I Got Punched By A Stranger On My First Day In Portugal… And Had The Trip Of a Lifetime
5/24/26:
I flew in on a red eye from Boston with my family and arrived in Lisbon at 10:30 in the morning. I was immediately captivated by the ocean, the rolling hills, the buildings of many colors, the castle looming over the city, and the arid landscape that reminded me of a lovely mix between Mexico and southern California.
The locals were great and spoke excellent English, however… I was walking back with my sister to our AirBnB from a big town square by the water, when we came upon a guy sitting on a bench. He was slightly dirty and ragged, but not overtly homeless-looking. The man immediately locked onto me as we were walking through this little courtyard between shops and he held his fists at me in front of his chest like he was drawing a bow.
We kept walking to pass him and I held up my hands like, “don’t shoot me haha,” because I thought he was joking. He stood up and walked towards me and as I passed by him, he punched me on my bare shoulder (tank top, I know) pretty hard and said, “fuck you,” in a thick Portuguese accent. I laughed it off and walked away with my sister to get her out of there.
As typical with me, I had a delayed reaction about it thirty minutes later. I felt anxious and out of place and definitely had an hour or so where I wanted to go home. I’d never just been hit in the street by a random stranger before, but I powered through with the help of my family and lovely girlfriend back home via text and ended up having a beautiful night in Lisbon.
We had dinner at this Italian place right by our AirBnB and I had some finos (or as Benicio Del Toro would put it, a few small beers) with my sister in an open air cafe with a solo guitarist singing in Portuguese. Bom dia.
5/25/26
My second day in Lisbon (it is actually called Lisboa, I’ve never understood why we translate names) was far better than the first, and that’s not even because I didn’t get assaulted in the street. No, this wannabe Bourdain fucking EXPLORED today. If I was insufferable enough to count my steps, I’m sure it would be an exceptionally high number.
I walked to the Praca Luis de Camoes and got vegan pastel de natas (delicious pastries filled with custard) and hiked the grounds of the Castelo de Sao Jorge. The castle was one of the tallest points in the city, offering stunning 360 degree views. There were ruins on the grounds dating as far back as the 7th century BC and contained a room with a real camera obscura, which essentially was a periscope above the castle that could view the city below in all directions and reflected its image down into a dark room where we could view it in real time, just like the oldest form of photography.
I write this now sitting on my AirBnB’s balcony on the Rua da Madalena, where I can look down the street below and over the colorful buildings to see where the Tagus River and the Atlantic meet, drinking a glass of stale port wine our host kindly left in a carafe for us, as a man who has succumbed to the lazy, seductive charm to this city.
The narrow, cobblestone streets and alleys surrounded by old buildings of different shades, patterns, and styles of architecture are wonderful. The views of the water are both breathtaking and comforting. The people are largely friendly and speak English enthusiastically. The waiters and bartenders take a WHILE to do their jobs, and that isn’t a bad thing at all, being forced to slow down and take in your surroundings with care. Taking a breath and savoring a small moment is not something that comes easy to us Americans, but it is so rewarding.
The music is delightful. I went to a fado show with my sister that night. It featured a steel acoustic guitar and a Portuguese guitar, which is kind of like a mix between a mandolin and a 12-string guitar. The steel guitarist played a walking groove, almost polka-sounding, and the Portuguese guitarist filled the space with busy, melodic lines that would’ve reminded you a bit of the main theme from The Godfather. There were two singers, male and female, that alternated songs until they sang a duet at the end. The vocals were almost operatic and in Portuguese they belted about longing and unrequited love, a common theme in Lisboa.
We had a phenomenal dinner at a tapas restaurant in the Baixa neighborhood by the water. Forgive my veganism, but I had some unbelievably good veganized traditional Portuguese dishes: fejoada (white bean stew), beetroot croquettes, and tempura vegetables with a delicious tomato sauce. The bread and oil alone was enough to make you think about abandoning your family and career stateside.
After depositing my father and sister safely back at our AirBnB shortly before midnight, I decided to venture out in search of the real music scene here, not one so geared towards tourists. I found myself at Tejo Bar, a very intimate and cool venue that only seats around thirty people and had several rules established before you could enter: no clapping and no photos. I caught a short accordion-led set where the accordionist was joined by either an a cappella singer or a drummer (who was also the bouncer at the door) depending on the song.
After each tune the patrons would rub their hands together, making the room sound like a rain stick, and my dumb ass went to clap my hands each time before rubbing them in unison with the rest of the room. Unfortunately, my phone’s battery dwindled quicker than expected, so I chose to make sure I could get home and used my remaining 10% to call an Uber before the next set began, but I would absolutely love to go back to Tejo Bar sometime. Obrigado.
5/26/26
Porto, my god. You took the breath right out of my mouth. I think she is the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. The heart of the city looks like it was carved out by a sculptor’s hand, but instead, the artist was and always will be the Douro River, which leads all the way up to the Douro Valley where port wine is made. We took a quaint three-hour train ride here from Lisbon and naturally had a few Super Bocks along the way.
