The City That Sent Ships to Your Shore
Lisbon does not announce itself as a colonial capital. It tilts and climbs, all narrow lanes and salt-bleached walls, and the first thing it gives you is the sensation of a city that has been grieving something for a very long time. Fado drifts out of open doorways in Alfama, the oldest neighbourhood, built on a hill the Moors held before the Portuguese did, and the music sounds like longing with nowhere specific to go. For an Indian traveller, especially one from Goa, that longing lands differently. You know, standing there, that ships left this harbour for Calicut in 1498. Vasco da Gama sailed from the Tagus and arrived at a coast your grandparents' grandparents' grandparents called home. Lisbon is where that story began. Goa is where it stayed for 450 years.
