Lisbon in four days

There is a particular light in Lisbon that photographers talk about the way wine people talk about terroir — you can try to describe it, but the description always falls short of the thing itself. It arrives around four in the afternoon, warm and low, and turns even the most ordinary tiles into something worth photographing.

We arrived on a Tuesday with two bags and no particular plan. By Thursday we had worn through the soles of good intentions. The city rewards wandering. The trams are slow and the hills are steep and both of these facts are gifts.

A few things we learned: eat lunch at noon (the tourists eat at two, which means the kitchens are slower and the portions somehow smaller), take the 28 tram at 7am when the light is right and the car is nearly empty, and never, under any circumstances, leave without a jar of the good fleur de sel from the market near Cais do Sodré.