From where I am currently sitting, an insane hotel on the riverfront my sister booked, I had a perfect view of Porto across the river. Our side of the water, a short walk over the Dom Luis I Bridge, was called Vila Nova de Gaia. Porto looked older than Gaia from my perspective at the hotel pool. The buildings were gorgeous and terra cotta roofed, with stone steeples, spires, ramparts and domes left unscathed from 20th century bombing via Portugal’s World War 2 neutrality.
At night, Porto was lit by warm, orange streetlights instead of their harsh white counterparts on my side of the river. What my side did have, was a lovely riverfront walk full of shops, bars and restaurants right on the water, where I had a staggering amount of tawny port wine (so damn good).
Again, not to flaunt my veganism, but the versions of traditional Portuguese cuisine that I was able to eat were phenomenal. I ate the same francesinha com batata that Bourdain had in his Porto episode of Parts Unknown. It was fucking incredible. It essentially is a sandwich with sliced meat, melted cheese draped overtop the whole thing, bread and all, and then doused in gravy with a healthy side of french fries to mop up all the goodness.
5/27/26
Today I went to one of the many stunning beaches in the Porto area, specifically the Praia do Homem do Leme, and was quite literally knocked on my ass… by the Atlantic Ocean. It was the warmest that water has ever felt to me, but a big wave caught me off guard once or twice for sure. My dumb Florida ass is so used to soft warm sand that I ambitiously trekked across the hot pebbles that made up the beach and left my feet sore well into the evening.
That being said, it was one of the most gorgeous beaches I have ever seen. So, I put my flip flops on that my girlfriend back home hates and explored that bitch (beach). There were many rocks to climb and waves to get smacked by, as well as this awesome jetty/fishing pier that looked like a medieval drawbridge.
I got a lot of sun and laid out on a beanbag chair rental that is vastly superior in comfort to any folding beach chair or recliner you’d use in the States. It was lovely to drink Super Bock in the sun, on my beanbag, and watch other idiot tourists limp and scurry across this gorgeous, painful beach. I’ll never make fun of another traveler wearing water shoes at a Florida beach again.
That evening back at the hotel I was feeling damn good. Is there anything better than spending all day at the beach, and then taking a steaming hot shower afterwards and feeling that burnt, clean glow the rest of the night? Well, imagine that feeling amplified by five-ish glasses of cold tawny Port wine while lounging at your hotel pool with a picturesque view of the Douro River carving a path between Porto and Gaia right in front of you.
This feeling was so incredible that I did something that is extremely, extremely rare for me to do: draw a picture. More specifically, sketch out the landscape right before my eyes. Here is what I ended up with:
5/28/26
My sister got engaged today on the riverfront of the Douro. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. She was completely shocked. I had been coordinating with my future brother-in-law, Mike, and my job was to get us to the planned location: a cobblestone landing along the river on the Gaia side, overlooking Porto in the shadow of the Dom Luis I Bridge.
Like an idiot, I had gotten into a stupid sibling tiff with my sister about an hour-and-a-half before the proposal, while on the way to dinner. Horrific timing, I know, but I smoothed it over in time just before we left the restaurant. Who doesn’t love a little emotional rollercoaster?
I led us to the spot after our post-dinner Uber, under the guise of a family picture on the Douro. I immediately saw Mike, her soon-to-be fiance, “hiding” at an outdoor cafe table not 30 yards down the walkway. Masterfully, he ducked his head behind his glass of beer. I was taking pictures of my dad and sister, with their backs facing where he was sitting, while Mike went full Solid Snake and crouch-walked behind the cafe.
I then gave my sister my phone to take pictures of my dad and I, so that Mike could approach from behind her and pull off the surprise of a lifetime. She took the photos and over her shoulder I could see Mike scaling down the path to meet us on the landing. He was still climbing down the cobblestones when my sister reached to hand my phone back, but in a stroke of pure genius, I asked her to flip the camera and take some landscape shots of us to buy Mike more time. Having a pretentious artist reputation well-established in my family, she did as I asked without question.
When Mike was finally right behind her, my father says, “Honey, look out. I think there’s a homeless guy behind you.” She turned around and the rest is history. We were all crying. Locals were literally clapping from the road above. The sun had just set on this beautiful city and now I have a brother-in-law waiting in the queue.
Speaking of my pretentious artist reputation, I saved the last exposure in my Fuji disposable for this shot of a lifetime:
This felt like the priority to write about for today, but I also did some great exploring on my own. I hiked up the stairs on the Porto side of the bridge and climbed to the top of the hill that the bulk of the city is perched on. This country loves their hills, that’s for sure.
Once I was up there, I walked around the Catedral Do Porto. It was as striking and gorgeous as the rest of the city. The architecture here alone consistently made me stop and take pictures with my iPhone like a tourist. The buildings here are strikingly different than those in America, just like the quality of food. Things aren’t made over here with haste or to yield the best possible profit margin, much fewer corners are seemingly cut.
