Sintra wakes up slow. Fog sits in the pines above the café like it forgot to leave, and the tile wall beside my table has gone cold blue in the morning light, the kind of blue that took someone months to paint by hand, tile by tile, patient in a way I am not. I ordered the pastel de nata because you have to, because not ordering it would be a kind of lie. It arrives still warm, the custard trembling a little when the waiter sets it down, cinnamon dusted across the top like an afterthought that took real thought.
The espresso is small and serious. No milk, no ceremony, just heat and bitterness that wakes something up behind my eyes. Someone’s dog sleeps under the next table, unbothered by the scooters coughing up the hill. An old man reads a newspaper that looks older than the news in it. Nobody here is in a hurry, and the tiles seem to agree, some of them cracked, one corner missing entirely, replaced at some point with a tile that almost matches but not quite. I like that it doesn’t match. Saudade, maybe, though I’m not sure that word means what I think it means anymore. I use it anyway.
I think about the plans I had for today, a list of ruins and viewpoints, a palace with tiled corridors that go on longer than patience allows. The list sits in my bag, unopened. My camera sits beside the coffee cup instead, the 35mm, quiet, waiting. It doesn’t ask to be somewhere else. It just waits for the light to do something worth keeping. Right now the light is doing something quiet, falling across the custard, across the chipped blue tile, across my own hand holding a spoon I haven’t used yet.
Do you ever order something just to slow down the morning? That’s what this is. Not hunger. Not really. The custard is already half gone and I don’t remember eating it, which either means it was very good or I wasn’t paying attention, and here that feels like the same thing. The espresso is down to the last bitter mouthful. The tiles are still there, older than my plans, older than the palace up the hill, older than whatever I thought I was rushing toward when I sat down.
Somewhere behind me a scooter finally gets its engine going. I don’t move. The morning isn’t done with me yet.
