จ๊าบ

Portugal recap!

Earlier this year, I was awarded the William and Neoma Timme Travel Fellowship. This past week, I traveled through Porto, the Douro Valley, Coimbra, Lisbon, and Sintra! Now continuing the journey into Spain. Here are quick snippets of things I learned from each place!

Porto: Granite slopes, tiled facades, tight streets, and the Douro River revealed a city shaped by topography, trade, infrastructure, and pedestrian movement.

Douro Valley: Port wine, terraced vineyards, schist rock that retains water, olive trees as edges, inheritance, and private land formed a working cultural landscape, a mosaic of people, production, and slope.

Coimbra: Historic university hill, riverfront paths, and historic streets revealed a city shaped by knowledge, topography, and the Mondego River, with conversations on wildfire and civil protection adding layers of institutional and territorial resilience.

Lisbon: Hills, plazas, tiles, street art, and historic ruins revealed a city where art, memory (or lack of), and adaptation remain tied to the 1755 earthquake, fire, and tsunami, as well as today’s heat and coastal pressures.

Sintra: Fog, forests, palace gardens, and mountain paths blurred the line between designed landscape and “wildland” edge, revealing beauty, tourism, microclimates, and fire vulnerability in the same terrain.