Lisbon

World-class golf, more than 300 days of sunshine a year, flavorsome local seafood, excellent wines and more than 1,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean coastline. There are countless reasons to add Portugal to your bucket list, not least that United Airlines has announced direct flights from New York to Faro, starting in 2025. Me, I might have been living in Lisbon on and off for four years, but I’m continually surprised by new discoveries, from quirky bookstore openings in central Lisbon (Salted books, I love you) to secluded coves or gnarly rock formations in the Algarve’s emblematic places such as Praia do Marinha.

Forget Barcelona. Say sayonara to San Fran. And so long, London. Post-Covid, Lisbon has become a hub for the creative, hungry and cosmopolitan. A throng of new restaurants, wine bars and buzzy co-working spots has formed a playground for the young and ambitious.  They’re squeezing every last drop out of their free time, too, joining the tourists in thumping nightclubs before escaping to beautiful  beaches. But plenty of weekend visitors don’t know (or have time to discover) that the city is flanked by bucolic countryside, dotted with world-class hotels and agriturismos. A forty-minute drive can take you to pristine white sands, enchanting pine forests, retro beachfronts and sprawling national parks. Next time you’re in town, tack a road trip onto your city break.

Six months of the year, I’m a (wannabe) Lisboeta, “a person from Lisbon.” A peripatetic British food and travel journalist somewhat scuppered by Brexit, I’m allowed in the Schengen Area for up to ninety days in any 180-day block. I max them out before I’m sent packing. I’ve come to think of these moments in time as “chapters,” in a half-hearted attempt to romanticize the loss of my border privileges. Lisbon is the object of my affections — and has become my base for European chapters from which I breathlessly ping between countries. I try new dishes and try not to fall in love with anyone before I’m ordered home (rather inconvenient: "getting married for the visa" jokes grow less and less funny).

On the morning of November 1755, Lisbon was struck by one of the deadliest earthquakes in history. It measured between 8.5 and 9.0 on the Richter scale, split the city center with fissures 16 feet wide, and killed perhaps 40,000 people (out of a population of 200,000). Shocked survivors gathered by the docks on the River Tagus, which had turned to a giant mudflat, littered with wreckage, as the sea mysteriously retreated. Many of them were killed by the tsunami that engulfed the city center 40 minutes later. Still, every cloud has a silver lining.