The funicular accident that killed 17 people in Lisbon yesterday hit home for me. Lisbon is one of my favorite cities, the one, I always say, in which I became a travel writer. In 1989 it was the last stop on an Iberian tour that was my first assignment as a newspaper travel editor. In Madrid, Barcelona, Seville I had had the typical tourist experiences, moments that would do nothing to distinguish my story from those of other travel writers. In Lisbon, I called a friend of a friend, a poet, and spent a long evening with him and his girlfriend that ended in a dive listening to fado music. “It smells of Lisbon,” Casimiro translated one song for me, “it smells of flowers and the sea.” That night I discovered the secret of travel writing: you experience, as best you can, in the short time allotted you, the life of a local.
A few years ago I returned to Lisbon, this time with Hania, and stayed in an Airbnb just steps from the funicular.
