From Lisbon (South) to Leiria
This is a step by step guide for you giving the information how to get to Leiria from the city of Lisbon. Lisbon airport (Aeroporto de Lisboa) is likely the place where you land when you arrive to Portugal.
Getting from Lisbon to Leiria was one of those things that I was a bit concerned about when I was traveling because I was on my own and my Portuguese was… well almost non-existent. If you’re traveling on your own and no-one is picking you up from the airport you might need this step to step guide to help you.
From Lisbon you can get to Leiria basically in three ways: by bus (the easiest), by train (not recommended but possible) or by renting a car. I used the bus option as it seemed easily the best option.
Getting to the bus station
The ‘problem’ here isn’t going with the bus but rather getting to the station. This thing also has three options: taking a taxi, metro or the airport bus. I have only experience on the first one as I have made this journey only once so far. The problem with taxi is that the taxi drivers are often those older men who don’t speak or understand any English. If you can communicate in Portuguese you have a huge benefit: you can get to places easily and are more likely to pay much less than the insecure one who doesn’t know the language. It’s a bit sad when you think about it but the ‘rich foreigner’ will pay more and that happens everywhere I think. I think that I paid something like 10 euros for my trip and locals might pay under 5 euros for the same but that’s how it goes… My tip here is to try to learn some Portuguese and being confident. This is something that I will try when I go back to Lisbon and visit Finland in the summer. It’ll be interesting to see how much I can influence with my own acting. If you don’t know any Portuguese you can always write the address of the bus station on a note and show it to the driver. I ended up drawing a picture of a bus as we had a huge language barrier with my taxi driver. Did the trick.
The right bus station and the address is the following:
Terminal Rodoviário de Sete Rios
Praça Marechal Humberto Delgado – Estrada das Laranjeiras 1500-423 LISBOA
Metro
Like I said: I don’t have any experience on traveling from the airport to the stations with metro but that is one of the options for you. To your assistance here are the metro routes:
There are two metros available for you: one in the airport and another one close by called Jardim Zoológico/Sete Rios.
You can plan your route using the information of journey of your own in this website:
Using the metro takes you to the bus station in no time.
Airport buses
Carris city bus 744 will take you to Gare Oriente; Aerobus 2 goes to the Sete Rios bus terminal. The Aerobus routes are operated by special buses of Yellowbus Tours and are not part of the city bus network. Aerobus tickets cost €3,15. Full details including route maps at http://www.yellowbustours.com/en/cities/lisbon/airport-transport/ Cash fare on Carris buses is €1,80 for any journey.
The bus to Leiria
This is the point where you already are in the right bus station. In terms of buying the bus ticket you have at least two options available: buying the ticket from the rear corner of the station or buy the ticket online with your smartphone. You cannot buy the ticket from a driver. There is a Multibanco ATM in the station available. With Multibanco you are able to withdraw cash with most debit and credit cards. More details about the functioning cards can be found here (in Portuguese):
http://www.multibanco.pt/pt/multibanco/informacao/faq.html
You can find the bus scheludes and the online ticket option here:
http://www.rede-expressos.pt/default.aspx
The bus trip costs you about 10 euros.
The bus journey is quite simple thing. Just enjoy the ride and scenes for one and half to two hours.
The bus station of Leiria is close to the centre of the city so you should not have big problems in getting to your accommodation when you have arrived to the city of Leiria. There are multiple hotels in the centre of the city and local people will gladly help you if you are having some problems in finding your accommodation.
The train
Leiria´s train service is poor because the city is not on any of the main lines and only four daily trains each way stop at its rather forlorn station.
Using the train is not recommended but it is possible. The problems with trains are that they go to Leiria quite rarely and also the trip to Leiria takes much longer than the bus ride takes. You will also have to make possibly even several train swaps during your trip as you can see from the photo. In my opinion: don’t do it.
More info about the trains can be found from the official web site of Portuguese railways:
