solo travel, but make it soft
Portugal travelogue: love notes from Lisbon
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Hi lovelies,
I wrote this last Thursday, on my last day in Lisbon. Let’s get right into it.
Everything drips syrupy-slow in Portugal. I open the windows to the morning air, cool before the fangs of the day’s heat grow in, and the hours stretch and expand, as if taking in deep belly breaths of the freedom and solace I have found in my aloneness. In choosing the pace with which I’d like to unfurl my time spent here.
I allow myself the time I need to ease in to my Self with the morning light: stretch, write, meditate, engage in my Reiki practice, send love to the parts of me that need listening to on this day. I tend to the wounds, too— especially those.
Then can I appreciate it so much more: that thrill that comes from letting your feet wander wherever they’d like to go (especially after you’ve been doing it for some time now). Of allowing the cobblestones and sounds of music to lead you from place to place, from narrow unassuming street to crooked alley laden with garlands of colorful tinsel, flower shops, and botanical gardens. Everywhere spilling cafes that serve crisp and delicious vinho verde at all hours, famous bookstores crowding the street corners, graffiti art so vividly beautiful it’s arresting… Lisboa.
But first, Reiki self-treatment and meditation, because I’m not the same without either.
This is how I’ve made my solo travel softer, slower, as of late—and how my “soft girl summer” is going.
I have often wondered at the phrase “pace of life.” But here it refers to just that, in the literal sense: people walk slowly—as in, they don’t walk, they mosey. Yoga studios open late or not at all. Meals run looong and relaxed, and your check will not be brought to you unless it is asked for. I thoroughly enjoy these sinfully long meals, camped out for hours, attempting to savor instead of rush. Certainly, no one around me is in one.
And again, charming bookshops crowd what feels like every street corner—livraria here, livraria there, the most beautiful in the world in Porto, the oldest in the world in Lisbon. I go to as many as I can, bask in the voracious pleasure I’ve always found in escaping through the pages of my new reads into another place and time, even when I, too, have escaped into another place and time.
I have often wondered at the phrase “pace of life.” But here it refers to just that, in the literal sense: tourists and locals alike walk slowly—as in, they don’t walk, they mosey. Yoga studios open late or not at all. Meals run looong and relaxed; you are never pressured, either to order or to finish, and your check will not be brought to you unless it is asked for. I thoroughly enjoy these sinfully long meals, camped out for hours, attempting to savor instead of rush. Certainly, no one around me is in one.
I want to take photos of everything, and am aware just how starkly this makes me stand out as the tourist I am. You see evidence of it everywhere as well; cyclists toting Uber Eats up and down the not-insubstantial hills, shaking their heads at crowds of people milling the streets, many aimless as herds of cattle, spurred on only by their to-do lists of must-see spots and activities to be checked off while in Lisbon.
Okay, so I walked in the street to take that last photo.
There are more French tourists than anywhere else I’ve been so far in my travels; next up on are the lads—groups of young British boys who talk fast, laugh loudly, and block the narrow sidewalks. Germans and other Americans, too.
And there is the grit. Chipped azulejo mosaics rippling from building exteriors in the heat, though they remain magnificent; crooked slants of cobblestones layered ungainly, unruly over one another; hordes of cigarette butts scattered outside flower shops and cramped markets. I catch an unwanted glimpse of a man peeing in an alleyway—not even a particularly hidden or dodgy one—and turn my head, walk past as quickly as I can so he doesn’t get any ideas.1 He laughs, the sound grating, to his friends.
The street the yoga studio is on isn’t far from where I’m staying, tucked away around the corner from the Livraria Bertrand in Chiado, which is famously known for being the oldest operating bookstore in the world. The entire street smells like meat, fragrant and overpowering, and I hit the unevenly paved stone with sandals slapping.
I wait outside the studio for the 12:45 class, but no one shows up. Not for the first time, I wonder at the level of relaxation here; at what point is slow too slow? (I’d be lying if I said the crowds of people inching along in front of me, blocking my way as I try to get to where I’m going, don’t grate on my nerves at times. It’s always been a pet peeve. Perhaps that’s obnoxiously American of me.) I read Clarice Lispector and Call Me By Your Name at the public spaces I frequent, especially the miradouros, and for once I don’t mind the ways in which I fulfill the role of “tourist cliche.”
On another day—early evening, though you wouldn’t know it from the light—I’m walking back from another visit to the livraria when I hear the sounds of music, celestial notes coming from down an avenue I haven’t yet traversed. Upon investigating (because of course I’m going to follow the music), I stumble upon a free live performance at Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea do Chiado.
My friend Josh lets me know that the man is playing a Kora, an instrument I’ve never before heard—or heard of, for that matter. The sounds these musicians make together are truly ethereal. There are multiple moments throughout their performance where I feel I am being transported, transcending, or both. I am moved to tears; it’s that simple, and that powerful.
Lisbon is a flawed city, and like others throughout Europe less-than-pleasant smells of sewage often fill the air. This is as one would expect when there are trash bags lined up on many of the sidewalks, when putrid water bubbles up from the sewers and overflows onto busy main avenues. But these flaws are woven into the texture of the city itself, and many have been here from time immemorial.
I grow to love the lack of pretense. I chose to return and extend my stay by over a week, after all. It’s sweaty and dirty and pretty; fresh, old, and full of history all at once. I tell friends that Lisboa is like San Francisco’s trashy, wizened older sister who’s gone to rehab. Perhaps more than once. She’s forever trying to convince SF to dump her tech bro husband already, come back over to the art side, where she leads her deliciously bohemian lifestyle with the utmost enjoyment.
And I relish in the feel of the name Lisboa, the way it fills and curls the tongue. I like her culture, her music, her people with their grungy-cool style, even the seemingly never-ending steps that lead every which way throughout the city— though they make my thighs and glutes burn. Maybe I don’t like certain things (read: odors) as much as the rest, but who am I to tell anyone or anything to lose its edge? Besides, it’s not as if she cares; she’s the type to toss her hair, roll her hips, and keep getting on with it.2
It’s my last night here, and I know I’ll miss it, this time in my life, with a soft3 ache I’ll hold dear for days, years to come. For now all there is to do is enjoy, enjoy, and treasure every last moment of radiant sun, art, and inspiration; each feather in the illustrious peacock’s plumage; each bloom in the olfactory bouquet that makes up this magical fever dream of a place.
Til next time, friends!
xx, Kimia
I’m still a woman traveling alone, and unfortunately this is our reality.
And let’s hope it stays that way, though overtourism and gentrification may have other plans.
There’s that word again!
I've actually recently discovered kora music too! It's such a beautiful instrument. Check out Ballaké Sissoko and Seckou Keita. Seckou Keita has made a couple beautiful albums with harpist Catrin Finch if you want super ethereal.