Posts about Photos (RSS, JSON)

7AM

Lisbon is a strange place. Tourists love its picturesque hills and the cobblestoned alleyways meandering in-between old, beautifully tiled buildings. It’s the perfect Instagram holiday destination. But Lisbon is too small for all those people coming off the cruise ships. It’s narrow roads are too crowded, people everywhere trying to avoid stepping in dog shit and dodging the rumbling trams and cars. So many cars on so little space. Lisbon could be the perfect walkable city if only it was pedestrianised beyond the innermost parts of the city. Still, it’s worth visiting—only to enjoy octopus for dinner, Ginjinha for desert and overdose on pastel de natas during the day.

7PM

The location (an empty parking garage), the lights (many, flashy, arranged to form a grid), the music (loud, electronic)—Mandylights’ Plexus is like a random techno club in Berlin and just as disappointing. But it works as a reminder for how much of the clubbing experience hinges on drugs and alcohol and the people around you, and how little it has to do with lights, music and location.

7AM

New York is one of the places, big cities usually, where you need to know where to go. You either have good plan or someone to guide you around. If not, you naturally end up where everyone goes: The shopping districts that look the same everywhere, whether you’re in North America, Europe or Australia. The tourist traps with its gift shops, overpriced chain restaurants, and selfie opportunities. And the places that are made to look cool and exciting, like markets in industrial settings that sell overpriced street food and trinkets that collect dust at home. When I arrived in New York for a one-day visit, I stumbled around like an absolute tourist and ended up in precisely those places.

Large parts of Manhattan are devoid of any character now. I watched too many movies set in the New York of the 60s and 70s, and today’s New York—naturally—is very different. It’s now full bland modern buildings that have replaced the architecture I’ve come to know from these movies: Red bricks, art-deco features and fire escapes. Change is inevitable; I’m sure some people didn’t like the Empire State Building when it was completed in 1931, towering over Manhattan and dwarfing everything else.

If you’ve lived in a big city, you build a tolerance for these things; they are part of the city’s ever-changing nature. Still, when I go to New York, I want to feel like I’m in a Woody Allen movie.

2PM — Blogging has been this week while I’m in Washington DC for work. Normal service will resume at the end of next week.

5PM