Portugal before daybreak

Another old one from a visit to Portugal in 2018, but a photo I like enough to repost. Below is what I’d written back then.

My first 24 hours in Lisbon – my internal clock is so wildly askew that that I wake up around 4 AM and have trouble getting back to sleep.

Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I unpack my camera, and start walking down the hill towards the center of the city. Here we see the entrance to Lisbon’s famous Rua Augusta, a wide pedestrian avenue and one of the most beautiful streets in the city.

If you walk further along it in the direction of the ocean, you’ll arrive at the Rua Augusta Arch. Already impressive, it’s made even more so by the history it was built to commemorate. In 1755, the city was flattened by a monster of an earthquake in the 8.5-9 range, still one of the deadliest in human history. The colossal arch symbolizes reconstruction as one of the world’s greatest cities was reborn from its own ashes.