One of our flight options gives us a 24+ hour layover in Lisbon.
Is it possible/advisable/nuts to try and get out of the airport for the day and see a tiny bit of Lisbon?
COVID complicates everything. We will be arriving from the US. Traveling onto either Budapest or Prague.
The 24+hour layover also means that we need to sleep...somewhere. The flights we are looking at would arrive 8 am-ish and depart the next day around noon.
Any thoughts? This would be at the start of our 2-week vacation.
TIA
It's easy to get to Lisbon from the Airport. So if nothing Covid related stops you, I'd say go for it. Nice city to just walk around and look at the tiles on the building etc.
Edit: Here's information on their Metro. Can buy a 24 hours pass for unlimited travel. I like their metro system.
https://lisbonlisboaportugal.com/lisbon-transport/Lisbon-metro-guide.html
FWIW, listening to woters world. he said hotels in Lisbon are either expensive/good or inexpensive/not-so-good and suggested considering a private room at a hostel if airbnb doesn't work out.
i am looking at a similar itinerary with possibly a longer layover in Lisboa. you have the afternoon (to nap!) and evening to enjoy the city. worth venturing in.
Lisbon's airport is very conveniently located. As the first replier noted, you can get to the center via Metro in about a half hour, or you could take a taxi/Uber for around 25-30 Euros, depending on where you're going. Lisbon, especially the center, is best explored without a car, and it's fairly compact (albeit hilly, be warned, but that's the price for the jaw-dropping views). I'd recommend taking a look at Rick's walking audiotours through Lisbon -- I think he has a couple different walking tours that are a couple of hours each.
In short, yes, absolutely, do it! If you need any other recommendations, I'd be happy to help.
Agree. Lisbon's airport is fairly easy to navigate, not far from the city, so it should be reasonably easy to pull this off. Figuring out what to do about sleeping will be your biggest challenge. Hopefully you sleep well on planes? If you can manage that, it will give you a small advantage.
Land in Lisbon, go from airport to hotel, see if you can check-in early, if not, drop bags and charge out the door, ready to spend the day, keep walking in the sunshine. Do a blitz/walking tour, try hard to stay awake until dinner, grab food, hit the bed, crash and burn. Set two or three alarms for the early morning wakeup, check out, off to the airport, jump through the hoops, nap on the flight to Prague/Budapest, wake up when the wheels touch down, pinch yourselves and ask each other if you really spent a day in Portugal or if that was a dream. It'll be an exciting way to begin your trip.
Edited to add: I could not disagree more about taking a nap in the afternoon. Don't! Having hours to kill in Lisbon at night is not a good plan - you need to be outside in sunshine, seeing the city. Try hard to stay awake until after you eat "dinner" - once you hit the sack, you will be down for the count (even if you tell yourself it's just a nap - you may wake up just in time to head for the airport). But if you can manage to stay awake until dinner (being outside in sunshine and fresh air is the best way to do that), then you will sleep VERY deeply, and once you do wake up the next morning, your body will be on European time. If you yield to the temptation to "just take a short nap" 1) it will probably be a much longer nap than you expect, and 2) you won't recover from jetlag for a couple more days. If you can tough it out staying awake in Lisbon until "dinner" you will be over the hump and good to go once you reach your destination.
I don't agree that good hotels in Lisbon are expensive. You can stay at a nice place that is also budget friendly. Portugal is overall budget friendly.
Here's a link to JulieDawnFox that lists recommendations. I've found her advice good.
https://juliedawnfox.com/where-to-stay-in-lisbon/
There's also the option to book a night at an airport hotel and drop your baggage off there before your adventure. If needed, there are also luggage storage facilities at the Oriente station.
Edit: I agree regarding staying up and seeing Lisbon during the day. So many wonderful things to see that you need daylight to enjoy.
Lisbon can be as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be. There are soooo many hotels (and Airbnbs, although I don't think an Airbnb is worth it for one night when time is of the essence; the hotel will be more convenient and can at least hold your bags when you arrive until you're able to check in). Agree on not napping during the day -- get out in sunny Lisbon and do as much as you can do before you crash, and then you'll wake up ready to head to your next destination much closer to being over your jetlag.
What I am trying to figure out is the "jumping through hoops" part when I return to the airport to continue my journey.
Between security and COVID, I am wondering if it will add a layer of confusion when I arrive in Hungary since I will not be coming directly from the US - could cut either way...
And yes, because of the expense of a hotel, I am weighing the pros and cons. My husband and I are not the "powering through" kind of folks so we will certainly need to sleep.
Again, thanks for the thoughtful replies.
Of course you need a hotel with such a layover. No question here. I cannot think of anything worse than spending an afternoon, a night and a full morning at an airport!
I would definitely pick a city center hotel, because it can be nice to enjoy breakfast in town before heading to the airport. This being said, with the time difference you are likely to wake up late, so perhaps an airport hotel isn't the worse thing. I usually travel in the other direction, so I don't know.
As for border concerns: you will enter the Schengen area at Lisbon airport and pass thru immigration there Whether you go straight to Hungary or stay in Lisbon does not matter, as there will be no immigration in Hungary either way.
You might check into transit thru Lisbon airport versus entering. I know in the past, it was the same, needing a negative Covid test. The US does not have a reciprocal agreement with Portugal regarding recognizing our CDC cards as equivalent for entry into the county.
https://www.visitportugal.com/en/content/covid-19-measures-implemented-portugal
Yes, it can be done, and not with a lot of hassle. Firstly, one hotel I can recommend is the Radisson Blu by the airport. Last August we visited our daughter in France, and flew home via Lisbon on TAP. We had an overnight stop in Lisbon, flying from Marseille to Lisbon and arriving around 7:30pm. Because we arrived in the evening, we ate dinner at the Radisson. The hotel is inexpensive, clean, has a great breakfast, and the restaurant for dinner was fine.
When our daughter and her family visited us in December for Christmas, they too had to layover in Lisbon overnight, but they arrived in the early afternoon. After checking into the Radisson Blu, they took a taxi to downtown Lisbon and spent some time wandering around, went to the castle, and had dinner in Lisbon. This is with 2 young children, ages 6 and 4.
We had visited Lisbon on a previous trip, and I can say it is easy to get to from the airport and is a great city for wandering and exploring. It is one of Europe's smaller capital cities, so you won't feel overwhelmed.
Thank you to everyone for your insights!
