2 Days in Lisbon: The city of my Dreams
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Originally, when I left to study abroad, I didn’t really have any must-see cities or places in Europe; I was fully committed to traveling to wherever I could get the cheapest plane tickets. So, during the first week of orientation, I put my location into Skyscanner and typed “everywhere” into the destination box. Instantly, a 20 Euro flight to Lisbon popped up for early November, and after 30 seconds of contemplation and a text to someone I had just met the previous week, I had both a travel buddy to make plans with and a ticket to Portugal sitting in my email inbox. So I got to work on creating an epic itinerary for spending 2 days in Lisbon.
Little did we know this would be our favorite trip of the entire semester, so much so that we stayed up both nights at our hostel trying to decide if 300 dollar flight change fees or an 18 hour bus ride and skipping class the next week would be worth it just to stay longer than 2 days Lisbon, this absolute GEM of a city.
(Unfortunately I’m a good girl and skipping class is terrifying to me so we huffed and puffed and used our original tickets to come home on time).
I don’t know if it was the city itself, the food, the language, or the people we met (probably a combination of all of these factors), but living in Lisbon has become a dream of mine, and I promise you I will be back for FAR longer than a mere weekend.
Do you have a trip to Lisbon coming up? Here’s what my travel buddy Hannah and I got up to with just 48 hours in Lisbon, Portugal. .
2 days in Lisbon
We arrived in the Lisbon airport EARLY on a Friday morning, and although our hostel check in wasn’t until noon, we arrived at 7. They graciously invited us in, stowed our bags, fed us a home-made breakfast, and signed us up for the walking tour that started in a few hours.
I’m not going to lie, this hostel is one of the main factors contributing to how hard we fell in love with the city. Hannah and I love to have fun, so we made sure to book a hostel labeled as a “party hostel” when we were looking for accommodation. Portugal does have one of the highest concentration of bars per square kilometer in the world, after all! Everything about this hostel was perfect: the staff was welcoming and hung out with us willingly, we had family dinner every night, beer pong tournaments afterwards and bar crawls as a group. If you’re there on a Sunday they have champagne city walking tours where the only requirement is that you finish your whole bottle before the tour ends. I’ve never had more fun in my life!
One night I came back from a bar crawl as the sun was rising, and I crawled into my bunk to take a power nap before starting the day. The person in the bed next to me was from New Delhi, and at 5 am, tipsy in a dorm room three bunks up in Portugal, I had a very intelligent conversation about Indian politics with someone I had just met. This is what makes me fall in love with traveling more and more every day.
Of course, if loud hostels and rowdy young people isn’t quite your scene, Lisbon is chock-full of boutique hotels and fancy restaurants. There truly is something for everyone!
After eating breakfast and hanging out with the staff, we made our way to the main square where the walking tour was set to start. There are multiple different tours you can join that take you through different neighborhoods of Lisbon, and if I was there for longer I would have tried to hit them all! We jumped in the group that was touring Barrio Alto, as i was dying to drown myself in buildings covered in Porcelain tile but not get lost, especially as we only had 2 days in Lisbon and needed to make the most of our time!
We wandered through the streets stopping at churches and listening to the guides fun anecdotes (and not so fun anecdotes: did you know Lisbon experienced multiples earthquakes, a fire, and a tsunami all within the same week?), drank lots of Ginjinha in chocolate cups, met lots of cats, and took lots of pictures. The tour took the better part of the day, and was a little long if it were up to me. We learned so many things we didn’t know about the city and saw so many cute viewpoints we wouldn’t have discovered if we were on our own, however, so overall I would recommend. The picture below was taken at the Miradouro de Santa Luiza!
After the tour ended, we made our way to the Main Square, or the Praca do Comercio. It’s a massive open plaza right next to the ocean. There are lots of restaurants and cafes lining the plaza where you can fuel up and feel the sea breeze on your face.
Also next to the Praca do Comercio is the famous Santa Justa elevator, another main attraction of Lisbon.
Because we only had 2 days in Lisbon, (midterms started the next Monday, so it was a whirlwind trip) we really had to condense what we wanted to see. While the Monastery of San Jerónimo is one of the best things to see, when it came down to it we just didn’t have time/didn’t want to pay the entrance fee (college problems whoops), so we decided we would take the evening, go get a massive amount of the famous pasteles de nata, and eat them in from of the Belem tower.
Buying a train ticket to the Belem tower proved massively difficult, and once we were on the train I think we missed our exact stop?? We were very confused, but fortunately there were two cute German boys who were also very confused. We all got off at the wrong stop and walked way further than we had to originally, but at least we did it together haha! We ended up spending the evening with these new friends, sharing our pasteles de nata and admiring the sunset.
Read More: The 5 Best Weekend Trips in Europe
After the sun sank below the horizon, we hurried back to our hostel in time for family dinner (which was delicious and so much fun). After the last plate had been cleared, the tables were immediately arranged for a beer pong tournament before we all headed out on our bar crawl. I think I got back to my bed somewhere between 3 and 4 in the morning, and - drumroll please - slept through my alarm.
We spent the morning missing our original train, buying more tickets, and napping on the hour ride to Sintra. Also, it was raining, and we didn’t even check the weather and had no umbrellas, just in case you’re wondering why I look like a drowned rat in the following pictures.
Once we got off the train, we QUICKLY realized our best option was to haggle with the tuktuk drivers and beat the buses to the top of the mountains. We lucked out with the most fabulous driver, who flirted with us and gave us his number so that we could drive with him the entire day. Leo, you are fabulous and we love you.
I would STRONGLY recommend buying tickets online before you go to eliminate waiting in the lines. We were waiting in line, got fed up, bought them online, dipped out, and beat everyone else, so if that doesn’t convince you i don’t know what will.
In my opinion, the MUST-SEE palace is Palacio Da Pena. It is the quintessential colorful Sintra castle that is a staple in any Sintra day trip. The colors are insane, the architecture is fabulous, and it seems like something out of a dream. We bought the ticket that allowed us to go inside because it was pouring rain and, as stated before, we were painfully unprepared. (I’ve heard the weather can flip very quickly in Sintra, so bring a sweater or a small umbrella just in case. I can’t wait to go back on a sunnier day.)
Having thoroughly explored Palacio Da Pena, we called Leo to come pick us up, and we gave him complete control of where he dropped us off next. We hadn’t researched the different castles too much, and wanted a locals opinion! We were extremely happy when we ended up at Palacio Monsterrate. This would be the perfect spot if the weather was nice and you had a picnic lunch, as there are massive gardens that surround this castle.
I love this castle in particular because it blends my favorite styles of architecture, gothic and Arabic, but the color palette consists of pink and yellow?? It’s fabulous and I loved it.
And with that we decided to head home to the hostel. We missed our train (again LOL) and decided to wait for the next one in the cutest little cafe, where we tried traditional Portuguese deserts and took a snooze. Thankfully, we made it back in time for another family dinner turned beer pong tournament, and we stayed up with the other travelers and the staff all night, playing games and looking for flights that left one or even two days later, contemplating long bus rides, but ultimately midterms won out and we sadly got on the plane back to Spain.
Portugal, I will be back!! And this time for longer than just 2 days!!! I love u with my whole heart <3
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