Portugal · Itinerary · Updated September 2026
5 days in Portugal: Lisbon, Coimbra and Porto
Five days holds two cities. Portugal's saving grace is that the third sits on the line between them, so it costs a day rather than a night. Fares and fees checked September 2026.
Diego Delso / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Length
5 days
Budget
€775 / $898
per person, mid-range
Best season
Apr–Jun, Sep–Oct
Both cities stay mild through winter
Stops
4
2 beds, 3 cities
The route
Two nights in Lisbon, a day in Coimbra on the way through, and two nights in Porto. Fly into Lisbon, out of Porto.
Day by day
Days 1–2 · Lisbon
Two nights, and Belém on the first morning
Belém takes a morning: the Jerónimos Monastery is **€21**, the steepest single ticket in the country and worth it for the cloister, with the Torre de Belém standing in the river ten minutes' walk away. The rest is Alfama, the Graça viewpoints and the tram everyone rides standing up. Lisbon charges **€4 per person per night** in city tax, applied from age thirteen and capped at seven nights.
Sleep: Alfama or Graça. At two nights, pay for the location rather than the room.
Day 3 · Coimbra
An hour and three-quarters up, and a library with bats in it
Check out, take the Alfa Pendular, 1h43, and leave the bags in the station lockers. The Biblioteca Joanina is **€16.50** on its own or €27 with the Royal Palace and the chapel, and it is a baroque library with a colony of bats living in the ceiling, released at night to eat the insects that would otherwise eat the books. Entry is timed and small, so book it. Then an hour or so onward to Porto.
Sleep: Porto tonight. The bags have moved once and you have seen a third city.
Day 4 · Porto
The one full day, and it is enough for this city
You arrive into São Bento, a working railway station lined with twenty thousand tiles, which is the correct introduction. The Ribeira is the postcard and the port lodges are over the bridge in Vila Nova de Gaia, most charging for a tasting. Walk the upper deck of the Ponte Luís I in one direction at least. Porto is compact enough that one full day and two evenings is not a compromise.
Sleep: Cedofeita or Bonfim, ten minutes uphill from the river and half the price.
Day 5 · Porto, and out
The metro to the airport
Porto's airport is about half an hour out on the metro, so the last morning is usable rather than lost to a transfer. Flying home from here rather than returning to Lisbon is what makes five days hold three cities: the train back is 2h39 you would spend seeing nothing new.
Sleep: Nowhere. This is the day you leave.
Best things to do on this route
If you cut the trip short, these are the ones to keep.
- 01
The Biblioteca Joanina
€16.50, timed, and small. A baroque library whose ceiling bats eat the insects that would eat the books. Nothing else on this route is like it.
- 02
The Jerónimos cloister
€21, and the one Lisbon ticket worth that much. Go at opening; Belém fills by ten.
- 03
São Bento station
Twenty thousand azulejos in a working concourse. Free, and you arrive through it.
- 04
The upper deck of the Ponte Luís I
Walk it once. It is the best view of Porto and it costs nothing, which is rare in a city that charges for its wine.
- 05
Station lockers in Coimbra
The trick the whole itinerary turns on: a third city for the price of a day, with the luggage left behind the barrier.
Where to stay
Neighbourhoods rather than specific hotels. Prices move, areas don't.
Lisbon: Alfama or Graça
Steep, tiled and central, with the viewpoints and the tram on the doorstep. Two nights is short, so cut the commute rather than the budget.
Porto: Cedofeita or Bonfim
Ten minutes uphill from the Ribeira, half the price, and where people actually live. The riverfront is for looking at.
Porto: Ribeira
On the water and in the middle of the postcard. Louder, dearer, and defensible on a trip this short if you would rather walk out into the view.
What it cost
Per person, 5 days. International flights not included.
| Category | Cost |
|---|---|
| Accommodation: 4 nights | €360 / $417 |
| Food and drink | €225 / $261 |
| Activities, entry fees and tastings | €60 / $70 |
| Trains: two legs | €45 / $52 |
| Local transport, transfers and lockers | €45 / $52 |
| SIM, laundry, everything else | €25 / $29 |
| Tourist taxes | €15 / $17 |
| Total | €775 / $898 |
Converted at €1 = $1.1593, checked 2 September 2026. About €155 a day, the cheapest route on this site outside Southeast Asia. Two tickets carry most of the activities row: Jerónimos at €21 and the Joanina at €16.50. The trains are €45 because both legs are short and neither is booked at the last minute.
Getting around
One line, two legs, one direction
Lisbon to Coimbra is 1h43 on the Alfa Pendular and Coimbra to Porto about an hour more. Coimbra sits directly on the track between them, which is the entire reason it fits: you are not detouring, you are pausing.
Fly in to Lisbon, out of Porto
An open jaw is usually within a few euros of a return, and returning to Lisbon to fly home costs 2h39 on a route you have already ridden. On a five-day trip that is most of a sixth of it.
Book the Joanina before you go
Entry is timed and the room takes very few people at once. It is the only ticket on this route that can sell out from under you, and the day it falls on is fixed by the train schedule rather than by choice.
Use the lockers, do not take a third hotel
Coimbra's station has left luggage. Four hours there with the bags behind a barrier turns a two-city long weekend into a three-city one, at the cost of a locker fee and no check-in anywhere.
Packing notes
The things that are annoying to find locally, or that people forget.
- Shoes with grip. Lisbon, Coimbra and Porto are all hills paved in polished limestone that is lethal wet.
- A timed Joanina ticket, bought before you fly.
- A bag you can leave in a locker and walk away from for four hours.
- A rain layer outside high summer; Porto is wetter than its photographs suggest.
- Cards work everywhere; carry a few euros in coins for the lockers themselves.
Why the Douro is not on this route
Because it needs two nights and five days cannot spare them.
Pinhão is 2h25 up the line from Porto. Going there and back in a day is five hours of train for an afternoon among the vineyards, and it costs you the only full day this itinerary has in Porto. Going and sleeping means a third hotel and a fourth city in five days, which is how a holiday becomes a schedule.
The valley is genuinely the best thing in northern Portugal, and it is the reason the 7-day route exists in the shape it does: three stops, two nights each, Sintra traded away to pay for it. If the Douro is what you came for, take those two extra days rather than compressing it into this one.
The whole plan is one locker
Two beds in five days is the constraint everything else follows. Lisbon for two nights, Porto for two, and the luggage moves exactly once, on day three, with a four-hour pause in the middle of the journey.
That pause is Coimbra. Left luggage at the station, the climb up to the university, the Joanina, lunch, and an afternoon train onward. No third check-in, no third checkout, and a city most five-day itineraries skip because they think of it as a stop rather than as the middle of a journey they were making anyway.
It is the same move as the Spain 5-day, which uses Córdoba the same way. When two cities sit at either end of a fast line, the one in the middle is nearly free.
What two nights in Porto is honestly worth
Enough. Porto is small, dense and walkable in a way Lisbon is not, and the things people go for (São Bento, the Ribeira, the bridge, a lodge in Gaia, one dinner that runs late) fit inside one full day and two evenings without being rushed.
What two nights will not give you is the Douro, the beaches at Matosinhos, or a second day to wander without a list. Those are real, and they are what the seventh day buys on the longer route.
But the failure mode at this length is not seeing too little of Porto. It is adding a fourth stop and seeing all of it badly.