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After graduating with a Bachelors from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, two of my best friends and I decided to take a three week graduation trip to Europe to celebrate our accomplishments! We had been talking about this trip since our sophomore year of college, so to actually have this idea become a reality was unreal.
We spent three weeks total in Europe, and our first stop was in Lisbon, Portugal. This was my first time ever visiting Portugal so I was super excited. We flew from Phoenix, Arizona to London, and then took another flight from London to Lisbon. We had booked these two legs separately to save between $300-400!
After our graduation on a Monday, we took off from Phoenix at around 10am on Saturday, with a layover in Canada and London. We were traveling for nearly 30 hours before reaching Lisbon at 9 or 10pm on Sunday!
In this blog, I’ll walk you through everything we did in Lisbon, Portugal, so you can get ideas for when you explore the city yourself! We were only here for two full days, but we had seen so much so there will be tons of ideas you can pull from here to create your own itinerary for Lisbon. I would definitely come back to Lisbon and spend more time, and would love to explore more of Portugal!
My itinerary at a glance:
Day 1:
- Time Out Market for breakfast
- Exploring Castelo de São Jorge
- Relaxing at a cute café
- First dinner in Lisbon
- Going out in Bairro Alto
Day 2:
- Breakfast at a cute café
- Boat tour exploring the Tagus River
- Exploring the coast of Lisbon
- Best spot to watch the sunset in Lisbon & meeting up with an old friend!
- Dinner & drinks in Bairro Alto
Day 3
- Light breakfast at new fav café
- Flight to Madrid, Spain
Arriving at our hostel:
We stayed at the Central House Lisbon Baixa hostel for our three nights in Lisbon and booked our stay through Hostelworld.com. The hostel was in a super convenient location, right between Alfama and Bairro Alto. We had booked three beds for a 4-bedroom suite, but when we arrived, they had separated one of us. So unfortunately we didn’t all stay in the same room in Lisbon. The good news was we were able to meet more people this way!
They told us we need to email them next time if we wanted to be in the same room, but that’s why we had booked under one reservation. Besides that, this was the best hostel I’ve stayed in. It’s super cute and very clean. They have activities to meet people throughout the week and the workers are very talkative!
Day 1 in Lisbon
Stop 1: Time Out Market
Our first day in Lisbon, we woke up around 10am and headed out for the day around 11. Our plan was to go to the Mercado da Ribeira, also know as Time Out Market, for breakfast. Little did we know, it’s more of a lunch/dinner market as they mostly sold meals and also were only beginning to open for the day. But we still were able to find something to eat here!
I decided to order this sandwich from a corner booth, and I didn’t really know what I had ordered at first, only that it had meat and mustard on it. But turns out, I was trying one of the most classic Portuguese meals, a bifana sandwich. This sandwich is made with a sautéed and marinated pulled pork, and mine also had spinach and mustard. It was so good!! Definitely recommend.
After Time Out Market, we walked along the coast and enjoyed how lively the city was. There were a lot of groups of people running which made it seem like a very fit place to live. Eventually, we started to walk up the hills to explore the streets of Lisbon, and met this lady selling Ginjinha in little shot glasses made out of chocolate. Ginjinha is the national liqueur of Portugal and is basically a cherry liqueur. The Ginjinha combined with the chocolate shot glass was so good. And it was only like 50 cents or 1 euro!
After trying Ginjinha, we came across this cute lookout point at the Miradouro de Santa Luzia. We had actually wanted to find this place for the sunset, but we came across it coincidentally during the day. It had a little garden and people selling art close by!
Stop 2: Castelo de São Jorge
Eventually, we started seeing signs for Castelo de São Jorge, which was on our list of places we wanted to see, so we kept walking up hill until we encountered a line of people waiting to get in. The line actually wasn’t bad, we might have waited 10 minutes because it moved quickly. You can also purchase tickets online to jump the line.
The history of the Castelo de São Jorge is absolutely crazy to think about. People had inhabited this hill in Lisbon since at least 8 B.C., and was first used by the Celtic tribes.
The views from this castle are some of the best in the city, I definitely recommend coming here for both the history and to take in all of Lisbon!
