Faro to Lisbon: December of not-doing
Back home after a week in Portugal, I realised that I did not feel the famous ‘saudade.’ I was in my living room, listening to the usual pounding rain hitting my windows outside. Why wasn’t I longing for the blue skies of Lisbon? Was I doing ‘post-Portugal’ wrong? I found myself frustrated, trying to evoke a feeling of longing that just wasn’t coming.
What went wrong? My attitude, for starters: “It can’t possibly be that different from Spain,” I naively reasoned as I looked around in the arrivals area and then again in a taxi on my way to Casa São Mamede in Lisbon. My friend and tour guide, Valentina, had spent her Erasmus year in Lisbon, and the city had captured her so strongly that she now returns multiple times a year, leading tours in both the capital city and the Alentejo region of Portugal.
I was determined to see whether the country would capture me the same way it had captured her. It did. A lot. But not exactly the first time I visited.
My short initial experience in Lisbon served as a gentle introduction to the city and the intriguing, though lesser-known, narrative of Portugal. I tend to wander around cities asking myself if I would ever live there. I hope I’m not the only one who does this… Most times, it’s always a “looks lovely, but I could never live here.” For Lisbon, that was not the case. For Portugal as a whole, that was not the case. I needed to return and experience it in another season, seeking nothing but personal, intimate enjoyment.
Portugal has always had its appeal to sun-seeking tourists. Usually, it’s the Algarve, thanks to its endless, California-evoking beaches and warm weather. Since it’s more popular, flights tend to be cheaper as well. I decided to travel to Lisbon via Faro. Yes, it’s miles away on the south coast, but hear me out: Portuguese trains are extremely convenient and affordable. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to watch the Portuguese landscape unfold before my eyes on a train. Yes, I do love train travel. Yes, I do romanticise every trip I take.
Safe to say, Faro is only a small town with not much “to do.” But what do we really mean by “to do”? It was in Faro that I started asking myself this very question. What does it even mean to “do” something on holiday? It definitely means something different for everyone.
After arriving in the small town and leaving my bags at the hotel, I started wandering as I normally do. This time, however, I didn’t ask what I “should do” but instead kept an open mind, looking for details, big and small. Starting with the piercing blue sky—when was the last time I saw it? Lisbon has amazing colours, but Faro’s sky… just wow! And the lemons dangling from the trees—am I in Amalfi? The community feel around the town centre reminded me of endless afternoons spent eating ice cream in the main square of my hometown.
I stopped and took it all in—all the colours, the contrast between a tree and the sky, a building and the sky, anything and the sky, my chin up, looking at the sky: this is what there is “to do.”
Despite my best efforts, my wandering and taking everything in were not what I had in mind, especially because I love to plan a holiday. I love setting all the pins in the right places, changing their colors, and making reservations in a different language. I was trying so hard to let go of my maniacal planning habit, but why was I constantly feeling as if I were “wasting” my time?
As usual, my almost insatiable urge to stay busy was asserting itself—a tendency I struggled hard to suppress, though not successfully. After all, I was in Portugal—the land of slowness and saudade—where I could easily let go of my brain’s ingrained need for constant activity, places to be, and goals to check off lists. And so I kept trying to do just that.
Strolling around the small square, I observed dozens of bikers dressed as Santa Clauses, joyfully distributing free (free!!!) mulled wine and traditional Christmas bread to anyone who wanted some. “This would never happen in the UK,” I thought. It got me thinking: I had fled to London at 18 to be alone, to escape the influence of others on anything involving my personal and professional life, and to take a break from everything to hopefully find myself. Yet here I was, feeling nostalgic for my childhood, missing that feeling you only get when you’re outside in the cold, shivering, warmed only by the scorching roasted chestnuts blackening your hands. How many years had it been since I felt anything remotely similar?
Another little wander around the town led to another set of tiny discoveries. Everyone knows I’m obsessed with the Middle East, so knowing that I was in a former Arab city brought me a lot of joy. The Porta Arabe, which marks the entrance to the old town, was the city’s gateway during the Moorish period. Details like the brick roof of the entrance made me think of the endless hours I had spent in school reading and learning about Roman architecture. This didn’t look that different—or so I thought. I checked TripAdvisor to see if there was anything remarkable about that door, and one of the comments simply read, “It’s just a door! Probably okay to skip it; there are so many better things to do in Faro!” Great, I thought, another traveler looking for “actual things to do in Faro.”
