There is a walk I did before I knew I was going to be a walker.
May 2022. Sarah and I had booked a Wowcher deal to Lisbon — one of those slightly mad, why not, let’s just go decisions that felt completely normal to us by that point and would have been unthinkable five years earlier. Three nights. Budget hotel. Explore the city on foot and see what happens.
Two days before we flew, Sarah ruptured both hamstrings.
She went anyway. Of course she went. She had trained her body into something stubborn and wonderful, and two torn hamstrings were not going to stop her seeing Lisbon. She walked every mile of that city — slowly, carefully, with me hovering slightly too close at every set of steps. Her first Strava title on day one said it all: she’s doing well with the pulled hammy.
Azulejo tiles, iron balconies, washing on the line. Lisbon is a city that doesn’t perform for you. It just gets on with it.
We walked eight times across three days. Not because we had a plan — we didn’t have a plan — but because Lisbon is a city that pulls you back out onto its streets. You sit down for a coffee and you look up and the light has changed on the tiles and you think: just one more street.
The back streets around Anjos and Intendente on the first morning were exactly what we needed. Quiet. Unhurried. No tourist infrastructure. Just Lisbon getting on with its day, and us moving through it at the pace that two ruptured hamstrings demand. It turned out to be the right pace. You notice things, at that speed.
By the first afternoon we had found our rhythm — the Santa Justa lift hauling us up the city’s absurd vertical geography with the calm confidence of something that has been doing this since 1902. The viewpoint at the top: the whole city laid out below, the castle on its hill, the Tagus glittering further south. We took a selfie. We looked like people who had no idea what they were starting.
The pink street. Rainbow umbrellas. Lisbon has absolutely no interest in being subtle.
Day two took us into the old city properly. Alfama. The Sé cathedral, cool stone and stained glass that had survived both the 1755 earthquake and everything that came after it. The narrow streets that climb toward the castle with washing lines overhead and cats on doorsteps. The Museu de Lisboa do Santo António, where an entire wall of donated ceramic plates speaks to a city with a very particular relationship to its patron saint. The Carmo Convent — roofless since the earthquake, kept deliberately open to the sky, so that the nave is now a chamber of gothic arches and daylight and birdsong. It is one of the most quietly extraordinary things I’ve ever walked into.
The Carmo Convent. The earthquake took the roof in 1755. They left it open. Good call.
We walked the waterfront in the hottest part of the afternoon — the full length of the Ribeira, west to east, all the way to the Praça do Comércio with its triumphal arch and its statue of King José and its vast open square that tips right down to the river. A vintage tram rattled past. A giant guitar sculpture stood outside what we eventually realised was a Eurovision-related installation. A fado truck parked in the Baixa told us we could have more fado for less price. Lisbon marketing has a very specific energy.
We stopped for Super Bocks. The hamstrings had earned it.
Sabor Autêntico. No argument from us.
The 28 tram at Praça do Comércio. We watched it go. We did not get on it. We walked.
That evening we went out again. Lisbon #6 on Strava — the cathedral again, but lit differently this time, the twin towers of the Sé rising out of absolute darkness, young people sitting on the steps in the warm night air. The Praça do Comércio arch glowing white across the square. The Tagus somewhere beyond it, showing its lights to the far bank.
It was 10pm and the city was nowhere near done with us.
The Sé de Lisboa. It survived the earthquake. It survived everything. It looked like this at 10pm on a warm May night.
The Arco da Rua Augusta at night. Beyond it, the Tagus. We stood here for a while.
The last day took us higher and further than we’d been. Lisbon #7 was the Chiado, the Bairro Alto, the Santa Catarina viewpoint, 272 feet of elevation and the city laid out below us in the late morning heat. We stumbled into the Military Museum — a wall of every Portuguese general since the republic, hundreds of portraits, centuries of authority looking back at us from gold frames. We found a garden inaugurated by the Dalai Lama — Um Jardim pela Paz — tucked between two streets, quiet and mosaic-floored. We found a basketball court painted like an abstract canvas, the street art getting bigger and more ambitious the further you walked from the tourist centre.
And then, on the last afternoon — Lisbon #8, souvenirs in hand — we sat at a table on Rua Augusta as the city went past. Sarah looked out at the street. The lights were coming on. Somewhere behind us, a fado singer was warming up in a restaurant doorway.
Rua Augusta, May 2022. On two ruptured hamstrings. Not going anywhere.
We had the conversation here, or something like it. Not a grand declaration. More like a question that had been building all trip and finally came out: what if we actually did this? Not Lisbon specifically. But this — living somewhere. Being somewhere properly, not just visiting.
We’d been saying for years that we should do something. The children were older. The constraints were different. The question had been theoretical for a long time.
In Lisbon, sitting on a warm May evening with a city full of people who had simply decided to make their lives in a beautiful place, it stopped being theoretical.
Parque Eduardo VII, looking south toward the Tagus. The whole city from one hillside.
We didn’t know where we were going yet. We didn’t know it would be Italy, specifically — that came later, with a trip we hadn’t planned yet and a city we hadn’t heard of yet and a night in Rimini that changed everything. The Lisbon trip ended the way budget city breaks end: airport bus, early flight, home. Sarah’s hamstrings recovered. We went back to work.
But something had shifted. Something quiet and significant, the kind of thing you only recognise looking back.
The four-year plan to Italy begins here — in Lisbon, on a Wowcher deal, on two ruptured hamstrings, in a city that absolutely refused to be anything other than itself.
We’ve never been back. We should fix that.
The walks — May 9–11, 2022
| # | Name | Date | Distance | Time | Elevation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Back Streets | May 9, 11:29 AM | 2.32 mi | 1:16:13 | 205 ft |
| 2 | She’s doing well with the pulled hammy | May 9, 7:50 PM | 2.52 mi | 1:19:35 | 192 ft |
| 3 | (lost to the archive) | May 9–10 | — | — | — |
| 4 | Old City & seafront | May 10, 12:33 PM | 1.88 mi | 1:06:21 | 57 ft |
| 5 | (unnamed) | May 10, 3:11 PM | 2.26 mi | 1:12:03 | 96 ft |
| 6 | At night and cathedral | May 10, 10:21 PM | 1.88 mi | 55:40 | 166 ft |
| 7 | History everywhere | May 11, 11:20 AM | 2.78 mi | 1:22:53 | 272 ft |
| 8 | Love this place, time to go home 😔 | May 11, 2:55 PM | 2.47 mi | 1:11:57 | 134 ft |
All walks with Sarah. All by bus, metro, and foot. No car. Never a car.