30 Roommates in the South of Portugal
A Lisbon and Lagos travel diary — the best spots I ate, shopped, beached, and had my world rocked by a €2.50 sandwich
On an orange grove in the south of Portugal, I saw summer start to take shape. I watched it transform from an amorphous blob to a tactile experience, and I let the sun unravel my skin. Spring skies were grey and drizzly back in New York—winds howled by the river. But I wasn’t in New York to see it. I was baking on terracotta tiles by the pool, peering into the future.
I came to the south coast with a celebratory purpose—a darling friend’s 30th birthday party—along with 29 of her other closest friends, most of whom had never met one another. The accommodation she booked had twelve bedrooms, three outdoor tents, and spotty plumbing. A peak-season loquat tree guarded the center of the compound, heavy with ripe marigold fruit, defending the kitchen entrance like a gentle sticky giant.
There was a pool (icy, half-chlorinated water that took my breath away), two hammocks drooping across the lawn, and a back grove that housed a large gazebo and wooden crates full of yoga mats. There, we stretched and squatted and sweat through the mornings, our one toddler resident monkeying his way onto his mom’s back during downward dog.
We made lemonade from the citrus trees, fired pizzas in the charcoal oven, and played cards on the backyard wooden bartop, drawing carefully from the center pile to avoid knocking over a beer or glass of natural wine from the vineyard next door. We sang karaoke to each other on the big outdoor sectional—white and C-shaped like something from Love Island—and the birthday girl cried when her little sister grabbed the mic.
Inside, the kitchen was a maze of half-eaten baguettes, a never-depleting pot of lukewarm coffee, and a rotating cast of IKEA glasses loaded and unloaded from the dishwasher every two hours. There were three small couches, one large dining table, and straw hats taped to the wall as decor. A comically height-mismatched barstool and kitchen bench combo rendered the seated parties with only their shoulders and head peeping up from the counter like a whack-a-mole arcade game.
The house had an L shape to it—two bedroom-laden arms stretching out perpendicularly with the kitchen/dining room sat right at their intersection. There was so much space. So many beds to rest on, so many windows to stare out of and quiet corners to take respite. Yet still, each night, we found ourselves snuggling up on two loveseat couches in the smallest alcove of the house, sardine-packed practically on top of one another, giggling like kids at summer camp. Strangers before but never again.
This was the latter half of a trip—teary-eyed and friend-filled and decidedly un-flashy, in sweatpants at the local chain grocery store trying to calculate how many chicken thighs 15 large men could take down. But I spent the first few days exploring in Lisbon, hiking cobblestone hills and tracking down pasteis de nata like a shark sniffing blood.
Here’s every spot I loved in Portugal.
Restaurants, shops, the beach, and a sandwich that I miss like a lover who’s gone off to war.