Is eating classified as “something to do” when you’re a tourist? Even when you have to eat to survive? I indulged in octopus-based tapas and plenty of white wine, including my new favorite, vinho verde. It was precisely the December sun in December that I craved. The sunset was gorgeous, and I greeted and bid it farewell with a tear in my eye. Off to Lisbon I went. This marked my second visit to the Portuguese capital, and this time, I was even more determined to make the most of it, curious to see whether the famous saudade would eventually get to me.
The station café resembled a scene out of a novel set in Southern Italy or the South of Spain. The slow pace of the barista, unfazed by the line of customers wanting a quick coffee before catching the commuter train, was fascinating to me. She deliberately took her time dusting the pastel de nata with the right amount of cinnamon powder, carefully steaming the milk for the perfect duration, and, of course, accepting only cash. “No card! No card!” the lady exclaimed in panic when she saw I was a tourist. “Of course!” I reassured her, handing over 5 euros as I made my way to the train on platform 6.
I leaned back, tuned into Clarissa Ward’s On All Fronts, and genuinely relished the three hours it took for the train to traverse the countryside. Leaving so early in the morning made it easy to watch the best of the early-moving light: transitioning from pink to light orange to light blue. It brought to mind the cover of Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Woman of Light: essentially a Portuguese rendition of a medley of lights, very reminiscent of Christmas (like layers in a trifle!).
Lisbon welcomed me with its usual regal charm as the train crossed the 25 de Abril Bridge from Almada, slowly revealing the hilly panorama of the city on the other side of the Tagus River. The view was stunning: the Monument to the Discoveries standing tall on the left, and the Portuguese capital sprawling over the hills on the right. Reflecting on my first visit to Lisbon back in April, I realised that I had been too demanding, expecting too much from the city. My visit in April wasn’t just about discovering a new city for the joy of it; it was more of a “business” trip, or rather, a “personal business” trip. Could this be the reason I couldn’t fully grasp what all visitors felt when they experienced Lisbon?
Under the now ever-present blue sky and bright sunlight, I once again found myself on the familiar cobbled streets of Southern Europe. These are the kind of streets that could never really work in England, given how much rain we get. Arriving at Casa de São Mamede (by now, I was very much a fan of its location!), we were greeted by the usual joyful lady at reception.
Off I went, not exactly sure what to expect in Lisbon around Christmas time. I’m used to grey skies and maybe some snow, so I was pleasantly surprised when I began my walk down to Chiado. The abundance of tiny, colourful Christmas stalls selling cute trinkets, alongside other stalls offering mulled wine and locally crafted goods, caught me off guard. I felt as if I were in Australia, where Christmas happens under the scorching sunshine. Lisbon’s answer to my Christmas question wasn’t scorching; it was pleasant. I was away, I didn’t have anything “to do,” and I didn’t have to rush from shop to shop to buy something for someone that would end up at the back of a wardrobe in a week anyway. I didn’t have to do anything else apart from soaking in the December sun and simply being.
This time around, I wasn’t there to scout for a new place to settle down or to tick off tourist checkboxes from my “Winter in Lisbon” Google map with all its pins. All I was there to do was bask in the mid-December sunshine, eat pastel de nata, drink tiny shots of Ginja, and avoid tumbling down Lisbon’s hills like a potato.
At Taberna Sal Grosso, I relished tapas before venturing across the river to savour the freshest octopus at Ponto Final in Almada. I even managed to try the famous Portuguese Francesinha! Throughout the weekend, I caught a few matches at the lively The Couch Sports Bar, situated right above Pink Street. When offered drugs on multiple occasions, I responded with a polite and distinctly British “No, thank you.”
I was in my element.
I basked in the wintry sunshine.
I cried looking at the sunset.
I finally felt the saudade of what had gone, of what was there, and of what will be.
