The Sunday letter · Mara LinIssue 01081522283337404345474848
Afterword.
Opening the journal
Travel
Thirty days in Lisbon, on foot
A month of tiled doorways, steep hills and one borrowed bicycle.
- KindTravel
- DateSep 14, 2026
- Read time9 min
Travel
Thirty days in Lisbon, on foot
A month of tiled doorways, steep hills and one borrowed bicycle.
- KindTravel
- DateSep 14, 2026
- Read time9 min
Travel
Thirty days in Lisbon, on foot
A month of tiled doorways, steep hills and one borrowed bicycle.
- KindTravel
- DateSep 14, 2026
- Read time9 min
TravelSep 14, 20269 min read
I said I would walk everywhere. The hills had other plans. This is a short account of thirty days in Lisbon, in a rented room near the river, with comfortable shoes, a notebook and, eventually, one borrowed bicycle.
The first week: stairs
Nobody warns you properly about the stairs. The map shows two streets side by side, and the map is lying, because one of them is forty metres above the other and the only link is a stone staircase with a cat asleep on every landing. In the first week I walked about eighteen kilometres a day and saw perhaps a third of what I meant to. My legs ached. I slept like a stone.
What I saw instead was doorways. Lisbon is a city of tiled doorways, each one a small argument between blue and yellow and green, and when you climb slowly you have time to read them. I started photographing one a day. By the end of the month I had thirty, and no two alike.
“You do not learn a city by seeing it. You learn it by getting lost in it at least once a day, on purpose.
The second week: the bicycle
My landlady, a retired teacher named Graça, watched me come home grey in the face on day nine and offered me her late husband's bicycle. It was heavy, green and older than I am. On the flat road by the river it was wonderful. On the hills it was a very expensive way of walking, because I pushed it up every single one.
Still, the river road changed everything. I rode to Belém in the early mornings, before the tourists, and ate a custard tart on a bench while the fishermen packed up. The light over the water was the colour of weak tea.
The last weeks: slowing down
By the third week I had stopped trying to cover ground. I chose one neighbourhood a day and stayed in it. I learned which café opened first, which bookshop had the chair by the window, which viewpoint was empty at noon because everyone else went at sunset.
When I gave the bicycle back, Graça asked what I had liked best. I told her the stairs. She laughed and said that everyone says that, eventually, once their legs forgive them.
— Mara
All essays
TravelSep 14, 20269 min read
I said I would walk everywhere. The hills had other plans. This is a short account of thirty days in Lisbon, in a rented room near the river, with comfortable shoes, a notebook and, eventually, one borrowed bicycle.
The first week: stairs
Nobody warns you properly about the stairs. The map shows two streets side by side, and the map is lying, because one of them is forty metres above the other and the only link is a stone staircase with a cat asleep on every landing. In the first week I walked about eighteen kilometres a day and saw perhaps a third of what I meant to. My legs ached. I slept like a stone.
What I saw instead was doorways. Lisbon is a city of tiled doorways, each one a small argument between blue and yellow and green, and when you climb slowly you have time to read them. I started photographing one a day. By the end of the month I had thirty, and no two alike.
“You do not learn a city by seeing it. You learn it by getting lost in it at least once a day, on purpose.
The second week: the bicycle
My landlady, a retired teacher named Graça, watched me come home grey in the face on day nine and offered me her late husband's bicycle. It was heavy, green and older than I am. On the flat road by the river it was wonderful. On the hills it was a very expensive way of walking, because I pushed it up every single one.
Still, the river road changed everything. I rode to Belém in the early mornings, before the tourists, and ate a custard tart on a bench while the fishermen packed up. The light over the water was the colour of weak tea.
The last weeks: slowing down
By the third week I had stopped trying to cover ground. I chose one neighbourhood a day and stayed in it. I learned which café opened first, which bookshop had the chair by the window, which viewpoint was empty at noon because everyone else went at sunset.
When I gave the bicycle back, Graça asked what I had liked best. I told her the stairs. She laughed and said that everyone says that, eventually, once their legs forgive them.
— Mara
All essaysTravelSep 14, 20269 min read
I said I would walk everywhere. The hills had other plans. This is a short account of thirty days in Lisbon, in a rented room near the river, with comfortable shoes, a notebook and, eventually, one borrowed bicycle.
The first week: stairs
Nobody warns you properly about the stairs. The map shows two streets side by side, and the map is lying, because one of them is forty metres above the other and the only link is a stone staircase with a cat asleep on every landing. In the first week I walked about eighteen kilometres a day and saw perhaps a third of what I meant to. My legs ached. I slept like a stone.
What I saw instead was doorways. Lisbon is a city of tiled doorways, each one a small argument between blue and yellow and green, and when you climb slowly you have time to read them. I started photographing one a day. By the end of the month I had thirty, and no two alike.
“You do not learn a city by seeing it. You learn it by getting lost in it at least once a day, on purpose.
The second week: the bicycle
My landlady, a retired teacher named Graça, watched me come home grey in the face on day nine and offered me her late husband's bicycle. It was heavy, green and older than I am. On the flat road by the river it was wonderful. On the hills it was a very expensive way of walking, because I pushed it up every single one.
Still, the river road changed everything. I rode to Belém in the early mornings, before the tourists, and ate a custard tart on a bench while the fishermen packed up. The light over the water was the colour of weak tea.
The last weeks: slowing down
By the third week I had stopped trying to cover ground. I chose one neighbourhood a day and stayed in it. I learned which café opened first, which bookshop had the chair by the window, which viewpoint was empty at noon because everyone else went at sunset.
When I gave the bicycle back, Graça asked what I had liked best. I told her the stairs. She laughed and said that everyone says that, eventually, once their legs forgive them.
— Mara
All essays