14 Hours in Lisbon
an uneventful story + songs for a one night stopover
Last year, I learned there is something to be said for spending just one night in a place. By “one night” I don’t mean a day and a night, I mean having petty hours in a place. Not enough time for even one touristy thing, not one sight. Only enough to sleep and maybe have one meal at the front or tail end. Your being there is totally utilitarian- it just so happens that you’re traveling and you, against your best efforts and automated aspirations, must sleep. So, you stop over. Your utter lack of a bucket list or itinerary will, ironically, give you quite a memorable few hours.
At least, this was my experience on one singular October night last year in Lisbon. From getting off a plane to boarding another the next day, I spent, generously, 14 hours in the city. I have been thinking about those 14 hours ever since, to the point that, months later and totally unprompted, I have to finally write about it. I warn you: nothing groundbreaking or noteworthy happened. If there is ever a moment in reading this where you think I am building to An Event- I’m not.
Maybe I need to write about it to diagnose why, then, despite the lack of anything happening, I keep replaying these 14ish hours in my mind.
I was coming back from Europe, and, because I bought the cheapest ticket possible from Rome to Toronto, I had an overnight layover in Lisbon.
My flight landed in Lisbon even later than it was supposed to, so I went underground into the metro well after 11:00 pm. There were others with me carefully balancing their checked luggage on an escalator step, but we didn’t have much other company. The airport metro station was sleepy, which made me nervous because generally the more people in an urban space, the less likely someone is to do something stupid and terrible to an unassuming tourist. I wondered if any of the clumps of fellow visitors were like me and coming back to this station in the morning, or if they were starting an on-purpose adventure in Lisbon (spoiler alert: I did recognize a couple on the way back in the next morning). I wondered where they all were sleeping.
The art on the wall in the metro station, minimalist renderings of stubby little knights, is what prompted me to ask the internet how old this city was while I waited on the train. Because if we’re making knights part of our personality, surely we’re old old. This is how I now know Lisbon as the second city in Europe, only after Athens.
I was trying to wrap my mind around how long ago 1200 BC is when the train pulled into the station. I sat across from a pair of university-aged girls who looked like they were on their way to a party. Or maybe they were on the way to one, if they were fun enough. I listened to their whole conversation because they spoke in English to each other and I’ve never been one to…what? Close my ears?
They were speaking English in accents that suggested it was neither of their native language, so I imagined they were both international students in this city. International students tend to befriend each other like this, even if it means communicating with each other in a language that is neither of their mother tongue’s. I don’t think any proponent of imperialism ever once argued for its friendship-forming effects, but here we are. On the other hand, maybe one was Portuguese and accommodating her non-Portuguese speaking friend.
The party girls’ nationality doesn’t matter because they were having a classic conversation that is always happening somewhere, sometime in the space-time continuum: Should I Forgive Him? One girl played the role of Hopeless Yearner and the other Well-Intentioned Enabler. I laughed internally at how universal the script is.
I got off the metro and began following the walking directions to my bed for the night and immediately began to notice huddles of men in dark corners all over the place, which is not something you want to see anywhere after midnight. In looking for a place to stay, the internet told me this neighborhood was safe, and I generally try my best not to be paranoid in these environments. “This is a safe neighborhood! I was actively trying not to be paranoid!” would surely work great on someone mugging me.
I had to cross an empty Rossio Square, dragging my big bag all the way, which is one of the loudest sounds in our universe. I felt the huddles watching me so I called my boyfriend, because being sometimes being a woman alone in public means being safer with the presence of a disembodied male voice. I’m not sure what I imagine my boyfriend would do in these scenarios- yell at an attacker?
However silly and futile my precautions, they worked that night. I made it across the square until I was confronted with no less than one million stairs lit by a bright yellow lamp post. I learned the hard way that Lisbon’s hilliness is not a myth. I was bummed to embody the “American struggling with suitcase up old European stairs” stereotype. Halfway up, I wouldn’t have minded one of those men whisking my bag away from my grip. If the disembodied boyfriend’s voice was actually a deterrent of danger earlier, it was certainly no help, here.
I was relieved to go slightly downhill on a narrow street for the last leg of my walk, but made a mental note of how this route would be slightly uphill in the morning. The entrance to the hostel was practically a hole in the wall, albeit a hole in the wall with an exterior door you need a code to enter. I memorized it from the Airbnb app on the train so that I would not be a sitting duck, scrolling through my phone on a dark and narrow street after midnight.
Once inside and up more stairs, I momentarily considered the possibility of sleeping in the common space. This was a hostel with communal bathrooms but private guest bedrooms. That is, theoretically, because I couldn’t find a door with my room number on it. It was so late that there was no one at the reception desk and I was relying on written instructions for finding my room by myself. This seems like a good moment to mention that, before landing in Lisbon and (psychologically) fending off bad guys in the public square, I had spent the entire day exploring Rome on foot. The flights of stairs were the cherry on top- I was too exhausted to be bothered by the notion of sleeping on a dingy armchair in the communal space. I wandered around the hallways for several tense minutes - it was eerily quiet for the kind of place I assumed young, adventurous backpackers were supposed to be lodging. The maze of hallways and stillness of the place made me feel like I had accidentally hiked up into a liminal space. “I guess this trip has been too nice to not end with a wrench in it,” I thought.
