Lisbon

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Cheap Flights from Toronto to Lisbon, Starting Around C$499 I booked my seat in February. C$549 return on TAP, including a meal and a checked bag. My friend, who “definitely wanted to come but needed to check a few things first,” waited three weeks and paid C$920 for the same fare class on the same flight. That gap — nearly C$400 — did not come from a price hike. It came from a fare bucket selling out and the next tier stepping in to fill it. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Lisbon, Without the Hill-Climbing Regret We booked our first Lisbon trip without a single bit of homework on the hills. The plan was simple: drag the suitcases from the metro to the guesthouse, drop them, explore. Then we hit the first cobbled ramp up toward the castle, in July, at noon, and understood why the locals were nowhere to be seen. By the time we’d hauled everything to Alfama we were soaked through and quietly furious. The guesthouse owner just smiled: “Next time, take the tram. And come in spring.” ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why Lisbon Is a Budget Traveler’s Dream My wife was hauling her suitcase up a cobbled lane that turned out to be the wrong hill, sweat in her eyes, while I checked the map and realized our €58 room was a flight of stone steps above us. Last November, our first night in Lisbon, and I’d already made the rookie mistake. The funny part? We still paid less for a week here than two nights would have cost us back home. The best budget hotels in Lisbon are almost suspiciously cheap, and the trick is choosing the right neighborhood and the right week — not chasing the cheapest pin on the map. I’ll show you exactly where they hide. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Car Rental in Lisbon: When It Saves You and When It Stings We spent our first afternoon in Lisbon doing exactly what I’m about to tell you not to do: circling Bairro Alto in a rented VW Polo, my wife reading out parking-app prices while I rode the clutch up another cobbled hill. We paid almost 20 euros to leave that car in a garage overnight and never touched it the next day. The car wasn’t the mistake. The timing was, and it’s the one almost everyone makes. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Cheap Flights from Paris to Lisbon: How I Paid €23 My wife had the easyJet checkout open, finger on the button, €44 staring back at us. Same Friday-evening departure, same kind of November weekend. I told her to wait thirty seconds and ran the search across both Paris airports instead — and there it was, Transavia out of Orly for €23. We booked it, and that €21 we didn’t spend covered every pastel de nata we ate over three days. Cheap flights from Paris to Lisbon really do start around €19 one-way, but only if you stop checking one airline at a time. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Portugal, in One Sentence The August quote came back at 240 euros a night for a plain Lagos apartment, and my wife just turned her laptop around so I could see it. “Or,” she said, scrolling, “the same place, last week of September, is 150.” We almost booked August anyway, because everyone tells you Portugal in late September is “a gamble.” It isn’t. We swam in a sea that was warmer than it had been all summer, walked a clifftop trail with maybe six other people on it, and I’ll tell you below the exact mistake we nearly made with the dates. ...