Festival Info for Getting from Lisbon to Cascais

From the "ARRIVING IN PORTUGAL - 2013 Fall Festival News - October 17, Issue #7"

TRANSPORT INFORMATION

If you would prefer to make your own way to the Festival site, you can either take a train or a taxi from the airport. [If you are leaving from a hotel in central Lisbon and are close to the Rossio metro station, that is on the green line, so you do not need to change metro lines. See the Lisbon metro map with streets.]

 

Metro/Train: From the airport take the Metro Red Line to Alameda.  At Alameda change and take the Green Line to Cais do Sodre.  Change at Cais do Sodre and take the Cascais train line to Cascais (last stop on the line).  The Metro from the Airport to Cais do Sodre will take about 35 minutes and will cost €1.40. The Train from Cais do Sodre to Cascais will take about 40 minutes and cost €2.15.  Useful links: Metro/Train map, Metro website, and Train website.

 

Aerobus/Train:  From the airport take the Aerobus to Cais do Sodre.  At Cais do Sodre take the Cascais train line to Cascais (last stop on the line).  The Aerobus from the Airport to Cais do Sodre will take about 30 minutes and will cost €3.50. The Train from Cais do Sodre to Cascais will take about 40 minutes and cost €2.15. Useful links:  Aerobus website and Train website.

 

Taxi: A taxi from the airport to Cascais will cost around €35.  It is always wise to ask the taxi driver first approximately how much the fare will be.

Travel Article about Lisbon

If you're visiting Lisbon, you may be interested in this Seattle Times article from Feb 17 this year:
"Walk through history in Lisbon's alluring neighborhoods"

Train from Lisbon to Cascais

For the most recent info, see the post Festival Info for Getting from Lisbon to Cascais

You may have seen this on the Festival Travel Info webpage: "Trains from Lisbon’s Cais do Sodré (Metro: Cais do Sodré) run to Cascais along the scenic coastal line via Estoril. Trains leave twice an hour and stop at Estoril, Estoril Monte and Cascais." The Festival team is working to add more information about this.

 

Because some information, such as the price of tickets, on the definitive website of the train can be so hard to find, even though in some ways the English version of the site is useful (see For More Information below), I am trusting that this information is correct until we get more information:

The short answer, based on http://wikitravel.org/en/Cascais

"Cascais is easily reachable from Lisbon  by train (40min), from the Cais do Sodré station. A return ticket costs 2.30€ and can be bought from the automatic ticket machines. Remember to keep the ticket as it will be checked and punched by the conductor in both directions."

The English call a round-trip ticket a "return," so that's cheap (about $3)! That page was last updated in August; it looks like the price has gone up 20 cents.

For More Information
Lisbon-> Cascais Train Schedule - helpfully added to the Festival Travel Info webpage from the Portugal train website; much easier to find! With a helpful diagram of the route with stops.

Portugal Train Website in English - the site is well organized, but when you follow the links, you end up at pages like this:

• Price of tickets, which are only in Portuguese, as far as I can tell.
• For the NetTicket feature on the main page, click Timetable and Prices (I didn't find the Lisboa - Cais do Sodré  or Cascais stations in the drop-down list of the default tab), but the results say that it's a 3-hour trip, when everywhere else I've read said it's 40 minutes?? The price for a "poupou" (which even my linguist friend couldn't find a relevant translation of, but in context I take this for at least a regular adult one-way ticket, if not a round-trip) is 2.50 euros.

No wonder it's taking the Festival team a while to provide the details!

Lisbon Hotels

If you are sightseeing in Lisbon before or after Festival, or you want a hotel near the airport because you have an early flight out, when the Festival shuttles aren't running, here are some places Sangha have booked:

Central Lisbon

• Grande Pensao Residencial Alcobia
• Independente, which is both a hostel and a hotel

Airport

• Holiday Inn Express - doesn't have a shuttle, but is 1 mile so taxi affordable. Note that taxi scams are common, especially for the airport, and that one of the ways to prevent being overcharged is to know the direct route, so here's a map showing the trip from this hotel to the airport. For more about taxi scams, see the post Transportation from Lisbon to Cascais.

If you have an early-morning flight, another option is to book an airport shuttle from your accommodations in Cascais; for more information, see the post Transportation from Lisbon to Cascais.
By the way, there is more transportation info here.
For example, if you are staying in Lisbon but traveling to or from the airport at a reasonable hour, take the Aerobus.

Note for those who are getting these posts via email: I am hoping that others who book Lisbon hotels will send me info about where they're staying, so that I can add them to this site. Which means you will have to check here for updates. (Unlike a regular website, with a blog I'd normally make a new post for new info and give it the same label, but that seems unwieldy for this scenario.)

If you don't have my personal email, you can reach me at meredw AT Hotmail.

Visiting Lisbon? Aerobus between Airport and City Center

If you're planning to visit Lisbon before or after Festival, I've read in various places that the Aerobus is the best option for transportation between the city and the airport. As it says on their user-friendly website:

The local Carris bus company runs a bus transport service connecting Lisbon's airport to the city centre passing by the main transport hubs such as Comercio Square and Cais de Sodré.
This service is called AeroBus and passes by dozens of Lisbon hotels, thus providing tourists arriving at the airport with easy access to their accommodation.
An alternative to the bus is the metro.

TIMETABLE
07:00h to 23:00h (departures from Airport)
07:45h to 22:30h (departures from Cais do Sodré [the Lisbon train station])

FREQUENCY
Every 20 minutes (every 30 mins after 9pm)
PRICE: €3.50

What to See in Lisbon

Festival Website info about Sights in Cascais, Sintra & Lisbon, including links to other websites

Rick Steves' Best of Lisbon

Lonely Planet Sights in Lisbon

LisbonLux Itinerary

Markets - scroll down to bottom of page to see day(s)

The most famous specialist bakery, with the long lines to prove it, is Casa Pastéis de Belém in Lisbon, which makes the country's most famous cake, pastel de nata. Their address and phone are:  Rua de Belem 84, Lisbon 1300-085, Portugal. 21 363 74 23. TravelAdvisor says they're affordable and that they have Breakfast/Brunch, Lunch, Dinner, Takeout, Late Night, Delivery, Buffet.