Over the hills, under the moon - and off the beaten path

This morning, I crawled through muddy, dark Roman-era tunnels below Lisbon.  The tunnels were carved during the reign of Emperor Augustus, and for centuries, they directed underground rainwater while empires above rose and fell. Eventually, they were sealed off and forgotten - to be rediscovered completely by chance during the rebuilding after the 1755 earthquake, which turned most of Lisbon into rubble. Today, the crypts are normally completely filled with groundwater, but they are pumped dry on just a couple of days each year, where only a few visitors are allowed access.   Today, I was among the lucky few.  The only entry to the below is through a narrow temporary shaft in the middle of the busy Rua da Conceição, right between the rails of the 28 tram line. The stairs leading down felt steep and risky, and when I finally reached the galleries, a few lights illuminated the void that had stood in total darkness for more than a Millenium. Some passages were s...

Yesterday we walked along Lisbon's shores. We started the day at the crumbling warehouses of Cais do Ginjal, and by evening we were eating golden sardines and moist monkfish. Cais do Ginjal is the waterfront just across the river. It used to be filled with life and workers, but now it stands totally empty. We wandered past locked warehouses with peeling paint and cracked glass. Wildflowers sprouted straight out of the bricks, and most of the walls were covered in graffiti. In one warehouse, a whole wall had collapsed right down, showing all the rusty pipes inside. The jagged hole looked like a gap-toothed grin, as if the building was chuckling at how broken it was. We went inside through a side door hanging loose off the hinges. Broken glass crunched under our shoes as we walked around the dark interior. It was now a place for pigeons, and their cooing echoed around. The sun streamed through broken window panes to light up the dust. Rust bloomed on the old machinery like ora...

We started our travels in 2024 at our house in the Ardeche mountains of Southern France. And - we had four absolutely miserable weeks!!! While Northern Europe experienced a lovely spring, we stayed mostly indoors, covered in duvets, while persistent rain and even sludge beat against our windows. Well - this is now rainwater under the bridge. And plenty of it! We survived - and, eventually, we escaped - and yesterday we arrived in a sunny, warm Berlin, where our new neighbors were hangi ng out in some of Kreuzberg's many outdoor cafes. ----------------- o ----------------- Today we used a lovely Ascension day to make our own ascent onto what is probably one of the weirdest places you can visit in all of Berlin - the top of the Teufelberg mountain far out in the Grunewald forest. This rubble mountain turned Cold War listening post turned graffiti wonderland is a strange mix of the last 80 years of German turmoil and rebirth. The approach to Teufelberg is unassuming - a nondescr...

Photo: Finn Tranter After several months of living in the constant light of big cities, we are finally back in our house in the small village of Antraigues in the south of France. We definitely miss the hectic pulse of city life, but here in the quiet Volane valley, surrounded by dark mountains, we have at least regained the nights without any light pollution. Thousands of stars show themselves. Last night we stood on a grass slope outside the village and watched the familiar constellations rising - the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and the square of Pegasus. The longer we stood looking upwards, the more stars came out from the darkness. Their light has traveled so long to reach us that we were literally looking into the past - and some of the stars we looked at have probably stopped existing a long time ago. Carpe Diem is a well-known expression, but on a night like this, Carpe Noctem felt equally important. Seize the night, while you still ...

The splendid city of Lisbon presents countless wonders to uncover, but there is one exploration that has risen to the top of my agenda: Finding a specific tree, and below that tree - a place that belonged to my mother's youth! Many years ago she visited Lisbon with some friends. It was during the heat of summer, and she often told about how one of those friends persuaded the group to climb a steep hill to sit in the shadow of a grand tree. Not once, but several times during their weeklong stay. As the years went by, my mother kept the many visits as a fond memory, but I never heard the reason why they had to climb that hill. Now - years after her death - I have the time in Lisbon to finally find this tree. And perhaps discover why they returned, again and again, to sit and reflect in its shadow? The internet can be a good solver of life's puzzles - and I did find an answer in one of its far corners: When the fabled Portuguese poet and philosopher Fer...

The unmarked door in the alleyway gave no indication of the feast that lay beyond. We knocked twice, and curious eyes sized us up before the door creaked open. Tonight we were visiting one of Lisbon's 'Chínes clandestinos', the illegal, non-regulated Chinese restaurants, which opened some twenty years ago during a wave of immigration from China. In a city that at the time was notoriously unwelcoming to immigrants, these underground eateries were sanctuaries, and some exist to this day in the narrow back alleys inside the multi-cultural Mouraria neighborhood. Often on an upper floor and with no outer signs at all - just perhaps a red Chinese lantern swinging high up on the wall. The staircase was steep, grungy, and strewn with graffiti, but stepping inside on the first floor, we were immersed in delicious scents of Szechuan spices. We were led past the narrow kitchen, dodging woks ablaze with oil and a cook yelling Chines...

I’ll admit I was a bit nervous walking into my first attempt at making Pastel de natas ; those dangerously addictive Portuguese custard tarts.     Michael and I have eaten them about every single day since we came to Lisbon. We've even tried them at Pasteis de Belem , the legendary bakery which claims to have the original secret recipe, but I’ve never tried my unskilled hand at crafting their intricate layers. Until this morning, when I stood ready with about ten other newbie bakers.    Luckily, the chipper instructors at the cooking class reassured us that we’d all be custard experts in no time. Martha and her colleague demonstrated how they carefully stretched the dough, explaining that it should be made so thin that you would be able to read a newspaper through it.  Soon I was elbow-deep in flour, attempting to coax my dough into ultra-thin plates, possible using a few c...