fitting it in means another move. Next time.
How I would change this for older kids
If Lochlan were six instead of twenty months, I would put Sintra back to a full two days and add Quinta da Regaleira and the Moorish castle, swap two of the Cascais days for Ericeira, and keep Óbidos for the walls. Nine or ten is probably the age where Madeira becomes the better trip than the mainland.
The hills stop being the problem the moment nobody has to be carried. Almost everything I have cut here is cut for that one reason.
A few things I am packing for this
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🛒 What is going in the bag
- A travel stroller with bigger wheels, because small hard wheels and Lisbon’s polished stone sidewalks do not get along
- A toddler carrier, which is the only thing going up to Pena Palace
- A lightweight travel car seat for the drive south
- A wide-brim sun hat, because the Algarve afternoon sun is serious
Questions I get about a Portugal itinerary with kids
Is ten days enough for Portugal with kids?
Ten days is enough for three places done properly, which is the right shape for a trip with a small child. It is not enough to add Porto or Madeira without cutting something else, and I would rather cut than rush.
Should I fly into Lisbon and out of Faro?
Yes, if the fare is anywhere close. It saves you a three hour drive back north at the end of the trip, on the day when everyone is most tired. Open-jaw tickets are usually only slightly more than a round trip and it buys you most of a day.
Do I need a rental car for this itinerary?
Not for the first week. The train handles Lisbon to Cascais, and parking in Lisbon is genuinely miserable. Pick the car up when you leave Cascais, keep it for the Algarve, drop it at Faro.
Is this itinerary doable with a stroller?
Mostly. Belém, Cascais, Meia Praia and the Lisbon squares are all fine. Sintra is not, and the Lisbon viewpoints and Alfama are not. Bring both a stroller and a carrier and expect to use the carrier on two or three specific days.
What is the best time of year for this trip?
Late May or September. The water is warm enough for a toddler, the Algarve is not at full August heat, and you are not queuing for an hour at Pena. I would avoid July and August for the crowds more than the temperature.
Would you do this trip with a baby instead of a toddler?
Honestly, a baby who still naps in a carrier and does not walk yet might be easier than this. The hard age is the one where they want to run and cannot be reasoned with, which is exactly where we are. If you are weighing it, go before they walk or wait until they can.
If you are still deciding whether to go at all, I wrote about whether Portugal is good for families first, and that is probably the better place to start. Everything else is in the Portugal archive.
I will come back and tell you what actually happened. Some of this is definitely wrong.
