Portugal: The Last Week

A journey concludes — and another one begins.

This was quite possibly the best two month stretch of my life.

The main reason: I came into this with zero expectations. Actually, I had almost negative expectations. I was convinced I’d be bored and lonely the entire time. I’d even paid an extra $80 on my return ticket in case I wanted to move it up and come home sooner. I reached out to friends in both London and Berlin to make sure they were around, in case my loneliness peaked so badly that I had to fly over and just talk to someone.

This makes sense. This year was miserable for me. The best word I could use was stagnant. I’d talked about this in my first post, how a deep sense of unfulfillment manifested in sleeping issues and insomnia. Eventually, I did begin to sleep properly again, but I still felt like I was sleepwalking through my days.

In short, even though I was sleeping, I certainly wasn’t awake.

The deepest fear I had was that I was losing my spark. Every idea I had seemed to sputter and die. I felt like nothing I was writing or creating had any juice to it. On a deeper level, I was resentful at other people’s happiness. My confidence was getting flattened at my job. I felt like I’d given up on my dreams in life. Sitting on my couch at night, watching some TV show, I’d get hit with a random spiral of anxiety — the harrowing sting of whether I’d made irreversible life decisions, whether I’d permanently lost my creative spark, and whether I’d ever be happy again.

Well, I have good news. It turns out the world is pretty forgiving.

At one point, I consulted a career coach. Funny enough, ten minutes into our first conversation, she asked what I loved doing and as soon as I started talking, the vision of visiting Portugal was practically screaming inside of me. I’d never felt anything so strong, intuitively. As competent as this coach was, I knew I didn’t need her services at the time. I needed to follow this calling.

It still took me a long time to actually pull the trigger. At one point, I even resigned that I wouldn’t do it. I kept asking whether this was an escape — was I just traveling to skirt this discomfort? I realized, though: By doing this, I’m not running away from my life, but I’m running towards it.

After arriving in Portugal, it took about three days to feel like myself again. The creative spark was back and in abounding force. How glorious it is to feel like you’ve returned to being you.

And here I am, two months later, stocked full of magical memories and grateful with every inch of my being.

So fittingly enough, the final week felt perfect in every way — I got complete closure in that I did everything I wanted to do, plus had solid goodbye hangs with everyone I met.

Without further ado, here are the highlights.

Tuesday night, I went to my friend Nuno’s apartment. You might remember Nuno from many weeks ago — he was one of my kidnappers the night I first ate a Francesinha. The week before he invited me over for dinner, and true to Portuguese reliability, he followed through. 

Nuno lives in a beautiful, high-ceilinged apartment right in the city. When I arrived, he had a record playing and soft, warm light in the kitchen. It’s a happy home. He cooked a delicious octopus, then used the octopus juice to cook the rice, and served it with “punched potatoes,” a salad, and some local wines. 

I previously referred to Nuno as “a bizarro Portuguese version of me,” and this night, that connection proved even more true. Nuno’s a copywriter who loves to make documentaries. He loves to get “into the mud,” so to speak — one of his first jobs was with Vice, the media company known for its gritty and hard-hitting reporting style. We talked about how he got started, and to my surprise, he said he worked as a clerk in his father’s office until he was 30 before pursuing his own creative endeavors.

“Judging from your accomplishments, I’d’ve thought you started way earlier,” I said. “Meanwhile, here I am at 35, and I feel like this is like my peak.”

“Oh man,” he said smiling. “You’re just getting started.”

After dinner, we were slightly drunk from the wine when Nuno asked if I wanted to get a beer from a cafe down the street.

Now, quick disclaimer: I was warned about this. On Monday I took a yoga class with a friend of Nuno’s and told her I’d be going to his place for dinner. Maybe it’ll be an early night, I told her. “With Nuno, it’s never an early one,” she said. “The amount of times my husband said that, and then stumbled in the door at like 2am … trust me.”

So of course, when we walked down the street and arrived not at a cafe but an empty storefront, I knew her warning might be true.

