Lisbon to the Algarve: Portugal Coast to Coast

Starting in the capital

Our June–July 2018 trip through Portugal started in Lisbon, at the Olissippo Saldanha, before heading south to the Algarve coast. It’s a natural route for a first proper look at Portugal — the capital first, with its hills, trams, and old neighborhoods, then the beach coastline that the country is equally known for further south.

Lisbon on foot

Lisbon is a genuinely hilly city, and cobblestones cover a good part of its old center, so comfortable shoes mattered more here than in a lot of European capitals we’ve visited. The number 28 tram is the classic, well-known way to see the steepest and oldest neighborhoods without walking every incline yourself, rattling through narrow streets past miradouros with views out over the rooftops toward the Tagus. We spent our Lisbon days doing exactly what the city rewards: wandering between neighborhoods, riding the tram when our legs needed a break, and letting the hills dictate the pace more than any itinerary would.

Neighborhoods like Alfama and Bairro Alto each have their own distinct character within a fairly compact old town, and the miradouros — the small viewpoints scattered across the hills — turned into a natural way to structure a day, walking from one to the next and stopping to take in the view each time. It’s a city where getting a little lost in the old streets is generally part of the appeal rather than a problem to avoid.

South to Albufeira’s resort coast

From Lisbon we continued south to Albufeira, staying at the Grande Real Santa Eulália Resort & Hotel Spa. Albufeira is one of the Algarve’s best-known resort towns, built around a dramatic stretch of coastline where golden cliffs frame small coves and beaches. It’s the busier, more developed side of the Algarve — plenty of restaurants, nightlife, and resort infrastructure built up around a genuinely beautiful piece of coast, and it gave us a proper beach-and-relaxation stretch after Lisbon’s hills.

A quieter finish in Faro

We ended the trip in Faro, staying at the Stay Hotel Faro Centro. Faro is the Algarve’s regional capital and the main airport gateway for the whole coast, but it’s a noticeably calmer, more local place than the resort towns further along the coastline — less built around tourism, more of an actual working Portuguese city with its own old town and marina. Ending here rather than in Albufeira gave the trip a gentler close, a chance to see a version of the Algarve that isn’t built entirely around beach holidays, with its walled old town and waterfront giving us a couple of easy, unhurried days before flying home.

The logic of this route

Lisbon-to-Algarve is a well-trodden path for good reason: it lets you pair the capital’s culture and hills with the south coast’s beaches, without needing to backtrack. Albufeira and Faro, sitting fairly close to each other geographically but feeling quite different in character, gave us a good sense of the range within the Algarve itself — the loud, resort-heavy side and the calmer, more everyday side. It’s a route that works equally well in reverse, starting on the coast and finishing in Lisbon, so it’s worth choosing the direction based on which kind of arrival and departure suits your flights best.

Practical notes

The Algarve’s train line connects Faro and Albufeira reasonably well, which makes the coastal portion of a trip like this manageable without a car if you’re sticking to the bigger towns. That said, a rental car gives considerably more flexibility for reaching the smaller, quieter beach coves tucked along the coastline between the main towns, which are often the more memorable stops than the well-known ones. In Lisbon, plan for the hills honestly — good, broken-in walking shoes make a real difference to how much you enjoy wandering the old city.

[Editor’s note: add what this trip actually meant to you both — the Lisbon trams, the Algarve cliffs, whatever you remember most — and swap in your own photos when ready.]