I arrived in Lisbon in April and I think this is why I stayed. The city in spring is a different proposition from the city in summer: cooler, less crowded, the streets still belonging to the people who live on them. The jacaranda trees on the Avenida da Liberdade and along the waterfront bloom purple…
I found my flat in Mouraria through a combination of luck, timing, and the willingness to make a decision in under an hour. The Lisbon rental market in 2024 operated at a speed that rewarded people who could commit immediately and penalised people who wanted to think. Prices: for a one-bedroom flat in a central…
Summer in Lisbon is when the city splits in two. The tourists arrive in their largest numbers — July and August push visitor counts to levels that make the centre of the city feel like a different place from the one I live in eleven months of the year. And simultaneously, the people who actually…
Vienna has a hostel culture that is functional and unromantic. Lisbon has a hostel culture that is genuinely good, which surprised me more than it should have. Two years in I have stayed in three Lisbon hostels for various reasons — once when my flat had a plumbing issue, twice hosting visiting friends who needed…
Lisbon’s events calendar is large, disorganised, and excellent. The information is scattered across Instagram accounts, neighbourhood Facebook groups, the Agenda Cultural de Lisboa website, and word of mouth from people who have been here long enough to know where to look. The official starting point: Agenda Cultural de Lisboa (agendalx.pt) covers the major events at…
I live in Mouraria and I would not necessarily recommend it for a first visit. This is an honest position: it is hilly, the streets are narrow, the nearest Metro is Martim Moniz which is further than you want to walk with luggage. I stayed here because I found a flat here. For a visitor,…
Lisbon is a cycling city the way a cobbled staircase is a running track. Technically possible. Not recommended without qualification. The city has been investing in cycling infrastructure since around 2015, and the flat areas — the waterfront from Belém to Cais do Sodré, the Avenida da Liberdade, the riverfront promenade in the Santos and…
I arrived at Lisbon Airport at 11pm on a Tuesday with two bags and approximately zero knowledge of how the city worked. I took a taxi. It cost €22 to Mouraria. This was fine, and it was also avoidable, and within a week I had learned to never take a taxi from the airport again….
Lisbon has hills and the hills are real. I say this because I arrived from Vienna, which is flat in the parts I lived in, and spent my first two weeks discovering muscles I had not previously located. The city is built on seven hills — the guidebooks say this without quite conveying what it…
Before I understood Lisbon I thought ginja was a tourist drink. The shot glasses in the chocolate cups outside the cathedral, the old men selling from small windows, the bright red liqueur that every guidebook mentions and no one explains. It looked like a prop. Then I had a proper ginja at A Ginjinha (Largo…
Vienna has coffee culture. Lisbon has coffee. The distinction matters. In Vienna, the coffee house is a social institution with a hundred and fifty years of tradition behind it. You sit for hours. You read a newspaper. The waiter leaves you alone. The coffee is a ritual that comes with a glass of water. It…
Two years in Lisbon and I have eaten in enough places to know that the expensive restaurants near the Tagus are not where Lisbon’s food actually lives. This is not a discovery — every local knows it. But arriving from Vienna, where a Gasthaus is as respectable as a Michelin-starred restaurant, it took me longer…