Lisbon

Lisbon is a city of surfaces. Tile, cobble, laundry, river light. It photographs so easily that it takes a couple of days to stop pointing a camera at it and start actually looking.

The hills are not a charming detail, they are the organising principle. Everything about how the city works — the trams, the funiculars, the miradouros, the fact that every conversation happens on a terrace — follows from the fact that it is built on a slope that should not really support a city.

We ate standing up more than sitting down. Bifana at a counter, a beer, then back into it. The best meal of the trip cost four euros and was eaten off a paper napkin.

Getting around