If you love travel, history, and problem-solving, then I have just the thing to make your next trip to Portugal extra fun: an app called Explorial. Explorial is currently available in 7 cities in Portugal including some of my favorite cities in the country including Porto, Lisbon, Coimbra, and Óbidos – with more to come. It’s also available in plenty of other cities in other countries. So what is it, and why do I love it?
I tried Explorial’s “Baixa-Chiado” trail in downtown Lisbon first with two friends, and then the Cascais trail with six friends. The whole process is very simple: buy your tickets online as much time in advance as you want; each participant downloads the Explorial app before you start; and then you meet at the starting point when you’re ready to go. The app guides to “must visit” locations, while giving you historical and cultural information. You have to answer questions based on what you’ve read and what you see around you. Some of the questions have clues, some involve problem-solving, and others involve observation. You can also answer team tasks for extra points. There are also photo challenges, which you can opt in or out of (if you opt in, you decide whether your photos remain private to just your team or if they can be used by Explorial).
The verdict: I thought I knew a fair amount about Lisbon, but even I learned new and interesting things about my hometown. If it’s your first time visiting somewhere, Explorial is a really fun way to learn about that town. Aside from the interesting local knowledge you gain, you also get a mini guided tour of the city. Even though I did it with friends, I highly recommend it for families with kids old enough to read. The app even took me to places that can be tricky for tourists to find, such as the Santa Justa Lift, where the views are spectacular. In Cascais, I went down some streets I’d never been to and might never have gone, if not for the app.
At the end of the game (which takes approximately 1.5 – 2 hours), you see the final team score as well as the individual players’ scores. You can also see how many steps you’ve taken and how you compare with other teams that have done the same trail.
Now that I’ve tried Explorial twice, I have a few tips so you can get the best Explorial experience:
- If you find a spot you like, take a little break. Speed only matters when answering questions, but the time in between each question doesn’t impact your individual or your team score. The point of the app is to explore the city and learn more about it than you would’ve just by walking around and seeing the sights, so stop anytime you like. In one of the trails, we stopped twice for drinks and a chat; on the other trail, we kept going and had a relaxed lunch afterwards.
- If you want to get competitive (say for a bachelor/bachelorette party activity) get a group of people and split into two teams. See who can get the highest score. The losing team buys the winners some pastéis de nata, or a ginjinha in a chocolate cup!
- Choose a time of day and year when you don’t mind being outside and walking.
- For the team challenges, only one person from the team can answer, so make sure that whoever answers, checks in with everyone else before submitting the answer. Think of the team challenges as “we win together, and we lose together”. Admittedly, it’s actually kind of fun when someone decides to “go rogue” and answer for the team without consulting the others.
- Each question is timed: the faster you answer a question, the more points you get.
- Lastly, wear comfortable walking shoes.
You can buy Explorial tickets directly through this link (or the tickets button in this post) for the exact same price as on the Explorial website. But if you buy them through my link, I make a small commission which goes straight to the cost of running my website, allowing me to produce ad-free content for you.
