Bairro Alto & Baixa, Lisbon

Reflecting on our time in Lisbon, I remembered a movie night I had with my dad when I was 11. We watched My Best Friend’s Wedding and as the final credits rolled he turned to me and said, ‘Val, how would you describe Julia Roberts’ character in one word?’ A little puzzled, I hesitated, and he offered, ‘if you were to ask me, I would say ‘enchanting’, because while she was not wholly good—she did some vindictive things, after all—she was always endearing.’ If I had to describe Lisbon in one word, it would be ‘enchanting’. Like all cities it isn’t wholly good—the graffiti scrawled everywhere, including across some of the historic buildings induced in us a profound and baffled sadness—but as it was with the protagonist in My Best Friend’s Wedding, Lisbon’s foibles ultimately do little to abate its charm.

We started our first day with a stroll to Zarzuela cafe in the central Bairro Alto district, which promised gluten-free Pastel de Nata (Portuguese Egg Tarts). It was lucky we were in pursuit of pastries because the waiter advised that items on the breakfast menu were not available before 12 noon. Mealtimes in Portugal would prove to be a constant source of confusion throughout our stay! When the tarts arrived though, we were thankful that this quirk had spared us from unduly filling up on breakfast savouries: Joel took one bite of the silky, vanilla-infused custard and, with flaky pastry still clinging to his top lip, raised his hand and called for another.

Afterwards, hopped up on tarts, Joel proposed a walk to the Castelo de São Jorge. It was only 2 km away but it took us five hours to get there, because the intervening terrain offered myriad spectacles not to be hastened past. We paused for coffee on the banks of the Tagus river alongside the Reminiscência, a monument to the Portuguese Futurist artist and writer José de Almada Negreiros, who wrote in his piece The Book, ‘I went searching through all the lives for one to copy and none was fit to copy.’ Perhaps we were under his ghostly influence when we broke away from the throng of tourists making the climb up the hill to the castle, opting instead to stroll along the Ribeira das Naus, taking in the vast waterfront and the fetching baby-blue Ministério do Mar (Ministry of the Sea), before wending our way to the Praça do Comércio (Commercial Square). The Commercial Square is an impressive, sprawling cobble-stoned plaza flanked by corn-coloured buildings, and it wowed us with its stately Arco da Rua Augusta: a stone arch built to commemorate the city’s reopening following the Great Lisbon Earthquake and concomitant tsunami on All Saints’ Day in 1755, ending some 75,000 lives. We lingered there long enough to enjoy a gluten-free pizza peppered with Portugal’s famous Piri Piri chilli, and to share a bottle of Portuguese green wine (which was less green, and considerably more delicious than it sounded: think of a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc).

After lunch we figured we’d better get serious about our castle-going, but the route from plaza to castle was via a series of narrow, steep, cobbled lanes fringed by bubble gum-coloured row houses that begged to be photographed, and which sporadically and without much warning opened out into gorgeous haphazard courtyards dotted with tiny cafes, bespectacled people reading newspapers on staircases, and—remarkably, orange trees, heavy with ripe fruit which leant the air a sweet orange peel aroma. Our giddy meandering also saw us discover the Panteão Nacional (Church of Santa Engrácia), and the Santa Maria Maior de Lisboa (Patriarchal Cathedral of Saint Mary Major) quite by accident.

At the crest of São Jorge hill: Castelo de São Jorge. It was built by the Moors in the mid-11^th century, though it underwent significant renovations in the 1920s. Still, in places, the original stones remain, and they offer up glimpses of fossilised fish bones and seashells to observant passers-by. The grounds feature eleven preserved towers and an archaeological site which dates back to the 7^th century, royal palace ruins, and gardens lush with native Portuguese plant species such as umbrella pines, olives, cork oaks, and strawberries. Our climbing efforts were rewarded with stunning panoramic views of Lisbon and the Tagus river, illuminated by the late afternoon’s dwindling saffron sunlight.

We walked back to our hotel enjoying the bustling atmosphere on Lisbon’s streets as afternoon yielded to evening. At one point a large, lanky greyhound strutted out from a front door, cutting us off. He turned and gave us what we could have sworn was a sassy ‘what are you going to do about it?’ look. Joel spent the evening re-enacting the look at random intervals. His ability to channel the greyhound’s essence was truly uncanny and it made me think that if telematics engineering doesn’t hold his interest, he may have a career on the stage.