A Long Weekend in Lisbon

We landed on a Thursday morning with no real plan beyond “walk until we’re hungry, then eat.” Lisbon turned out to be the perfect city for that. Every street goes up or down, every corner has a café, and nothing is more than a twenty-minute walk away, even if most of those minutes are uphill.

Getting lost in Alfama

The old neighborhood below the castle is a knot of stairways and alleys that refuse to line up with the map. We gave up on the map by the second afternoon. Laundry hung across the lanes, someone was grilling sardines on a doorstep, and every few turns the buildings opened up onto a view of the river.

The best meal of the trip was at a place with six tables, no menu, and an owner who simply asked, “Fish or meat?”

Belém and the custard tarts

Everyone tells you to go to the famous bakery in Belém, and everyone is right. The line moves faster than it looks. Order more than you think you’ll want, sprinkle the cinnamon on yourself, and eat them on the bench across the street while they’re still warm.

A day in Sintra

We took the train out to Sintra on Saturday. The palaces were wrapped in fog all morning, which made the gardens feel like something out of a storybook. By the afternoon it cleared and we could see all the way to the ocean.

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If you go:

• Wear real shoes. The cobblestones are beautiful and very slippery.
• Buy a rechargeable transit card at the airport; it covers trams, buses and the Sintra train.
• Dinner starts late. Nobody sits down before eight.