So dramatic for nothing, because I did, eventually, find my room down a hallway I’d yet to explore. My nervous system could finally exhale and I leaned out my window to take in the night-covered city from a couple stories above the ground. No huddles of men in corners could get me from way up here. Across the narrow cobblestone street below me was a small halal Indian restaurant. I would have entertained the idea of late night biryani if it looked open, but it was as dead as the rest of the street and the inside of this hostel.
I wasn’t perched above the whole city, but because of Lisbon’s infamous hilliness, there was plenty of city towering over me. In the distance, I saw lights on what looked like the top of a castle’s tower. I had no time to check it out any more than I was doing right there, from far away in my own kind of fabled lonely tower.
I gathered my toiletries and the towel left for me on the bed and shuffled to the bathroom in my red patent leather flats, regretting that I had no proper shower shoes to keep on under the water. I chose to risk ringworm over getting on my long flight the next day with dirty hair or soaked shoes.
I then proceeded, for what felt like ten minutes, to fondle shower handles until I finally figured out how to make water come out of one for more than two seconds. It was while I was in the shower that I heard someone else in the bathroom, but this was the only evidence of other life I experienced the whole time in the hostel. For all I know, it could have been a ghost with me in that foggy, tiled place in the wee hours of the morning. Why shouldn’t a community bathroom be haunted in the second oldest city in Europe?
I fell asleep with my hair wet and the window open, a combination a wise grandmother would probably warn against. Add to these circumstances that this particular night air had licked the Mediterranean before filling my room and it reads like the beginning of a cautionary fairy tale. But I was too busy resting on my laurels to worry about whatever ailments I might conjure up - I had successfully managed to get my freshly bathed body into this assigned bed in this hostel in a strange city in the middle of the night all by myself. Chisel one more item into my treasured, growing list of Things I’ve Done Alone.
My flight left mid-morning, which meant I didn’t have to get up before the sun but I still had to set an alarm. I had just enough time to get breakfast before heading back into the metro station from whence I came. Walking down the stairs of the hostel, I appreciated the ornate tiles on the wall that I hadn’t noticed in the dark- the geometric patterns gave an artistic nod to the Islamic era of the city. I got all the way from my room to the exit without seeing another soul.
I went back to Rossio Square, which looked much less like a villain’s chess board in the sun, to get to a Reddit- approved cafe. It was buzzing with a modest bunch of people, seemingly locals by the way they were gabbing with the men behind the counter. The light inside was intensely warm and illuminated the pastries in the glass case like relics in a cathedral. The cafe was still in a touristy enough neighborhood that the man who helped me spoke English to me with ease before I even opened my mouth. For the umpteenth time while in Europe, I wondered what gave me away.
He asked if I wanted a pasteis de nata (a tart that Portugal is famous for), because, again, he could tell I wasn’t from around here. Apparently I gave off so much of a foreigner vibe, he was inclined to help me along before I even had the chance to admit I was in over my head. I affirmed his kind decision for me and ordered a coffee to wash it down. When it turned out that this alone wasn’t enough to meet the minimum amount to use a card instead of cash, I laughed and said I’d take another tart. We both shrugged giddily at each to mutually agree, “sometimes God ordains you to have two pastries for breakfast instead of one, praise be.”
I took my coffee and tarts outside to enjoy the sights and sounds of the square. Most of the city was still sleeping because this is southern Europe after all, and they have a circadian rhythm more aligned with my own. That is, not starting the day until mid morning and dining at midnight. But I watched a few shops go through the motions of opening up for the day. I watched people shifting their weight between their feet as they waited for the tram. I watched gulls descend upon the fountain in the square. I ate one of my tarts and took a picture of my remaining breakfast for posterity’s sake.
I went back up the stairs to get to my hostel and officially check out. Even this hike seemed less daunting in the mid morning glow. I closed the window and thanked and said goodbye to this room I had only spent one night in. Hadn’t it been a friend in a time of need? The reception desk was still empty as I left the hostel, and I checked out as easily and independently as I had checked in.
Walking back through the square with my luggage in tow, again, I realized the tiny window of Lisbon I got to see reminded me of sleepier Istanbul. Of course, this contrast may be because I’ve only seen Lisbon in its sleepy hours. Another ancient port city accustomed to strangers and bored of your whole deal. A bit jaded from being abandoned by one too many lovers, but all those unlucky encounters have accumulated into beautiful mysteries and stories and maybe even revelations for those willing to stick around and dig a little.
I boarded the metro and watched the red route I took the night prior rewind on the map until I reached the airport. I sat on a red seat and texted a friend about how wonderful and old the city is, how we have to plan a trip together one day.
Didn’t I warn you? Nothing happened on my micro trip to Lisbon. And at the end of recounting the 14 hours in words, I have no real answer as to why my memory habitually drifts back there. Maybe it’s because my human interaction while in the city was so minimal, perhaps it was the eerie stillness the hours were steeped in. Maybe it’s because I don’t feel like I visited Lisbon, more like I hid there for a few hours. I did what I could to make myself minimally known- I was so briefly a complete stranger in a city that has hosted billions of strangers since the ancient world. Have your pick of the personal lesson I should take away.
Or maybe it’s just that there’s something unique and magical about staying in a place for just one night. Not enough time for even one touristy thing, not one sight. Only enough to sleep and maybe live through a series of uneventful moments that will stick with you for life.
Songs to accompany a one night stop over that you can’t stop thinking about:
Drive x SZA
Charade x Johnny Hartman
Mexican Dream x Piero Piccioni
Lonely Fight x Mk.gee