Travel
Travel
A Week in Lisbon: The City That Slows You Down
Lisbon rewards the visitor who has nowhere to be. The light is extraordinary, the hills are punishing, and the city gives back exactly as much as you give it.
I arrived in Lisbon expecting something like every other European capital: beautiful, expensive, slightly too full of people exactly like me. I was half right. Beautiful, yes. But Lisbon operates at a pace I wasn't prepared for — slower than I expected, more human than I was used to, generously indifferent to the urgency visitors bring with them.
The city is built on seven hills, which means every walk involves a decision about how much effort you want to make. I found I wanted to make quite a lot of effort. Not because the trams are unreliable (they are) or the Ubers slow (they are also that), but because the streets, discovered on foot, are the point. The miradouros — the city's hilltop viewpoints — are one of the few tourist things that are also genuinely, privately pleasurable.
Where to stay
Príncipe Real is where I want to be every time. It has the bookshops, the antique dealers, the garden that seems to belong to the neighbourhood rather than to anyone in particular. The restaurants are better than they need to be and less expensive than they would be in any other European capital with comparable food.
Lisbon is the city that rewards returning. The first time you see it. The second time you understand it. The third time you feel at home.
The things not worth rushing: Belém (go on a Tuesday morning, before the tour buses), the Museu Nacional do Azulejo (quieter than it should be, more beautiful than you'll expect), the fish market at Mercado da Ribeira if you go for the market and not the food hall. The things genuinely worth your time: the Fado shows in Mouraria that haven't been in a guidebook yet, the wine bars in Bica that are too small to be famous, the ferry to Cacilhas and back just for the light on the water.
Lisbon does not try to impress you. This, in the end, is what I find most impressive about it.
The neighbourhoods beyond Alfama
Alfama gets the photographs — the viewpoints, the trams, the azulejos covering every surface — but Lisbon's character is distributed more widely than the tourist footprint suggests. Mouraria, directly adjacent, is the older Moorish quarter and has the specific quality of a neighbourhood being discovered: good restaurants appearing between the laundry and the hardware shops, a population that is local and curious in equal measure. Eat dinner there rather than in Alfama and you will be at different tables from different people.
Príncipe Real is the neighbourhood for the afternoon. Wide streets, plane trees, a garden with a Sunday antiques market that runs along its perimeter. The wine shops and independent bookshops here are among the best in the city. LX Factory, the repurposed industrial complex in Alcântara, is worth a Sunday morning — the market is good, the bookshop inside is extraordinary, and the brunch places are significantly better than those nearer the centre. Take the tram 15E from Praça da Figueira and get off at the river.
Belém deserves more time than most visitors give it. Yes, the Jerónimos Monastery and the Tower of Belém are the landmarks. But the wider neighbourhood — quiet, residential, pressed against the water — has a quality that the centre lacks. Walk west from the monastery along the river for twenty minutes. There is almost nothing there: a few fishermen, a dog, the water, the bridge in the distance. This is Lisbon being a city rather than a destination, and it is worth the tram ride out.
What to eat and when
Lunch is the meal in Lisbon. The prato do dia — the daily special, usually a generous main course with bread, soup, a drink, and sometimes a dessert — appears in almost every neighbourhood restaurant between noon and three, and it costs between seven and twelve euros. It is the best-value meal in Europe and the clearest window into what the city actually eats. Order it without looking at anything else on the menu. Ask what the fish is today. It will be whatever came in this morning, and it will be better than anything on the printed menu.
The pastel de nata question: yes, the ones at Pastéis de Belém are the originals and yes, the queue is worth it. But the ones at the small pastelaria three streets from wherever you are staying will also be good, will require no queue, and will be eaten warm and slightly imperfect in the way that the best pastéis de nata always are. The point is the pastry, not the provenance. Eat one every morning. It is the correct start to a Lisbon day.
Ginjinha — the sour cherry liqueur sold from small hole-in-the-wall shops in the Baixa — should be tried once, ideally at eleven in the morning when this is slightly absurd and therefore perfectly right. The small ceramic shot glass costs a euro. You drink it standing in the street. This is the most Lisbon thing you can do in three minutes, and it will make every subsequent activity feel like part of the same excellent day.
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