Issue 41: Lisbon, in October
The tourists have gone home, the light has gone gold, and the 28 tram is finally worth the wait...
Go in October. I will say that once and then get on with it, because everyone says it about everywhere and it is only true of a few places. Lisbon is one.
The tram
The 28 is the one on the postcards and in summer it is a queue with a tram at the end of it. In October you get on. Ride it end to end once, for the hills, and then never again, because the hills are better walked.
The light
Lisbon faces south over a river the width of a sea. In October the sun sits low enough that the tiles on the buildings throw it back at you for most of the afternoon. Photographers call this the golden hour. In Lisbon it lasts about four.
Where to eat
- A tasca in Graça with no name on the door and a handwritten menu. Ask for whatever is on the stove.
- The pastel de nata place everyone names, at seven in the morning, when it is a bakery and not a queue.
- Anything grilled, on the Cais, with the ferries going past.
A city is a light and a slope. Lisbon has both and knows it.
One thing
Take the ferry to Cacilhas and look back. Every city should be seen from across its water once, and Lisbon more than most.
One place, every Thursday
The letter, in your inbox, before it is on the site. Nothing else, ever.
Writes Signal from wherever he was last Thursday. Eleven years, sixty countries, one forty-litre bag.
Signal
A weekly travel letter: one place, one week, one opinion.