Stop 3: Copenhagen Coffee
After exploring the castle, it was about mid afternoon so we were looking to take a break from the heat and grab a snack. We stumbled upon the Copenhagen Coffee Lab, which coincidentally was right next to our hostel. It’s funny because when we walked by the coffee shop in the morning on the way to Time Out Market, we thought it looked so cute so we wanted to try it, and we ended up going there three times!
Here, I had a shot of espresso and then split half of a focaccia with Rohini. The espresso was so strong and bitter, but I actually think it’s the best espresso I’d ever had. It was so smooth, I could feel and taste the quality even though I don’t normally prefer my espresso tasting that strong! The focaccia was also very yummy.
After relaxing at the café, we took a power nap at the hostel before getting ready for dinner.
First night out in Lisbon
We decided on dinner at Figu’s, which was also conveniently next to our hostel. This place was amazing! We split a pitcher of sangria, and I ordered a pesto with prawns, but it actually came with shrimp instead. Thank god it came with shrimp because later on in the trip I realized I don’t like prawns!
Our server Paul was so much fun. He kept referring to us as his Arizona besties and we were loving it haha.
After dinner, we stopped back at our hostel before going out, and we had realized that we missed a wine tasting! We got back right as they were finishing up. I was so sad because it looked like so much fun, and our new friend Bella from Rohini’s room had joined it and loved it.
Once we freshened up, we headed out to Bairro Alto to check out the bars! We ended up at Bombar, which is a small but cute bar that turns into almost like a small club.
It was actually super lively at night especially for a Monday night! There were lots of people out, we mostly ran into others traveling, but it was lots of fun. We actually liked it so much that we came back the next night too!
Day 2: Boat Tour & Pastel de Natas
Our big plan for our second day in Lisbon was our boat tour along the Tagus River that we booked on Airbnb as an experience, leaving from Alcântara in Lisbon. The tour was scheduled for 11am, so our plan was to leave by 10am to get there early since it was supposed to take about 30 minutes to get there by metro and train.
We stopped for breakfast first at Copenhagen Coffee, and left maybe 10 minutes later than we wanted to because we met a German girl who was solo traveling so we were talking to her!
Technically, we still left with plenty of time, but once we got off the metro, we couldn’t figure out where the train was because signs were so confusing. We walked circles around the metro until finally asking a lady who worked at a coffee shop, and she only spoke Portuguese! But we were able to figure out what she was saying, and her friend there sold us 3 tickets to the train and we paid in cash. We definitely paid more than those tickets were worth but by that time, we just needed to get on the train and that was the fastest way to do so.
Once we got on the train, it was 10:45am, and technically it would be 7 minutes until we get to the dock, but the train leaves every 20 minutes, so we were going to be late.
At this point, I went onto the Airbnb app and messaged our tour guide Tiago and said we were running a few minutes late but will try to make it. Once the train left, we got to the station at about 11:08 and Tiago said we were too late and they couldn’t wait, which is totally fair but I was upset because I really wanted to do this tour and we had paid.
I still wanted to see where the dock was and everything, so we walked towards the meeting point. As we were walking, Tiago asked us how far away we were, so we started sprinting to reach them. Rohini was even running in sandals!
Tiago said how he asked everyone on the boat if they wanted to wait, and they were kind enough to all say yes since it was only a few minutes! Getting on the boat felt really awkward because we had to walk past everyone. It was only about 5-7 people but it was intimate. The plus side was that me, Emma, and Rohini sat on the day bed in the front and had an unobstructed view as we toured down the river!
This tour was a highlight of our time in Lisbon for me. It was very relaxing, and each of the tour guides (there were two) spent time with us at the front and gave us their undivided attention. They had both grown up in or near Lisbon, so they had a lot of knowledge about the area. At one point near the end, we even saw a family of dolphins swim right by our boat! This part was magical to me because I’ve never seen dolphins before in real life.
Here is the link for the tour – it was a 10/10 for me, I definitely recommend it.
