This was my first time visiting Portugal, a place to which I would return a few times. As a Portuguese speaker, it felt both strange and familiar. I could understand everything, yet I was still an outsider—discovering a culture that felt close, but not entirely mine. From the start, I knew this trip would leave me with mixed emotions.
It began as an adventure of lessons learned. After a seven-hour flight and a long day of work, I thought it wise to rent a car and drive four hours from Lisbon to Porto. It wasn’t; exhaustion and Portuguese highways proved to be not a great mix. Thankfully, nothing happened. Later that night, in Porto, someone knocked on my Airbnb door in the middle of the night, demanding I stop making noise—though I had been asleep. When I refused to open, the stranger gave a violent kick/punch to the door before disappearing.
But Portugal offered so much beauty to balance those moments. The food was unforgettable, from the simplest pastries to the freshest meals. Sintra’s history and misty hills felt like something out of a fairytale. The ancient ruins of Conímbriga revealed the Roman roots of the country, a vivid reminder of Portugal’s deep history. And Lisbon, with its tiled facades, steep hills, and rattling trams, closed the journey with a charm that lingered long after I left.
In many ways, my experience of Portugal mirrors the relationship between our two countries: familiar yet different, full of admiration, yet occasionally marked by subtle barriers. It is a place I both cherish and approach with a quiet awareness of its complexities.
