My number 1 tip for Portugal

During February half term, my husband, daughter and I had a lovely holiday to Lisbon in Portugal. I have shared my tips about the best places to visit here, but here’s my absolute number 1 tip for Lisbon and for Portugal.

YOU NEED CASH.

Back in the day, when we went on holiday abroad, we would always stock up on the local currency beforehand. Some readers may even remember the days of travellers’ cheques, which you had to exchange for cash in a local bureau de change. In more recent years, we might have got euros from an ATM later in our holiday, but would also start off with a couple of hundred quids’ worth of euros brought from home.

But since Covid, Britain has become a largely cashless society. No longer are card purchases restricted to over £5. You can pay for a packet of sweets with a card if you want to. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who doesn’t even always carry my card any more.

BECAUSE WE CAN PAY FOR THINGS WITH OUR PHONES!

In Portugal? Not so much.

Shortly after we arrived in Lisbon, we nipped into a convenience store to buy a couple of bottles of water. They wouldn’t accept payment on the phone. In fact, they wouldn’t even accept payment by card. So we couldn’t buy the water there.

One of the restaurants we had our eye on was cash only. A restaurant! You can understand it a bit more for a convenience store where we’re only spending a couple of euros, but a restaurant? Realistically, we’d be spending quite a lot of money in there.

So the next morning, we got 100 euros out of the ATM.

The first cash I spent was breaking into a 10 euro note to pay the 50 cents to go to the toilet. Almost literally spending a penny.

We paid for lunch and our entrance to Torre de Belem by card. Then we tried to get public transport back to our hotel…

My husband set off on his own, as he didn’t want to go to a nearby art gallery. He missed his first train in the ticket queue. Then he missed his second train in the ticket queue.

When he finally made it to the front of the queue for the ticket machine, he discovered it didn’t take cards. Well that was OK, he had cash. (At this point, I must point out that the machine should have taken cards and people were trying to use their cards, slowing the queue down further.)

AND IT TURNED OUT THE MACHINE DIDN’T EVEN TAKE NOTES. It only took coins. What tourist who has been in the country less than a day has coins to spend on a train ticket?

So he had to go to the other platform to a machine which actually took notes.

He explained all the difficulties to me, so it would be much easier for me to buy a ticket. I went to the right ticket machine (the one that actually took notes). But it wouldn’t give change. And I was trying to pay for a 1,35 train ticket with a 20 euro note.

So I went back to the back of the queue and tried again with a 5 euro note. Except I couldn’t buy two tickets at once (one for me and one for my daughter). And because it wouldn’t give change, I would have ended up spending 5 euros on one ticket and 20 euros on the other.

So we left the station and walked nearly a mile down a busy road before we managed to hail a taxi. It cost less than 8 euros to get to our hotel. We paid it in cash of course.