Exploring the Coast of Lisbon and Belém
After our tour, we walked along the Tagus River towards the Tower of Belém. We stopped for lunch at this Italian restaurant called Nosolo Itália. I had one of their sandwiches which I enjoyed, but Emma and Rohini weren’t a fan of their pizza because it was very heavy.
Then we continued walking to the Tower of Belém, which was used as the gateway to the city of Lisbon, and also acted as a defense against attacks many many years ago. We had wanted to go to the top but the line was insanely long so we skipped it.
Next, we headed back in the direction of our hostel, in hopes to find the famous Pastels de Nata. Tiago had told us the story about how they were first made in the monastery here in Lisbon, and the original bakery from 1837 is still in business so we had to find it! We didn’t know the name so we just headed in the general direction and ended up finding it. The bakery is called Pastéis de Belém. The to-go line much shorter than the line to dine in, so we went with that and maybe waited like five minutes.
We took the Pastels de Nata and sat in the shade around the corner because it was so hot! They are an egg based dessert and reminded me a little bit of a mini cheesecake. It’s funny because I have seen these in so many boulangeries when I lived in France but I never knew what they were, or that they were Portuguese! We topped them with cinnamon because that was Tiago’s favorite way to eat them. Yum!
Then we explored little shops in Belém as we wandered to the train station to head back to our hostel to take a little nap before dinner.
Second night out in Lisbon
Before going to dinner, me, Emma, Rohini, and our new friend Bella met up with one of my friends, Helena who I had met my freshman year at ASU! I hadn’t seen her since freshman year, so it had been about 3 years! We had tried meeting up in Barcelona last year, but it didn’t work out. You can read more about that story on my blog for Barcelona.
At first, we were all going to meet at the Jardim do Torel for the sunset, but Helena had got there first and realized it was closed. It was probably closed because it was a Tuesday, things in Europe seemed to be closed a lot on Tuesdays!
She gave us the name of another good lookout spot called Miradouro da Senhora do Monte, so we headed there instead. We had basically arrived at the Jardim do Torel when she said it was closed so we probably all could have walked together, but we met up 20 minutes later after what felt like 1,000 stairs!
FYI: the streets of Lisbon are very hilly; you will be doing lots of walking!
The walk to the second sunset spot was so worth it because the views at the top were absolutely incredible. If you’re looking for the best place to watch the sunset in Lisbon, you need to come here! It’s the highest point in the city, and locals come every night to relax with their friends. It was super lively and the views were amazing.
It was so nice to finally see Helena again in person, especially in such a beautiful place like this park in Lisbon!
After the sunset, we all walked to Pastaria-Anjos for dinner. So many people had recommended this place to us, so we wanted to see what the hype was! Unfortunately, Helena had to head back since she had an exam the next day, but the four of us enjoyed a really fun dinner and got to know Bella better!
I am obsessed with cacio e pepe, so I of course had to ordered that when I saw it on the menu. We had also split a bottle of Portuguese red wine – I used to not like red wine, but throughout this trip red wine ended up being my go to choice!
After dinner, we all went to Bombar in Bairro Alto! I was very impressed with the night life in Lisbon because since it was only a Tuesday, every place was so busy.
When we had gotten back to our hostel that night, we had at least an hour long conversation with one of the hostel employees about Portugal’s history, which somehow stemmed from us talking about how good the espresso is here. We had talked about so many different things, I left the conversation eager to learn more! Though it was like 3am so I would be doing that another time because I wanted to go to bed haha.
Day 3 in Lisbon: Flight to Madrid
The next morning, we headed to the airport to catch our flight to Madrid, Spain! Our flight was at 1:20pm, but with taking the metro to the airport, we didn’t have enough time to explore.
We slept in until 9am ish and then checked out of our hostel. We had one last breakfast at Copenhagen Coffee, and I had a pain au chocolat. Their pastries here were so good, I was really impressed! We also ran into Bella here before she left to catch her train to her next city!
I hope you enjoyed reading about our first stop on our graduation trip in Europe! Feel free to use this blog as inspiration when making your itinerary for your trip to Lisbon, Portugal :)
If you have any questions about our trip or our itinerary, feel free to message me on Instagram @underthesun.blog!
Xx
– Carmela
Under The Sun 
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