Streets of Lisbon
Photos and words by Liza Herlands
Walking through the streets of Lisbon brings you through walks one thousands of years. Tiled side streets cracked and crumbled from wear, touch gingerly their partnered tiled walls and ceramic colored buildings. Each structure a different height, shape and design. Paint thins and chips clinging to dear life on doors and window frames. Each home and store front is designed differently from its neighbor, each door higher still than the one before it. Clothes dangle lifelessly in the breeze from iron balconies. Walking down a street in Alfama seems beautifully forgotten; left in its place in any certain time. A faded red car with no certain branding parks in front of a one story building with salmon and turquoise Moorish designs. A sign states “RESTAURANTE” each on its own individual tile diagonally upwards. A waiter stands in the door frame and waves as I lift my camera to catch his lax stance as he leans against the faded door frame.
Maybe I was lucky, or maybe this is how it always is, that there was a place such as this. So beautiful and abandoned, bar the occasional tram that passed by so close to the buildings you could almost feel you would be plastered against the tiled walls if you didn’t watch your step. Breathless from the hike up winding streets, air escaped my lungs as I looked over the burnt sienna colored rooftops, the skyline painted in reds, yellows, and the occasional alien blush and blues that melted with the sky. And when they were done, what was left was the ocean. Portugal is the western most part of continental Europe, and looking out from above, imagine that in this moment, you can see into gray-blue waters that reflect and meet the sky somewhere in forever’s distance.