A man comes and lets us in from the inside. This is Nuno’s friend. It’s an upscale clothing store in the front, with a bar and restaurant in the back. Since it was closed for the night, we had the bar to ourselves, along with four other friends of his. It was a wood-paneled, open-air bar at the end of a long garden restaurant. Immediately, beers were poured from the tap, along with shots of whiskey. “Beer and a shot,” one guy yelled, grinning, “just like America!” 

Turns out, Nuno and I are alike in more ways than just our profession. He was raised in Povoa de Varzim, a small town 30 minutes from Porto’s city center, right on the coast. Fishing’s truly the lifeblood there. When Nuno wanted to escape, he’d go to the sea. So when he heard of my fascination with the Portuguese fishing culture, and waking up early to go photograph them, it bonded us even further. 

We took several of these beer-and-shot combos. Then it was time to go, and Nuno offered to walk me home. Of course, we stopped for another beer along the way. “Oh my,” I said to him after, “I’m kind of drunk.” And then, when I got home and laid down, and everything started spinning, I said to myself: Wow, I’m really drunk. 

Wednesday, I got a pizza from the best place in town, then went to my absolute favorite spot in Porto, right above Parque de Virtudes. This overlooks the river and is one of the premier spots for the sunset. Every single night, it’s flooded with Portuguese folks. There’s a small mini-market right next door. Everyone gets beers and bottles of wine and sets up shop to watch the sunset. It has a wholly local and wholesome feel to it. So my last night, fed from pizza, I grabbed a beer from the market, sat with my back to a tree, and watched the sunset in total bliss, journaling about the magic of my time here. 

Thursday, my last night, was truly special. 

I haven’t written about my friend Jasmine yet, and it’s high time I do (even though she begged not to be mentioned).

This whole adventure started back in March. I was on a walk with a friend and mentioned my desire to go to Portugal. “Oh, my friend just moved to Porto,” she said, referring to Jasmine. This was kinda wild, as I had this poster I bought about Porto in my room. In fairness, I didn’t even know Porto existed when I bought it, but I found the connection serendipitous and asked if I could reach out. 

Jasmine and I connected on a video chat and talked about Porto. She’d moved there earlier and was loving it. That was a serious push for me to go. Once I booked my ticket, she very kindly invited me for dinner on my second night along with two of her friends, as a way to welcome me into the city. One of those friends invited me to Pickleball, which introduced me to other people, and so on. And to add even more — it was Jasmine’s coworker who subletted by place while I was gone. So it was only fitting we spent our last night together.

I had no news of the evening’s plans, just to arrive by 7pm.

Two other friends were there, Natalija and Greg, whom I am incredibly fond of. The four of us walked the bridge and arrived at a hidden sunset spot along the river. Jasmine brought a bottle of Rosé, because weeks back she heard me say it was my favorite, and we all shared the bottle. 

Then came dinner. 

A quick note on this place, Oficina dos Rissois. This is one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to in my life. It’s a very narrow place with only bar seating, except a few tables outside during summer. It was opened initially by a French-Canadian chef. They cook Portuguese comfort food, namely Rissois, the small empanada-like treats, along with other sides. And let me just say: Flavor-wise, this is one of the best meals of my life. So when we turned the corner and I learned this is where we were going, I lit up. 

Each time I went, I was either alone or with one other person, so this allowed us to really order the barn: We got nine Rissois, plus French fries (the best I’ve had in Porto, which also comes with their homemade sauce), tomato rice (a Portuguese staple that’s been mastered here), pickled veggies, plus a bottle of champagne. 

When the waiter offered us dessert, Jasmine declined, and I knew the night was continuing.

At Natalija and Greg’s, Jasmine busted out a box of Banoffe, my favorite dessert in Portugal — crumbly, Banana-cream pie. We each had our slice and played my favorite game, Code Names. 

It was a perfect sendoff, complete with some of my favorite people and chock full of everything I loved about Porto. I walked home that night with such a heavy heart. I was walking as slowly as I could, like returning from the bathroom during Hebrew school and trying to buy as much time as humanly possible. I was sipping in every breath of air and sight. I was sad. Tomorrow, I’d be going home. 

