Lisbon, with Rick Steves

Rick Steves’ Europe made this half-hour episode about Lisbon, and it covers the city the way a first-time visitor meets it: the Alfama’s tangle of lanes, the miradouros, a rattling ride on the 28 tram, the monastery at Belém and a long evening of fado.

It’s an older episode, so a few of the prices will make you laugh and some of the cafés have changed hands. But Rick’s patient, slightly dad-joke enthusiasm holds up, and the camera lingers on the river light in a way most travel videos rush straight past.

Why I keep rewatching it

I first watched this in Manchester in the winter of 2018, with Rosie heckling from the sofa, and a year later I was hauling two suitcases and a cast-iron pan up the stairs in Graça. Now I put it on whenever friends are about to visit. It’s the gentlest possible briefing, and it reminds me what the city looked like before it was home. If you’d like my version, start with Notes from a small flat in Lisbon.