There is a kind of travel that asks for almost nothing — a window seat, a paperback, a town small enough that the baker recognizes you by the second morning.
The train from Lisbon to Cascais takes forty minutes and costs less than a coffee at the airport. I took it four times in three days, never because I had to, always because I wanted to watch the Tagus open into the sea.
There is a particular quality to the light on that coastline in April — not the hard gold of summer, but something softer, more provisional, as if the sun is still deciding whether to commit. I wrote six pages in that light. Most of them were bad. Two were not.
I found the restaurant on my second evening, the way you always find the good ones: by following a local who looked like she knew where she was going. The clams arrived in a shallow pan of white wine and garlic, with bread that had clearly been made that morning. I ate slowly, then ordered the same thing again.
This is the kind of travel I have been practising for years — not the collection of sights, but the accumulation of small, specific pleasures. A table near the window. The right book at the right moment. Arriving without a plan and discovering that the town has already made one for you.