For example, there is a ton more paper, glass, and fabric sold here for consumer goods packaging rather than our patriotic single-use plastics. Instead of every building being copy and pasted with the same steel and cheap drywall designs, there are so many beautiful brick and stone buildings with gargoyles, various paints, and colorful tile patterns. The ingredients at even the casual restaurants in Portugal are fresh and natural, not pumped with forever chemicals and microplastics.
Something that America is a bit better at is universal handicap accessibility. With someone in our travel party having limited mobility, the hills in Lisbon and Porto definitely proved a challenge, with many buildings lacking an elevator that made things a bit difficult for us at times. Though we navigated these challenges well and they didn’t impact the trip terribly, it still was a factor we needed to keep in mind for the duration of our time in country. We did occasionally need to call an Uber for people in our group to travel half a mile back up a hill, but for less than five Euros? No problem at all.
5/28/26
Back in Lisbon for a final night is where this tale ends. We took the train back down and there was a nasty heat wave that had passed through while we were up north in cooler Porto. It was so bad in France (not as bad as the one currently happening there at the time of editing) that multiple professional tennis players were dropping like flies at Roland-Garros. They never would’ve lasted at band camp in southwest Florida.
We stayed in a different part of town for our second leg in Lisboa. It was further from the water in the Saldanha district, a more residential-feeling neighborhood compared to Baixa, but still had plenty of good hotels and restaurants around nonetheless.
I walked myself to The Green Affair (no, not a romantic fling with Lou Ferrigno) and had a phenomenal three-course meal of spinach croquettes and a vegan mayo dipping sauce, a sweet potato and mushroom Wellington served with rice, bok choy, and mango chutney while drinking Estrella Damm, a rare break from Super Bock or Sagres.
I finished the meal with a tiramisu that nearly made me finish as well. It was unreal good. I left after several obrigados and made sure to leave a hefty tip of two Euros. I loved that coins are relevant in Europe and a 2 Euro coin goes a long way over there. At least that’s what I told myself.
After dinner, my sister and her new fiance, Mike, joined me on a walk around the Campo Pequeno (see photo above). It was a big shopping/entertainment center right next to our hotel that caught my eye when I walked to dinner earlier, so we checked it out. Turns out, there was a big local festival going on with at least a few thousand drunk and happy Portuguese people dancing and partying.
It was a good crowd of mostly twenty and thirty-somethings and the three of us had a few Sagres and took it all in, bouncing along to the DJ’s set while we sipped our beers. It was already past 9pm with plenty of light outside and the audience kept growing. We decided to get some space and find a bench to smoke cigars I had bought to celebrate the engagement.
We found a good bench under some trees that was still within earshot of the concert and we people watched. I didn’t have a cigar cutter, so Mike and I bit off the ends of ours and spent the next couple minutes spitting pieces of tobacco into the bushes behind us.
Next to us sat a nice, quiet, middle-aged man with a massive fucking dog lounging on the ground. Think of the biggest Great Pyrenees you’ve ever seen and double it (not really, but close). The dog was awesome. At one point, a street drunk slowly approached us with a very unsettling energy, as if he were a coiled spring with a raggedy beard, and as he started to step too close, that big beautiful dog started growling and barking and the guy backed off. My sister lobbed over a “good boy” at him and his owner nodded with a smile.
6/30/26
I thought that I would wrap up this article up shortly after getting home with some grand takeaway from my trip, but truthfully I’ve always been a delayed reaction kind of guy. It takes me time to process things, and there certainly was A LOT to process on this trip.
I got assaulted by a stranger in broad daylight on the street, my sister got engaged with a great guy, I was blessed to be able to explore two of Western Europe’s oldest and most beautiful cities, I met so many lovely Portuguese people who treated me with kindness and respect, and most importantly, I had some truly fucking incredible food.
Do you want to know what it is that I’ve been missing the most since being home for a month? It isn’t the food or the architecture or the Port wine. It’s the pacing of day-to-day life. There was peace and quiet and not excessive stimulation. I felt comfortable sitting at a cafe in a random town square and sipping a beer with my notebook opened or just simply people watching without feeling like I’m falling behind in the rat race back home.
Sure, ambition is important and is what has driven America to global power since the 20th century, but it isn’t everything. Our culture has become so ingrained with work and productivity and corporate dominance that it feels impossible for many of us to just slow down and sit and put the phone down and drink a Super Bock in the sun unless we buy a plane ticket and fly halfway across the world.
Something that I’m trying to get better at is treating my free time when I’m home like I am back at a cafe on the Douro in Porto, but instead of a Port wine it’s a Wiseacre Tiny Bomb or a monkey mocha from Frothy Monkey. It shouldn’t take thousands of dollars and multiple travel days for us to find unstimulated peace for a moment while we unplug from the rat race, even if just for a half hour.
My advice to the rest of the country, as someone who needs to follow this himself: slow down, America.