Public Transport “Roadtrip” in Portugal

If you want to come to Portugal and travel around the country, only considering the mainland, it is super possible to do it using public transport or let’s better without a car or the need of taking a plane. The two main options that you have to do this are traveling the country by train or bus, and here we will tell you all you need to know about them to do your road trip.

🚆Train: the country is mostly well connected by the train system and its domestic routes, especially within the big cities but they don’t reach all the small cities and towns. As is common in European countries, and in Portugal too, you can find either regional trains or high-speed ones. The latter are usually more pricey but also faster than the regional ones. In a nutshell, it is possible to go by train from the very north to the southernmost point of the country.

If we consider the departure point as Lisbon, here are some of the most popular domestic train routes:

• Lisbon to Braga: 3h16min in high-speed train and 7h50min in regional train.
• Lisbon to Coimbra: 1h40min in high-speed train and 3h30min in regional train.
• Lisbon to Faro: 3h30min in high-speed train
• Lisbon to Porto: 2h35min in high-speed train and 6h40min in regional train.

Also, there is an international train route in the country, that goes from Porto to Vigo in Spain, which takes 2h15min to reach the destination.

There are two main stations in the country, from there you can reach all the main cities in Portugal, in Lisbon is the train station of Santa Apolónia and in Porto is the train station of Campanha. But if by any chance you’re around Porto downtown, don’t miss out the opportunity to go and have a look at the São Bento train station, which is well known as the most beautiful train station in the whole country, with a very portuguese style full of azulejos.

If you want to check time tables or purchase train tickets you can do it on the website Comboios de Portugal (https://www.cp.pt/passageiros/en/buy-tickets), their app or directly at the train stations. The prices may vary depending on where you are going based on the distance and the type of train you will take, but in general it is not that expensive and is on average comparable to the prices in southern Europe. For example, crossing the country could be around €30 but prices increase if you choose a high-speed train. But if you’re only traveling within the same city, a one-way ticket can cost you €2 or even cheaper!

🚌 Bus: this will always be the cheapest option to travel, but also the one that takes longer, considering the number of stops, the traffic jams and so on, but despite that doesn’t take much longer if you compare it to the regional trains, also the buses will take you almost everywhere in the country. The bus network in Portugal is composed of two types of buses, the coaches that make longer trips and the local buses that connect smaller towns with each other.

The most popular domestic bus routes departing from lisbon are the following:

• Lisbon to Porto: 3h15min
• Lisbon to Faro: 3h30min

However, there are also some international routes that are very convenient and popular to do by bus such as:

• Lisbon to Madrid: from 8h
• Lisbon to Seville: 6h40min

To buy the tickets you should go on the Flixbus site, Rede Expressos or their apps on your phone, also you can purchase them on some bus stations that have bus companies offices around.

The prices of the buses are similar to train ones and quite affordable, it can start from €5 from one main city to another and international ones could go from €20.

Also, if you want to consider different options at the same time to decide which means of transport you'd like to use for your road trip you can check out the website or app Omio which is a very easy-to-use and trustable site where you can put your departure and arrival place and date and you will get almost all the options available to do your trip, either bus, train, or Blabla car, a site that enables you to take a spot in a car pooling.

Now that you know all about how to do a road trip by public transport in Portugal, if you choose to travel by bus, train or other kind of transport is up to you, depending on what you like, the time and budget you have available, just don’t forget to make the best out of it.