4 days in Lisbon, what to know before you book

Cash, cards, and the bizarre tipping rule

Cards work in restaurants, hotels, museums, and supermarkets. Cash is required for the small tasca lunches, kiosks in the squares, and most petiscos bars after midnight. Pull €60 to €80 per person from a Multibanco ATM on arrival, no foreign-card surcharge.

Tipping in Portugal is round-up only. A €23 dinner becomes €25, a €4 espresso stays €4. Leaving 15 to 20 percent confuses servers and quietly inflates expectations across the city. Hotel housekeeping €1 per day, taxis no tip unless they helped with bags.

The dinner clock and the lunch deal

Lisbon eats at 9pm and after. Restaurants that fill at 7:30pm are tourist traps, the locals walk in at 9:30. Book your headline dinners for 9pm or 9:30pm and accept that the room will be empty at 8.

The unbeatable food deal is the menu do dia at lunch: three courses with a drink for €8 to €12 in any neighborhood tasca. This is what office workers and pensioners eat. A €25 dinner at the same place serves the same food at twice the price.

What foreigners get wrong in Lisbon

A few common tells:

Booking tram 28 as a tourist activity, it is technically free with a transit pass but 90 percent of the riders are tourists and the other 10 percent are pickpockets working them.

Pre-arranging an airport transfer, Uber from LIS to the centre is €10.

Eating dinner in Bairro Alto, overpriced and aimed at people who do not return. The locals are next door in Cais do Sodré.

Confusing pastéis de Belém with pastéis de nata. Same shape, different recipe. The original at Pastéis de Belém has a queue worth doing once.

Ordering espresso as "espresso", call it a bica.

Where to base the crew (and why not Bairro Alto)

Chiado is the best base for 4 to 6 people, walkable to everything, dense with restaurants, residential enough that you actually sleep. Príncipe Real is the calmer, slightly cheaper alternative with the best food scene per square metre.

Bairro Alto looks fun and is, until 1am, when the streets fill with bottle-shopping bachelor parties and the noise comes through the windows of 18th-century buildings. Avoid for accommodation unless your crew is the "out till 4am" type.

Alfama is photogenic but the cobbled hills with suitcases will end the trip before it starts, and most of the streets are too narrow for taxis.

Hidden corners worth knowing

Not the headlines. The names locals reach for once the crew has done Belém.

Miradouro da Senhora do Monte, the highest viewpoint, the one without a kiosk, mostly local couples at sunset.

A Ginjinha do Carmo, a single dark cherry liqueur at the counter for €1.50, two minutes flat.

LX Factory on a Sunday morning before 11, the brunch crowd is just stirring, the design stores have space.

Pastelaria Versailles for the belle-époque room and a 5pm meia de leite, the office workers still come.

Tasca do Chico fado, cash only, no reservations, queue from 8:30pm, the most honest fado in Lisbon.

Cervejaria Ramiro late, ordered as a parade of shellfish, then a prego sandwich for dessert. Cliché, correct, do it.

Sintra without losing the day

Sintra is the obligatory day trip and gets it wrong in two ways: trying to fit it into a half-day, or going on a weekend in summer.

Train from Rossio at 8am, arrive 8:40. Pena Palace first as it opens (9:30), then Quinta da Regaleira mid-morning, then lunch at Tascantiga or Piriquita for the travesseiros.

Cabo da Roca at the end of the day, if the legs hold, for the sunset on the westernmost point of mainland Europe. Skip Monserrate and Seteais unless you have a second Sintra day, they will not fit.

The booking timeline

Eight weeks out, accommodation. Group prices climb sharply inside the four-week window.

Six weeks out, Cervejaria Ramiro, Tasca da Esquina, and any rooftop with a view, and a slot at Pena Palace.

Three weeks out, the calm-Saturday-night fado spots and any wine cellar in the Douro if extending.

A week out, casual dinners and the airport Uber or Aerobus.