Montecarmo 12

For about six months there, everyone was moving to Lisbon. Friends were disappearing, whole house-shares were gone over the course of a long weekend — ‘they’ve probably moved to Lisbon’ became a perfectly acceptable assumption if somebody ghosted you. To talk about the charms of Lisbon became a cliché — the sea views, the red roofs, the glossy tiled buildings, the way it welcomes freelancers (or ‘digital nomads’, a phrase I can only share in protective quotes). Eventually it became clear I’d have to visit, if only to dismiss its charms.

We left England in a blizzard, and arrived to a peach-coloured afternoon. Montecarmo 12 sits parallel to the main street of Príncipe Real (last year voted one of the ‘coolest neighbourhoods on the planet’ for the second time in seven years). A double-height door opens into a white limestone lobby. You walk in, and take a breath. On the left, there’s a minimalist living room, the only decoration a bowl of green apples, and on the left an open kitchen, where guests are invited to have breakfast at the bar, where an impossibly elegant chef cooks your eggs to order. A curved staircase leads up to 10 bedrooms, each one spa-like in their design details — ours had impossibly deep bath tubs, white linens and tall windows that look out towards the river. Waiting for us, quivering on the table, were the first pastéis de nata of our trip. They were dainty, they were warm, and they were delicately dusted with cinnamon. They tasted of extreme luxury. In the bathroom, solid shampoo and conditioner bars nod towards a chic eco aesthetic, which I appreciated, but take a really long time to wash hair with, which I did not. But if that’s the worst thing about this hotel, it bodes well.

Within maybe three minutes' walk of this perfect little hotel (in the sunshine! Through groups of young people so handsome you feel like you’ve stumbled onto the set of an independent film!) there is an ice-cream shop that opens late, a chocolate café (it sells cracked slabs of 70-per-cent-cocoa chocolate layered with caramel and sprinkled with salt that you could build successful religions around), and at least five chic restaurants that promise to provide both lunch and existential fulfilment. It’s that kind of a place. It’s lovely, is what I’m saying. Within maybe five minutes, there is a view of Lisbon that encourages you to not only swoon at the colours but also Google its history — the 12th-century Moorish castle, the magnificent 16th-century Manueline monastery of Jerónimos, its 18th-century heart, built after much of the city was destroyed in the 1755 earthquake. 

We took trams and we took trains and we took buses, but mostly we walked — clambering up cobbled hills, dashing down them, stopping to catch our breath in bougainvillea-clad squares. We visited the Museu do Aljube — Resistência e Liberdade in a building that was a political prison until 1965, a museum founded to remember and document the struggle against Portugal’s dictatorship. Mainly though, we ate — whole barbecued chickens, ripped up with bread, exquisite seafood down by the water, that goddam chocolate. Every bar we went to had a small busy kitchen throwing out perfect plates of things rolled in breadcrumbs and fried in oil. 

One morning we walked to the flea market, a journey so steep there were escalators built into the hills, and after browsing every single tile in Lisbon, and, scattered on blankets, all manner of penis-related memorabilia (I was tempted by a ceramic testicular drinking flask), we found a little restaurant hidden behind some steps. Five tables, crammed together, menu written on the wall, one of the best lunches I can remember. There was an autumn salad with pork, and unnecessary chips, and chocolate mousse, and wine, and with the very reasonable bill, a generous shot of cherry flavoured liquor. 

It started to rain as we returned to the hotel, so we were able to enjoy its precise, minimalist charms for a whole afternoon, as a storm battered the pavement outside, and we bathed and gloated. Over the sound of the thunder, I heard myself saying, maybe we should move.