Seventy-four stairs and a pastel de nata

The listing said charming top-floor flat in Graça with views. Every word of that was true. What it did not say was that between the street and the charm there were seventy-four stairs, and that Pip, who can climb anything at home including the bookshelf, would stop on the fourth one and announce that she was a baby now.

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01 The tram

Everyone tells you to ride the 28 tram. Everyone else has also been told, and they are all in the queue at Martim Moniz. We rode it once, on a Tuesday at 8.15, when the only other passengers were a nun and a man with a bag of oranges, and Pip waved at every single person we passed for forty minutes. Several waved back. The nun did not, but she smiled, which from a nun counts double.

02 Custard tarts: a field study

Teo grew up in Porto and therefore believes he is entitled to opinions about Lisbon's pastéis de nata, which he expresses loudly and in front of the people who bake them. Over six days we ate, between the three of us, nineteen. Pip had the tops. I am told this is not how it works.

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Lisbon does not have streets so much as staircases that have been talked into it.

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