Lisbon eSIM — plans from ₹299.00

Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS) is unusually close to the city, and the red metro line starts inside the terminal, which is why so many arrivals are on a train within fifteen minutes of clearing customs. Operator shops in arrivals do sell prepaid Portuguese SIMs, but the queue moves at the speed of a full A320 and the packages are sized for residents, not for a four-night city break.

From the airport, the red line runs to Alameda and Sao Sebastiao for connections across the network, while Uber, Bolt and FREE NOW all operate in Lisbon and pick up from the departures level. The thing that catches people out is the last two hundred metres: Alfama and Bairro Alto are stairs, tiles and lanes too narrow for cars, so you will be walking with a map in your hand. An eSIM installed at home over Wi-Fi means that map works the moment you land, since validity starts when your phone first connects to a Portuguese network.

Portugal's networks are MEO, NOS and Vodafone Portugal, and your plan connects to a partner and holds the strongest signal. Lisbon is comprehensively covered, with 5G across Baixa, Chiado, Avenida da Liberdade, Parque das Nacoes and Belem, and 4G filling the steep older quarters where the hills break line of sight. Metro tunnels and stations carry signal on all four lines. Ferries across the Tagus to Cacilhas and Trafaria stay connected the whole way. On day trips, the Cascais and Sintra train lines are covered, though the Pena and Monserrate woods above Sintra have genuine dead spots, and the Arrabida coast road dips behind the headlands.

Download an offline map of central Lisbon before you arrive, because the Alfama in particular is a maze of unnamed stairways where GPS wanders between buildings and a stalled map leaves you guessing. Keep data for Bolt and Uber, the Carris and metro apps, and restaurant bookings, which are increasingly online only. Cafe Wi-Fi is common but often slow at peak hours, and hotel Wi-Fi is good. A hotspot comfortably runs a laptop, and Lisbon has a large remote-working crowd who do exactly that. Two notes: tram 28 is heavily pickpocketed, so keep your phone in hand rather than a back pocket, and hill walking drains batteries fast. Porto uses the same Portugal eSIM.