Using an eSIM in Lisbon

What Lisbon is like on a phone

Lisbon draws people for three or four nights, remote workers who stay a month, and cruise passengers ashore for the middle of the day. It is built over several hills at the mouth of the Tagus, so some districts sit high with a long view while others lie in the folds between, and the two feel quite different. Coverage across town is even, but the gradient makes map-following treacherous: the shortest line on screen can turn out to be several hundred steps.

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Humberto Delgado (LIS) is unusually close to town and links straight in on the red metro line. Long-distance trains use Oriente or Santa Apolónia, and cruise ships berth near Alfama. Switch the eSIM on in the terminal, because a lot of accommodation is up a hill and you will need to message the host before you get there. On the metro in, the tunnels cut out and hand it back at each station. Crossing the river by ferry from the far bank, you will notice a slight dip out in the middle of the water.

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The miradouros on the hilltops are the best-connected places in the city, high and open. The lanes of Alfama — narrow, crooked, houses stacked up the slope — slide the map pin until finding your way is genuinely hard. On tram 28 through the old districts the speed sags when the car is full and hemmed into a tight street. Metro platforms work and the tunnels do not. Belém, open along the river, runs smoothly for most of the day.

What a day here costs in data

You open the map more often here than in a flat city, because you keep checking whether a route is a slope or a staircase, on top of tram times, restaurant bookings and the burst of photographs every viewpoint produces. That usually comes to about 1 to 1.5GB a day. Remote workers spend considerably more, particularly if they take calls from cafés and fall back on the mobile line rather than unreliable Wi-Fi.

Districts travellers ask about

• Baixa and Chiado — The flat grid between two hills; wide streets keep it steady, and it is the easiest part of town for sorting bookings or calling a car.
• Alfama — A hillside maze where houses stack up and a lane becomes a staircase without warning; the pin is usually wrong enough that following the posted signs works better.
• Bairro Alto and Príncipe Real — High on the hill and well served, though on Friday and Saturday nights, with the narrow streets full, the bandwidth is shared out and the speed falls away late on.
• Belém — Open riverside with broad esplanades and a good connection throughout, though it feels slower when the queues outside the pastry shop and the monastery are at their longest.

Day trips out of the city

• Sintra — The suburban train holds a connection, but up on the wooded, often misty hill the speed drops and parts of the palace gardens have almost nothing; have tickets and entry times saved beforehand.
• Cascais — The coastal railway runs in the open with the sea in view the whole way, so it stays consistently good, and even the windy cliffs at Boca do Inferno hold up.
• Setúbal and Arrábida — You cross by bridge or by boat, and mid-river it thins; the road along the Arrábida ridge down to the small coves has stretches where the hill cuts the signal out.