Journey 03 · Portugal
Downhill All Week
Lisbon on foot
Published 10 Apr 2026 · Travelled 14–22 Mar 2026
- 9 moments
- 9 days
- 20 km
- Spring
- Portugal
- 24mm · 1/800
- 38.7170° N, 9.1330° W
- Miradouro da Graça
- 09:10
- 15°C, clear, cool
You walk up for twenty minutes with no sense of where you are and then the street simply stops and hands you the whole city. Terracotta roofs all the way down to the water, and the bridge, which is red and enormous and looks like it was borrowed from somewhere else. I sat on the wall for an hour.
- 24mm · 1/100
- 38.6975° N, 9.2035° W
- Belém
- 08:40
Warm, cinnamon, eaten standing up, never sitting. The counter in Belém puts them out in trays every few minutes and the queue moves the whole time and nobody in it is unhappy. I bought two and ate the second one before I had finished the first.
cinnamon, yes. icing sugar, no. I asked.
- 24mm · 1/400
- 38.7128° N, 9.1290° W
- Alfama
- 11:25
- 17°C, warm in the sun, cold in the shade
Everybody photographs the azulejos. Nobody photographs the four lines of washing strung across the gap above them, which is what actually tells you that people live here and not in a postcard. Somebody's sheets, somebody's football shirt, four floors up, over a street two metres wide.
- 24mm · 1/640
- 38.7160° N, 9.1470° W
- 24mm · 1/640
- 38.7160° N, 9.1470° W
- Príncipe Real
- 14:05
- 19°C, bright
Whole facades of them, floor to roof, glazed, and each building has picked a completely different pattern from its neighbour with no apparent negotiation. I found these two within a minute of each other. Blue, and then green, and it is the same light on both.
Overheard · Cais do Sodré · 18:50
"You have been here three days and you have not been to the sea." — "I have seen the river." — "The river is not the sea. Go to the sea." I got the train to Cascais the next morning and he was completely right.
- 24mm · 1/500
- 38.7118° N, 9.1305° W
- Alfama
- 10:40
The street is narrow enough that when the tram comes you step into a doorway, and everyone already standing in that doorway shuffles up without comment because it happens forty times a day. The driver rang the bell twice. Nobody looked round.
- 24mm · 1/320
- 38.7095° N, 9.1480° W
- Escadinhas, Bica
- 16:30
- 18°C, clear
There is no flat route anywhere. Every shortcut is a staircase and every staircase has a small tiled shrine or a bar or a woman with a folding chair at the top of it. This one has ninety-one steps. I counted, twice, on two separate days, and got the same number, which surprised me.
08 · The list of things I was told to do
- Miradouro das Portas do Sol
- 18:45
- 16°C, clear, warm light
- Last frame
The terrace above Alfama at the hour when the roofs go orange and everybody on it has a beer and nobody is talking loudly. Two domes, a thousand roofs, the river doing nothing at all. I have taken a version of this photograph in four cities and this is the one I kept.
- 24mm · 1/250
- 38.7125° N, 9.1313° W
The route
9 stops
Journey completed
Nine days, nine stories
- Distance walked
- 143 km
- Frames exposed
- 2100
- Custard tarts
- 17
- Times I took the tram
- 2
- Times I regretted not taking the tram
- many
- Favourite moment
- Realising the laundry is the point, not the tiles
- Best food
- The first pastel de nata of the morning, cinnamon on it, standing at the counter
