Cascais

Overview

Cascais is where Lisbon goes to the beach, and has been since King Luís I moved his court to the fishing village every September from the 1870s and the nobility followed him; exiled kings came later, Edward VIII, Umberto of Italy, Juan Carlos of Spain, and the casino at Estoril next door gave Ian Fleming the idea for Casino Royale. Today it is a smart town of 214,000 in the municipality at the mouth of the Tagus, 40 minutes from the capital by train along the coast, with a marina, a citadel, three small beaches in the bay and, 5 km on, the Atlantic proper at Guincho.

It is the dormitory of Lisbon’s international set and one of the most expensive addresses in the country, which shows in the restaurants; it is also the easy base for a beach-and-city week, with Sintra reached by the bus over the cape and Lisbon by the train.

Neighbourhoods

The old town and the bay

The pedestrian centre between the station, the Praça 5 de Octubre and the citadel holds the restaurants, the bars, the shops on the Rua Frederico Arouca and the three beaches of the bay, Ribeira, Rainha and Conceição, which are small, sheltered and busy; the marina is beyond the fort. The seafront road, the corso, is loud at night, so ask for a room facing away from it.

Uphill

Above the centre the cobbled residential streets climb past villas and gardens, and the genuine eating houses are up here rather than on the front.

Estoril and the Linha

The coast line east of Cascais, the Linha, is a string of beach suburbs, Estoril, São João, Parede, Carcavelos, each with a station and a beach; Estoril is the hotel-and-casino end and Carcavelos has the biggest beach and the surf schools.

Guincho and the park

West of the marina the town gives way to the natural park, the golf estates of Quinta da Marinha, the Guincho dunes and the road to Cabo da Roca; the hotels here are resorts with a car in mind.

See & do

The town and the citadel

The Cidadela fort dominates the harbour, and the old town behind it is a small grid of pedestrian streets and painted houses with the museums a walk apart: the Museu do Mar for the fishing history, the Condes de Castro Guimarães palace in its park with a library of 25,000 volumes, the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, the red pyramid museum of the painter’s work, €3, and the free museum in the town hall on the Praça 5 de Outubro that is the best introduction to the place. The lighthouse museum, in an old fort beside a working light, and the Parque Palmela with its open-air concerts are the others.

Boca do Inferno and the coast road

The seafront path and cycle lane leave the marina along the Avenida Rei Humberto II de Itália and reach the Boca do Inferno, the Mouth of Hell, in a few minutes: a collapsed sea cave where the swell booms on rough days, filmed in 1896 as one of the first moving pictures of a wave and the scene of the occultist Aleister Crowley’s faked suicide in 1930. The path continues along the cliffs and dunes to Guincho, with the north-west wind in your face on the way out and behind you on the way back.

Guincho

Praia do Guincho is an 800 m Atlantic beach in the Sintra-Cascais natural park, which has kept it undeveloped: strong north winds and swells in summer make it a windsurfing and kitesurfing beach that once hosted the world cup, winter easterlies and bigger swells make it a surf beach, and at no time is it a beach for small children, which is part of its appeal. It opens the 1969 Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and looks the same.

Food & drink

Cod, sea bass and squid are the dishes, and bacalhau comes in its hundred recipes; the meat dish of the coast is roast suckling pig from Negrais or pork Mercês-style. Good value is hard to find in the centre, where the Indian, Italian and English restaurants are for the residents who miss home; the tastiest places are the modest ones in the residential streets uphill or along the coast with fresh fish and a view, and one fish restaurant near the centre has been at it since 1964. The Michelin-starred table is the Fortaleza do Guincho, in a fort above the beach, at around €100 to €140.

The sweets are the areias de Cascais, sandy butter biscuits, alongside Sintra’s queijadas and travesseiros, and the wines to ask for are the rare local ones, Carcavelos and Colares, made in tiny quantities on this coast.

Nightlife

Cascais has a nightlife out of proportion to its size because the younger international crowd lives here: the bars of the old town’s pedestrian streets and the seafront run late in summer, the casino at Estoril has its shows and tables, and the beach bars along the Linha fill on hot nights. For clubs the last train to Lisbon matters; check the timetable.

When to go

June to September. Beach season, warm and dry, the bay beaches full and Guincho windy every afternoon; the town is at its liveliest and its most expensive.

April to May, October. Mild, with the Estoril Open in spring, the golf courses at their best and the coast path a pleasure; the sea is cold.

November to March. The surf months at Guincho, with big swells and east winds in December; the town is quiet, the hotels cheap and the light on the bay at its clearest.

Getting there

By train. The Linha de Cascais from Lisbon’s Cais do Sodré runs along the river and the coast to Cascais station in about 40 minutes, with the Navegante card or a paper return of a few euros; bikes travel free. A Carris bus links Cais do Sodré with the airport every 20 minutes for the connection.

By road. The A5 motorway from Lisbon; from the airport the drive is 30 minutes off-peak and up to 75 in the rush hour. The Scotturb 403 bus comes over the cape from Sintra. The Cascais aerodrome at Tires has a few Sevenair flights from Bragança, Portimão, Vila Real and Viseu.

Getting around

The town is walkable end to end. The municipal bus 27 loops the sights including the Boca do Inferno for €2 on board, the regional buses leave from the terminal under the shopping centre opposite the station, and taxis are easy to find. Bikes are the local habit: the council’s BiCas scheme lends them free against ID and an address, when there are any left and in whatever condition, and rental bikes wait outside the station; the shared path to Guincho is flat and the ride there and back is the thing to do.

Where to stay

The Albatroz, five old houses joined above the sea in the centre, and the 1930s Palácio in Estoril with its gardens are the classic addresses; Vila Galé and Pestana have four-stars by the marina and on the seafront, mid-range hotels with pools sit a block or two back from the beach in Estoril, and apartment blocks are going up everywhere. Rooms on the corso are noisy at night; those facing the pool or the garden are not.

Practical info

The tourist office in the centre has the bike information, the bus timetables and the maps for the coast path. Guincho is not for swimming or for children, and the bay beaches are small enough to be crowded by 11:00 in August; Carcavelos, three stops back towards Lisbon, is the big one. The last train to Cais do Sodré is the constraint on a night out. For money, plugs and pharmacies see the Portugal guide.