Lisbon to Algarve Road Trip: The Alentejo Coast (4 Days)

Most people do Lisbon to the Algarve on the A2 in under three hours and pay about €23–24 in tolls for the privilege. This is the other version: 300 km down the Alentejo coast over four days, on free national roads, through the emptiest stretch of shoreline in southern Europe.

You drive on the right. Portugal has no vignette. The 25 de Abril bridge out of Lisbon is tolled northbound only — heading south you cross for nothing — and the A22 across the Algarve has been toll-free since January 2025, so if you stay off the A2 this trip costs almost nothing in tolls. Where Portugal still catches people out is the electronic-only pórtico roads elsewhere in the country: those have no booths, so a rental needs a Via Verde transponder or a plate pre-registered through Easytoll, or the tolls arrive later as fines.

Day 1 — Lisbon to Comporta (110 km)

Cross the Tagus and take the N379-1 over the Arrábida ridge — a narrow cliff road above a run of white-sand coves, Portinho da Arrábida and Praia dos Galapinhos among them. It is slow, single-lane in places, and the best half-hour of the day.

Drop into Setúbal for lunch on the fish quay, then head inland around the Sado estuary through Alcácer do Sal, a white town under a castle on the river. Finish at Comporta, where rice paddies run right up to the umbrella pines and the beach behind them is almost empty.

Day 2 — Comporta to Vila Nova de Milfontes (100 km)

South on the N261 and N390 into the Southwest Alentejo and Vicentine Coast Natural Park, which protects effectively the whole of this coastline. The road runs a few kilometres inland through cork oak and eucalyptus; the turnoffs to the sea are the point.

Sleep at Vila Nova de Milfontes, a white town at the mouth of the Mira river with a river beach on one side and the Atlantic on the other. The Fishermen’s Trail — the coastal half of the Rota Vicentina — passes through, so an hour on foot along the cliffs is easy to add.

Day 3 — Milfontes to Lagos (90 km)

The best driving day. Take the N120 south through Odemira, then down to Odeceixe, where the beach sits in a river valley and the regional border runs through it — you go to sleep in the Alentejo and wake up in the Algarve.

Continue through Aljezur, under its ruined Moorish castle, and cross the last hills to Lagos. Park outside the old walls: the centre is tight, one-way and full by mid-morning in summer.

Day 4 — Lagos, Sagres and Cabo de São Vicente (local)

No transfer today. Walk the Ponta da Piedade headland and the stairs down to Praia do Camilo, then drive out west on the N125 and N268 to Sagres and Cabo de São Vicente, the southwesternmost point of mainland Europe, where the cliffs drop straight into the Atlantic and the wind rarely stops. Go late — the sunset there is the reason people stay an extra night.

Costs

Use the cost calculator to price fuel and nights for your exact dates. As a rough guide: expect €70–130 per night, higher in Lagos in August and on the Comporta strip year-round, plus fuel for about 300 km. Tolls on this routing are close to zero — the saving against the A2 roughly pays for a night.