Lisbon, Sunday

Our last day in Lisbon. We ran out of time yesterday for MAAT — a contemporary art museum split between a modern space and an old power station. The art was mixed, but the building was memorable. Huge old turbines and colorful pipes and little tracks laid in the cobblestone for the coal carts, and dads mansplaining steam power to their small sons.

We took a long walk east along the water, stopping for pizza at a restaurant filled with Portuguese families, then hopped back across the train tracks and climbed up and down the hills of Santos. Suddenly all the sandwich board signs on the street were in English. Every coffee shop was full of American and Northern European twenty-somethings on laptops, wearing chunky New Balances and nineties baseball hats. I recognized this, the Lisbon of remote work Instagram. It has its perks: We bought excellent coffee at Ela Ela and some chocolate and tinned fish to bring home from Comida Independente.

Up into the hills again, under orange trees that littered the sidewalks with rotting fruit, and past the funicular being stalked like an exquisite animal by so many photographers, me among them. Into the Church of Saint Roch, almost obscene in its ornateness. Back to the hotel through a party neighborhood whose smell can only be described as redolent of Toad’s Place.

Dinner: Tapisco, not far from the hotel. Potato tortilla, octopus salad, a slab of Iberian pork, vermouth over ice.

And that’s it for Lisbon. Excited to get my film developed and to pull together a slightly more cogent reflect on what has been a great four days.