The good nights

There are moments when the shutters are able to block out all the morning light. Only a few glowing dots announce the day that has risen on the other side of the wall. The sounds and the clock might reveal the movement already filling the streets, the people already heading to places, the lives on the other side of the window, but these possibilities not truly considered. There, at that moment, in that room, the night is a living memory. The lights of the previous night belong to a time that still exists, that continues in memory.

In any Portuguese night, from north to south, there are countless possible scenes and stories, both in the neighborhoods and streets with a nightlife tradition, and in new locations where bars and other spaces are also emerging. In Porto, the downtown area, Rua das Galerias de Paris, Ribeira, or Foz are some of the many examples, these are destinations for very different types of nightlife. In Lisbon, there’s the unmissable Bairro Alto, but also Cais do Sodré, Avenida 24 de Julho, the various floors of the Lux/Frágil club, places that continue to create memorable moments for various generations. In the Algarve, it is also easy to list places to enjoy very diverse moods, from the quieter ones, with the sea reflecting the stars, to the more energetic ones. This choice is abundant and also depends on the part of the Algarve you choose. The same is true for the rest of the country. In all Portuguese cities, there is a lot of nightlife to discover.

After dinner, as the hours move towards that time when no one has real obligations, when daytime responsibilities fade away, we choose the place where we want to be and, in doing so, choose the person we want to be. Bars, terraces, and clubs are autonomous worlds; what defines them is the music, of one genre or another, louder or softer, or also the décor, evoking multiple imaginations, or the lighting, showing or hiding, coloring with different shades. But there are also other characteristics, even more subjective, relative, but equally real and important.

At night, there is the gathering, defined by the thin, invisible boundary that surrounds people in the places where they decide to be. In groups or individually, communication takes place in so many ways, glances speak. Through gestures, half-words, or entire words, one perceives the openness to meeting up, to allowing others to cross that fine boundary and enter the closer circle, to cease being strangers. This is one of the hallmarks that characterizes Portugal at night, from north to south: the ease of contact, the path opened by a smile, the willingness to know and be known.

The places we enter at night, the open doors that attract us, are mainly constituted by that intangible yet so concrete well-being, that well-being that escapes the words that try to describe it, and yet, it leaves no doubt when we are there, when we feel it. The next day, in those moments when the shutters still manage to block all the morning light, it is the memory of that well-being we feel inside. That’s why we keep our eyes closed for just one more minute, just one more minute.