I spent a month in Portugal in July 2017, here are my Lisbon digital nomad tips including travel, accommodation, cafes and co-working spaces.
Travel
TAP were great – good price, fresh looking plane and a free inflight snack. Sketchy landing at Lisbon due to crosswinds!
The Metro is cheap and easy, the red line runs from airport all the way into the city centre for around €1.50. Ticket machine sells you a Viva Viagem card that you can recharge and then use on Metro, buses, trains, trams and boats.
Lisbon is fairly walkable with the option to get the Metro or a tram if you’ve got bags or it’s too hot. Electric TukTuks and a variety of other strange vehicles are available too.
Uber is a thing here and air conditioned cars are a good alternative to walking or the Metro when it’s hot. Trips around the city were around €4.
Buses and modern trams were regular and easy to use with the same Viva Viagem card (around €1.50 a trip).
I took the train to Porto after my stay here and it was amazing. Fare was around €25 booked in advance for first class and it took around 2.5hrs. The tilting train got up to 240km/h and had free (terrible) wifi and a table to work from.
Safety
Lisbon is apparently very safe to walk around, even in the narrow alleyways and dark streets. Tourist spots feature annoying and persistent ‘drug dealers’ selling herbs. No I don’t want any candle wax or Rosemary, but thanks for asking every five minutes.
SIM cards
Vodafone looks like €15 for 15 days with unlimited data, I just used my UK GiffGaff one though as since July 2017 free roaming has been available throughout Europe on all networks.
Digital Nomads in Lisbon
As of July 2017 there was a huge digital nomad scene here, with many coworking spaces and a very active Lisbon Digital Nomads Meetup group with meals, coworking and drinking events throughout the week. There are also the Digital Nomads Portugal and Lisbon Digital Nomads Facebook groups (that are mostly people spamming and looking for places to live..)
Coworking spaces in Lisbon
Second Home
Looks incredible and they use hundreds of plants instead of air conditioning. No trial day or day passes and I was informed that they only accept people longer term who will be part of the community. Fine.
Cowork Central
Lots of plants, new bean to cup coffee machine, aircon, great light and views over the river. 90/90 internet. Slack channel with jobs, events & chat. I loved it here, the internet is ridiculously fast and I ended up coming back a few times. The guys invited me out for pizza and they do surf trips. Reservation is recommended as it fills up quick.
Drinks and snacks: Free tea, coffee (bean to cup machine) and water
Costs: €15 per day. €210 a month.
Trial: Free day
Accommodation option: Nope
Avila
Amazing facilities, peace and quiet and great value. Looks more like a business centre than a co-working place – felt a bit of a scruff in my shorts! Air conditioning, free fruit, coffee machine and sun terrace.
The only reason I didn’t sign up was the lack of community and the Internet was playing silly fuckers for me the day I went. I couldn’t log in to various websites I need to run my business. Not sure if this is the way it is or just a temporary problem.
Drinks and snacks: Free tea, coffee (bean to cup machine) and water
Costs: €80+VAT for the month
Trial: Free day
Accommodation option: Nope
Beta-I
More of a startup incubator and coding school than co-working, but we had a coworking day organised by Lisbon Digital Nomads. Unfortunately the stools on the coworking day were terrible for posture, but I think they offer proper desks for paid coworkers.
I went to a couple of coding events at Beta-i including an intro to Javascript evening and a taster for the Le Wagon bootcamp that runs here, which covered UX, landing page build, Git version control and basic Ruby.
They also have a TGIF social meet on a Friday (obvs) with beers on the terrace.
Drinks and snacks: Coffee pod machines (bring your own pods) and water
Costs: €10 a day, €75-100 a month
Trial: Free day
Accommodation option: Nope
Cowork Lisboa at the LX Factory
I found this place a bit visually chaotic but they had solid internet, good kitchen facilities and it was busy. It’s off to the West of the city with lots of trams and buses available. Internet download speed was decent but upload speed was slow. Good chairs.
Drinks and snacks: Free coffee (didn’t try it as I had one from the excellent Wish cafe across the street) and free chilled water.
Costs: €12 a day, from €100 a month
Trial: Free day
Accommodation option: Nope
ImpactHub
Bare looking industrial unit that needs some soft furnishings. It’s a work in progress and the finished version looks amazing. Chairs were pretty bad for posture. Internet was very slow and hampered my productivity here. No aircon.
Drinks and snacks: Bean to cup coffee at 50c a cup, tap water but no water cooler.
Costs: €100-€130 a month depending on whether you want office hours or 24/7 access. I went here for free as part of the Lisbon Digital Nomads meetup so not sure about free trial day or day passes.
Trial: Free day
Accommodation option: Nope
Cafes
I didn’t find many nomad friendly cafes in the tourist areas. Popping out a laptop and mooching their wifi for half a day doesn’t fit with the crowds and I found them too hectic to concentrate.
Brick cafe
One of the highest rated coffee shops on Google Maps, I thought the coffee was average. Amazing cheese toastie though. OK internet and some other laptop folks around so working from here looks fine.
Cafe Tati
Retro place with amazing salads. Laptop friendly, so-so internet that came and went. Worked from there for an afternoon and got stuff done.
Pois Cafe, Alfama
Great brunch and coffee, lovely mismatched decor and artwork but terrible internet. Also too busy with tourists to stay here and work.
Fabrica, Alfama
Famous for their freshly made croissants, people were queuing out of the door at weekends. Would be good off peak. Great coffee.
Fabrica Coffee Roasters
Incredible coffee and pastries, no wifi but looks like it’s OK to work from here too.
Wish Slow Coffee House, LX Factory
Amazing coffee (some of the best I found in Lisbon) and good range of food. Didn’t work from here but it looks like they would be OK with it.
Accommodation
Expensive (or shitty) AirBnbs aimed at tourists, with short term flats seemingly hard to find. I got lucky as a nomad chum had a room free in her flat for a few weeks. Erasmus flats look basic and terrible, plus they sell the package as being a massive piss up which isn’t ideal for a 40yr old with a business to run.
There are some companies offering accommodation and coworking packages aimed at digital nomads, with the associated high costs.
Check out the digital nomad groups and international accommodation Facebook groups but be ready for a struggle. Mentioning budget and being flexible with location will help.
Things to see
There are a ton of things to see in Lisbon, many of which you’ll see while walking around. There are free walking tours around the city as well as the We Hate Tourism tours. Buildings are beautiful and the old trams are cute. Trying to get on a number 28 tram in July was futile.
There’s a Meetup group called Lisbon Explorers who do beach trips and hikes in the areas surrounding Lisbon. I did this every weekend to get some nature and went to a few places around Sintra and Cascais and a trip to Cabo Da Roca, the westernmost point of Europe.
I spent an afternoon at MAAT and found the buildings more interesting than most of the exhibitions.
Summary
I hope you’ve found these Lisbon digital nomad tips useful. I had a great time in Lisbon as there’s lots to see and do as well as good coworking scene and tons of tech and social Meetups. I’ll be back for sure.