I’ll end my story with this: I’ve heard that when you go somewhere, you’ve got two forces at play — there’s your conscious reason you went, and there’s the actual, invisible reason you were meant to be there.

By the end of the two months, I was not excited to return to New York, but I felt ready to leave Portugal (at least for the time being). That was because I felt like I’d fulfilled the invisible reason.

I believe this trip was for me to learn the language of my intuition and how to trust it implicitly.

In my trip, I was introduced to a certain therapist’s blog. He said we all have three guiding forces within our decision-making: there’s the ego, which is concerned with our reputation, our success, looking good, etc.; there’s common sense, which is all about results and outcome — this is the voice that says, ‘Where will this get me?’ ‘If I do this, it will lead to this,’ and so on; and then there’s the soul, which is a much deeper, more subtle force, and this is concerned with our happiness and growth.

Most of us operate based off the former two. At least I could say that I do. The hardest part of the soul is that her voice is the softest; and also, it typically defies logic, societal expectations, etc. For that, it’s often the hardest choice. 

Soul appears to people in entirely different ways. Each conversation is unique. For me, it’s the vision — my imagination spontaneously goes into action, I can see myself in the situation, and I can see myself excited as well (it also works in reverse: if it’s a decision that’s not in my best interest, I can see myself suffering within it). 

I don’t want to sound like an authority on this, because I hardly know it myself. It just makes a ton of intuitive sense and also, every single time I practiced it in my trip, amazing things happened. 

One was my first weekend, which I wrote about before. People kept telling me to visit the Duoro Valley, where they make Port wine. So I booked an AirBnB trip. Logically, it made a ton of sense: I’d be with other people and I’d have the whole thing planned out for me. The whole week, though, I kept just seeing myself on a train. That one made no sense. It was eight hours total in one day — four there, four back — and I wouldn’t know anyone. I had this fear of me bored out of my mind after hour three, watching Netflix shows and doing NYT Crossword puzzles on my phone.

I decided to try the train. And as I wrote about, it was one of the happiest days in quite some time. I met people on the way, whom I shared lunch with and then talked with on the whole journey back. The ride itself was so beautiful and stimulating I wasn’t bored for a single moment.

One more example was my co-working space. In my first week, I checked out four spaces total. Each one made logical sense, for their own reasons — one was filled with artists in a cozy office space; another had tons of expats and daily homemade meals; another was sleek and right in the middle of the city. Yet each one I toured, a sharp “no” would sound in my head.

On Friday, I followed a whim and went to Armazem. I found it on Google searches. When I walked in, there were no interactions, a flag for me (I like an interactive space). It was deathly quiet. The majority of the people were Portuguese and knew each other already — plus, the walls were paper thin and you couldn’t go number two without the world hearing. 

Yet minutes after I walked in, something said “yes.” So again, I followed it. 

This space ended up greatly enhancing my time here. First of all, that quiet atmosphere was incredibly productive for me. But I was wrong about the clique-ness. Every single day, everyone ate outside together in the back garden. Though they were Portuguese, and I was intimidated to go, some days I would, and they’d so kindly shift into English, welcoming me in. And most especially, on my final day, the office manager laid out a goodbye breakfast, as well as a handwritten card. 

There were countless other examples of this. It kept happening time and again. Each decision is difficult, because it always brings its new challenges, arguments, etc. But every time I followed it, magical things happened.

So for me, this was no clarity trip, like what I’d done before, but more so the beginning of a transformation — a new way of living and making decisions. A way of being I’d done for far too long that was growing increasingly heavy, burdensome, unfulfilling and counter-productive.

Now, it’s my quest to trust my instincts implicitly in situations, even when the outside world logically beckons otherwise. When I’d learn to distinguish between the competing voices in my head. When I’d start to fulfill the life I was meant to, and not the one that I’d planned. 

So what comes next, who knows. But you’ll be the first to know.