A Slow Weekend in Lisbon
Forget the checklist. Forty-eight hours in Lisbon are best spent climbing hills on foot, eating long lunches and letting the light do most of the sightseeing.
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Lisbon is a city that punishes hurry. The hills are steep, the pavements are polished limestone that turns slick in the rain, and the famous yellow trams move at roughly the speed of a confident walker. Arrive with a list of twenty sights and you will spend the weekend tired and slightly sunburnt. Arrive with no list at all and the city starts to make sense.
Here is how I spend two days there now, after many visits of doing it wrong.
Saturday: up the hill, then down to the river
Start early in Alfama, before the tour groups, when the only sounds are shutters opening and someone sweeping a doorstep. Walk uphill without a map and stop whenever a staircase looks interesting. You will reach a viewpoint eventually. The Miradouro de Santa Luzia, with its tiled walls and bougainvillea, is the classic, but the smaller terraces are often better.
On Saturdays the Feira da Ladra flea market fills Campo de Santa Clara, a short walk away, and it is worth an unhurried wander even if you buy nothing. For lunch, find a tasca with a handwritten menu and a television in the corner. Order the dish of the day and a jug of house wine, and do not look at your phone for an hour. Afterwards, walk down to the river and follow it west towards Cais do Sodré as the afternoon light turns everything gold.
Sunday: tiles, the river and a long lunch
The national tile museum, set in a former convent east of the centre, is one of the most beautiful and least crowded places in the city. Give it a whole morning, then sit in its courtyard café for longer than you planned.
Save your appetite for a proper Sunday lunch, the way Lisbon families do it: grilled fish, boiled potatoes with olive oil, a green salad and no plans for the rest of the afternoon.
The best view in Lisbon is the one you find on the way to somewhere else.
A few practical notes
Wear shoes with grip. The pavements are beautiful and very slippery.
Buy a rechargeable transit card at any metro station. It works on the metro, trams, buses, funiculars and river ferries.
Take the ferry across the river at sunset for the cheapest and best view of the city.
Eat pastéis de nata warm, ideally straight from the oven, with cinnamon on top.
Two days is not enough to see Lisbon. It is, however, enough to slow down to its pace, and that is the part you will remember.
