Right off the bat let me make it clear – the purpose of this trip was to attend the Web Summit tech conference, not for sightseeing. So I saw a lot more of the inside of their convention center than anything else. However, the little glimpses I did get to see were so lovely that it is still worth sharing and remembering to keep this city high up on my list of places to make my way back to soon.

I arrived Monday evening after work and took a cab to Plaza Dom Duarte where I met the host of the B.com flat I rented to get the keys. I settled in to my new home for the next couple of days which was fantastically pink. I was in heaven.

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It was already late and what I’d seen of the area so far didn’t leave me enthused to go out exploring by myself at night, so I settled in for an early start in the morning.

Day 1: Tuesday

I woke up early and stepped out the door to be utterly delighted by this sight:

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SO pink! You can see why I loved Lisbon from the very beginning. I took the Metro to to join the throngs of other Web Summit attendees. What I mostly saw over the 3 days were this:

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I had a long and exhausting day running around the massive Summit attending talks. At the end of it, I joined the pop-up bar for the conference looking out over the water to re-group with a fellow colleague who was attending and trade notes.

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Then, I went back to my pink B.com flat with the intent of taking a bit of a rest and then going to the after hours fun at Pink Street (I know!), but wound up completely falling asleep. I woke up hours later to find myself conference badge & blazer still on in a perfect caricature of an exhausted business traveler.

Day 2: Wednesday

On this day I fared slightly better on navigating the massive conference without being totally overwhelmed. I’ll also take advantage of this paragraph break to insert some pics of some of the local food truck offerings available at the Summit which was pretty dope (despite the distinct lack of cashless payment options…which is NOT very high tech).

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This time when I went back to the apartment at the end of the day, I had maintained enough energy to go out to the official after-hours party. I went back to my glorious pink apartment to drop off my stuff and freshen up headed out to the LxFactory. Iwas waiting for some new friends I met at the Summit to arrive so I ducked into a bookstore. Which turned out to be one of the most amazing bookstores in the world. Ler Devagar (“Read Slowly”) Bookstore.

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No, but like, really. This is not a hyperbole. The space used to be a printing press (how appropriate is that??) and has now been modernized (while keeping some of the original machines) into a bookstore / community space complete with 2 bars and is also an event space. Basically a dream space for us literary nerds. (Did I just refer to myself as I literary nerd yet start this paragraph with “No, but like, really”. Yeah. Yeah, I did. I own it.)

And apparently is commonly named one of the 10 most beautiful bookstores in the world by many. One of the Pros of going to a place unprepared is serendipitous discoveries like this. You duck into a place to get out of the cold and to find a place to kill some time and it turns out to be an amazing discovery.

I spent some glorious alone time here enjoying a glass of wine and perusing the books and antiques while I waited. Then my new techie friends arrived and we explored some of the bars of the LxFactory. This whole area stinks of being a manufactured “hipster space”. Quirky shops, a barbershop/whisky bar with heavily mustached men, pre-requisite “cool street art”, etc. But I enjoyed it despite myself.

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Day 3: Thursday

The final and last morning, I woke up early and went for a run. THIS was when I truly discovered the beauty and magic that is Lisbon.

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But as I vowed to return to this gorgeous city to spend some proper time exploring and enjoying, I also witnessed some evidence that this is all too common of a notion, with consequences to the local population.

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Now, I have a pretty good sense of direction, and one of my weird skills is the ability to go out for a run and “randomly” explore only to arrive back to my starting place at almost exactly a perfect 5k loop every time, but the winding streets of Lisbon through me for a REAL loop. I got delightfully ‘lost’, but of course gave in to the city and was OK with missing the first talk I had planned on attending due to a slightly longer run than planned. I attended a few more hours of the conference before heading to the airport to head back to France.

My running exploration left me with very mixed emotions in terms of desperately wanting to return to this incredible place, while being a conscious and considerate tourist (which is something I hope/try to do already, of course). If you have ideas and thoughts on how best to enjoy new cities without contributing to the over-tourism that affects areas, please share!