Portugal: Saudade and Miradouros (Part One)
On Lisbon, and the words it gave me for what I’ve been feeling
I can’t remember when Portugal started speaking to me, but the whisper grew to a scream a couple years ago with a vision of celebrating my 50th birthday in a countryside villa, poolside with a cocktail in hand and a distant view of an azure sea.
My recent Portugal visit wasn’t the exact manifestation of this vision, but it was no less majestic.
Living in Lisbon
I landed in Lisbon on a Thursday morning, after a redeye from NYC. The drive into the city from the airport made me nostalgic for Seattle, following an industrial coastline and watching a summer rain flood the car windshield.
In the coming days, Lisbon’s narrow windy streets, hills, and colorful building facades validated the initial US west-coast vibe that I felt during that morning ride from the airport, and morphed from a Seattle to a San Francisco feel.
Lisbon infused me with creative inspiration everywhere I looked - from traditional painted tile covering building facades, endless shelves of ceramics, urban street art, and contemporary art galleries. I gave myself some playtime with a graffiti art class, where the palm tree I adopted as my go-to doodle as a kid was given a new personality with a couple cans of spray paint and a cement wall.
As I walked around the city, the words “I could live here” kept coming to mind. It’s picturesque, has great food, and the people are friendly.
The magic of Miradouro and the subtlety of Saudade
If the artistic detail on the streets of Lisbon appealed to my inner artist, the miradouros stirred my inner philosopher. Miradouro - the first significant Portuguese word that I learned on this trip - means “to admire a place” and is also used as a noun to define various lookout points from the top of Lisbon’s hills where tourists and locals peer out onto the speckled terracotta rooftops and pastel yellows, corals, and aquas of the buildings below.
On my first visit to a miradouro, I sat on a bench, enjoying a solo acoustic guitar serenade of some of my favorite classic rock songs. Did someone put this guy there for me, specifically? He played a lot of my favorite tunes, and the waterworks started. This show of emotion had me wondering if there was something more deeply biological about viewpoints (and jet lag, to be fair) that was stirring this emotional outpour.
I dug a little into this and learned that what I experience at great heights is indeed a universal human response. Viewpoints diminish our egos, enabling us to contemplate our interconnectedness. With this “forest for the trees” perspective, we inherently understand our individual role as a piece of the whole - a single tree. This understanding that we feel aids a natural meditative state where our brains are still, and thrive in creative problem-solving rather than execution of details.
This may explain my experience of “feeling” the mountains in Sri Lanka before I saw them, which I wrote about in this post. If I ever thought that my fascination with mountains was apropos of nothing, my time in Portugal squashed this thought. The natural, biological contemplation that I’ve been experiencing in midlife - my 50th birthday, to be specific - is amplified by viewpoints that bring on emotional overwhelm.
And, as if Portugal hadn’t gifted me enough with miradouro, I learned another uniquely Portuguese word that communicates the emotional overwhelm I was feeling: saudade. Saudade is the longing for a memorable past that is gone, like ‘nostalgia,’ but also encompasses the anticipation of a future moment when an aching is satisfied.
I cannot think of a more perfect word to encapsulate my complicated feelings at the start of my 50th trip around the sun, especially as it coincides with my sabbatical and career transition.
A medieval fairytale in Sintra
A highlight of my trip was found in Sintra, a 40-minute train ride from Lisbon city center, and a portal to medieval castles, palaces, gardens, and caves. Together, they oozed with inspiration for future sketches, paintings, and stories.
The main attraction of Sintra is Pena Palace, a colorful fairytale palace, resembling a Disney park attraction. I was moved by its tragic existence -- a summer home built by a King for his Queen, who died before enjoying its lavishness -- and disappointed by the ridiculousness of its only real and lasting use as a tourist trap.
Sintra hosts several structures which I found more interesting, if not as colorful, as the Pena Palace.
The Moorish Castle was built in the 8th century and used through the 12th century by the Moors to defend the region from attack. I decided that if I was alive during that time, I would want the job that put me at this castle, guarding a view instead of fighting a war. I would spend my time tracing landscapes of rolling hills to a patchwork of green fields, admiring sunrises and sunsets, following an infinite horizon out to sea, and imagining the commerce and commune happening in the towns below. Maybe I’d have a sketchbook with me, although I suppose that would be the medieval equivalent of burying my face in social media while on the job - probably frowned upon.
The gardens and hiking trails in the Parques de Sintra gave me a much-needed nature fix, as well as a muse for some sketches. I came upon a gazebo, wrapped in the arms of wisteria branches and gently covered with white, pink, blue, and purple hydrangea. I perched myself in front of it, pulled out my sketchbook and started to see what might want to flow. Luckily for me, the gazebo acted as a stage for many groups of tourists, so while I got my solitary sketch time, I also enjoyed some good people watching.
The main attraction for me was the Quinta da Regaleira, another palace. It was much smaller, less ornate, more cracked and creepy, and the one that I would choose a thousand times over the fairytale Pena -- if someone were to ever build a palace for me, that is.
On the grounds of the Quinta da Regaleira was also the Initiation Well. I felt its mythology as soon as I entered it. Dark, echoey, damp, cool, moldy, spooky - all of which reverberated with me as deeply sensual. The well spirals down nine flights to a network of caves that open into lush and peaceful corners of a pond with waterfalls and tropical plants.
Adeus Lisboa, for now
Lisbon left a loud impression on me of creativity, colorful facades, and life contemplation. I had the perfect ending to my Lisbon time - which was also the beginning of the next part of my trip - when I met up with a lifelong bestie from Seattle. Together, we would roadtrip to the dramatic seaside cliffs in the Algarve, the southern region of Portugal.
I will cover the Algarve, where I officially celebrated turning 50 😬, in part two.
Stay tuned...
Live with Love. Be Unexpected. 😘
