Thank you TAP Air Portugual

The roofs of the buildings are a terra cotta red. But not a terra cotta red that of your potted plants, but a red that makes you dance during twilight, an inviting hue of coordination amidst the bright pastel painted buildings. Then there is the sun which illuminates the city in a way unlike any other place, deeply affected by the angle and the intensity of the rays, the city could be viewed from hundreds, thousands, millions of different ways.

This capital of Portugal was the first in which I traveled to it alone and wasn’t meeting anyone directly. Though I was a solo traveler, I was never truly alone. Living for a few days in a community of other adventurers there was always someone new to meet and somewhere to go. Surrounded by a myriad of accents, languages and customs, joined together solely by chance, the connections are easily made and suddenly you follow global instagrams and have the phone numbers from all around the world.

Experiencing the city at night is about more than just consuming alcohol and dancing your heart out (though that happens too). It’s about conversing with people you will likely never see again, obtaining a glimpse of their life, and their view of the world. I don’t think I’ll ever forget about this group of Italian friends who graduated from a school of medicine, and how they told me about a custom that when celebrating the graduation of a friend, they read a poem about all the stories of their time in school while their friends physically beat them and throw things at them— like taking a roast to the next level.

I opted to take a day trip to Sintra, a magical Portuguese town full of castles and wonder. As I gazed up at the bright yellow and tiled wall with concrete sculptures I thought about what it must have been like to live there. To live like royalty, for the intention of this place is to house the people who by accident of birth are deemed worthy to rule over their peers. Though this practice is rarely formally practiced today, the legacy of privilege and inequality remain in complicated ways. Though in school I learned about theories and studies of social justice and governmental power, it is a completely different experience to witness it, and identify this outside of an academic text. In some form or another, I hope to grapple with this, to work to alleviate vast inequality, and to aid in promoting a kind of equality of opportunity.

Standing at the westernmost point in Europe, the few wisps of hair blew all around my head, and I was in awe of the great expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. There is something so interesting about these points of geologic interest — the equator, prime meridian, easternmost, southernmost, northernmost, westernmost point of…. There is nothing uniquely special about the formations of the earth here, yet there is a feeling of majestic-ness that I can’t put my finger on, it was a place that I could stare at forever.

Walking around the tiled streets there was a sort of moving meditation where every corner, every nook offered another surprise. The forest green iron rods guarded every window, and there were many clotheslines with garments out to dry. Some buildings were decorated in tiles, and other in pastel paint, and though they were all unique they somehow complemented each other, as the same height of roughly 6 stories tall. Similar to the group of us that went to Sintra. Joined by chance, we explored the many gardens and castles together, navigating the extravagant grounds. Though we all came from unique circumstances we became a group of sorts, and upon our return to the hostel, we accomplished our mission to see a view of the sunset over the skyline.

To end my brief but long stay in Lisbon, I ate an egg tart and espresso watching a square of people, and talking to a new friend. It seemed to cap off my 3.5 days of utter wonder, spent wandering with a mouth wide open.