Lisbon in a day

This one’s truly the last one. I spent one last day in Portugal when Sketch Tour Portugal ended. And it was in that magical city, Lisbon. Where do you start when you have just 24 hours? You walk out of your hotel room, and go from there.

I started out on Avenida da Liberdade with a vague idea that I wanted to wander around Lisbon’s oldest district, Alfama and then end up at Cais das Colunas for the workshop I was teaching that evening.

Cobbled pavements, sloping streets, terracotta roofs climbing up hillsides, chestnut sellers, beautiful ironwork. Just everywhere you look…

This tiny sketch is of the street cleaners who work so hard to keep those cobbled streets looking beautiful.Here is that iconic yellow tram that’s a symbol of Lisbon (well, for tourists, atleast).

My day was fueled by lots of coffee and superb pastries.

And my afternoon was spent wandering around the winding, narrow, sometimes-dead-end streets of Alfama.

And then it was almost 6pm, time for my workshop. I did one last sketch, at Cais das Colunas, very fittingly, on the last page of my book .

And that’s it from me in Portugal. For now. If you’re not packing your bags for Portugal yet, I hope you’re marking your calendars for Porto, July 18-21, 2018?