Two Weeks of Solo Travel Through Lisbon — What I Learned

Lisbon is a city that asks you to slow down whether you want to or not. The hills make it impossible to walk fast. The trams stop without warning. The pastel de nata is an excuse to sit somewhere and write.

I went there in February for two weeks with a single rule: no agenda after 11am. The mornings were for the things every guidebook tells you about — Belém, Alfama, the tile museum, the seven hills. The afternoons were for whatever happened next.

What happened next was the thing the guidebook was reaching for and could not name.

The Morning Routine That Made the Trip

I would write for an hour before breakfast. Then walk to wherever the morning was going to take me. Then eat. Then read. Then walk back.

I have written more in those two weeks than in the previous two months. Travel as productivity hack is a terrible thing to say out loud and a true thing to discover.

The Conversation in the Bookshop

The owner of Livraria Bertrand on a Tuesday told me that the people who buy poetry in Lisbon are mostly tourists. The people who live there read novels. He thought this was funny.

I bought a Pessoa anyway. I am writing this paragraph from the same bench where I read the first poem.