The Lisboa Card (a.k.a. the Lisbon Card) is Lisbon´s official city travel card. However, is it worth getting for your trip to Portugal?

Like many other major cities, Lisbon has jumped on the bandwagon and created their own city card. The goal of this card is to provide visitors with discounts and museums or shops with visitors, which seems like a win-win, right?

The first thing to do with a card like this is to do math, horrible, I know! However, it is important to try and guess what sites you are going to visit so that you can see if the card is worth it to you. So, what is included in the Lisboa Card, anyways?

To start, it gives free unlimited travel via tram, bus, elevator, and funicular. This is really useful in a city like Lisbon with all the hills and having some attractions spread out across the city.It also allows for travel on the CP train line to Sintra AND Cascais, which let’s face it…if you are in Lisbon you are going to go to one or both of them during your time there.

You also get free access to 26 museums, monuments, and UNESCO World Heritage Sites along with discounts into cool places, tours, shopping, and nightlife. When in doubt, it is useful to flash the card and see if it gets you anything for entry. There seems to be a bit of fluctuation of where and when the card is accepted that differs from the “official” list.

At the time of our visit, the 3 day card cost about $50 USD or about $17.00 per day. Not a bad price considering most museums are about $10 per person and riding the Metro one way is about $2. Since we were getting lost a lot in Lisbon, we actually used the card for the Metro A LOT.

 

We also took advantage of the trip to Sintra and got to see Pena Palace, which was amazingly cool. Unlike the castles in other European countries that we have seen, this one is decorated to the max. Definitely helped that our train had some roving accordion and tambourine players who were rather good.

There were also a few really unique places to visit for free. Our favorite was The Pilar 7 Bridge Experience. We had no idea what we were getting into prior to visiting and got lost along the way there. It was awesome. Without the Lisboa card, we would have never gone out there and it was one of the least visited places we went that entire week.

So what did we do with our Lisboa Cards?

• Multiple (like many many many) Metro trips
• The commuter train to and from Sintra
• Elevador Santa Justa
• Palacio de Pena/Parque da Pena
• Torre de Belem
• A Tram Ride on the 12 (Not the 28, that line was soooooooooooooo loooooooooooooong)

However, we had a few issues with this card when stacking it up against our experience with a similar card in Copenhagen. There were fewer free entrances into sites. This allows the price for the Lisboa Card to be almost ⅓ that of the Copenhagen Card, but you miss out on the huge variety that Copenhagen offers. They also only have a 1, 2, or 3 day pass where Copenhagen also offers a 4 day pass with travel into Sweden.

There is also the issue that the Lisboa card does not let you jump ahead in the line/queue. While we didn’t experience this as a problem in Denmark, it seems as if Lisbon hasn’t hired enough workers to deal with the huge influx of people coming to their beautiful city.  Buying this card will not help you save time while you are waiting in line at the Santa Justa with 500 of your new best friends.

Is the Lisboa Card worth it?

Yes!

The bottom line is that you should buy this card if you are going to Lisbon. It is worth it alone to have it with you on your trip to be able to just roll onto the Metro and get into the city. We got into the airport so early (5:30 AM!!!) that we were there before the kiosk opened and so we had to figure out where to find the office downtown, which wasn’t easy. Would have saved us a lot of annoyance if we had bought it ahead of time.

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