Vol. 11, No. 1 | What He Said
Hey Ya’ll!
Happy New Year! Bonne Année! I’m back home after two weeks of traveling with my boyfriend, mom, and sister to Lisbon, Morocco (Marrakech and Sidi Kaouki), and Paris. The trip ended with my boyfriend proposing on our last night in Paris.
That’s right! I’m engaged, and I’ve quickly realized that I have no idea how to be engaged. I don’t know how to tell people. I don’t know when I should wear my ring (I was honestly shocked to find out that people wear their ring 24/7). I don’t know what I should be doing at all. So, I’ve decided to sit with it for a couple of weeks and let it sort itself out.
While I’m doing that, I’ll go back to a few weeks ago in Lisbon when we were a couple of days into the trip. I mistakenly said aloud…”Hmm, what should I write about?” This prompted my boyfriend to offer his suggestions. Here was his list:
How cocktails travel as you go. (We were grabbing drinks at Farès, a cute little restaurant with well-executed classic cocktails. I can’t tell you how the food was because we ate at Lupita, a well-known pizzeria that is worth the hype. Their natural wines were also top-notch.)
How the airlines don’t care about you anymore. (Our time in Lisbon was shortened because our flight was delayed in Atlanta and we missed our connecting flight in New York by 10 minutes. I remember a time when they’d hold the plane…what happened to that? Especially when the 90-minute delay was caused because they had to take trash off the plane, but a catering truck on the tarmac was blocking their ability to exit. This is the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard. Fifteen of us missed the flight.)
How Portugal is the number one consumer of saltfish, but they don’t have it, like Jamaica. (Yes, this is true. Bacalhau (salted cod) is the national dish of Portugal, but all the cod is imported. It’s the same for Jamaica. Ackee and saltfish is the national dish, but the cod is imported, already dried and salted. We learned this on a sailing trip across the Tagus River while drinking Portuguese wines like vinho verde and moscatel. It was chilly, but this was one of my favorite memories of the two weeks. It also reminded me how good and inexpensive Portuguese wines are.)
Lisbon is the second-oldest European city. You have to throw some facts in there. (I was a little surprised by this. I didn’t realize the city was this old. Lisboans also like to tell the story of the earthquake, tsunami and fires of 1755 that destroyed most of the city.)
Traveling with your family and how different it is from traveling with your significant other. And how your mom lost her phone in the Uber and blamed it on her purse. (I was definitely worried about this. My boyfriend (fiancé) and I have a pretty defined way that we travel together. I put a lot of time into pulling together an itinerary that would make this trip work for everyone. And I have to say, it worked. The only mishaps were the travel factors that we couldn’t control like missing the connection to Lisbon or when our flight was diverted to Agadir because we couldn’t land in Marrakech (a 2-hour flight turned into a 9-hour travel day). I’m deeply grateful that I was able to have this time with all of them.
Oh, Gunpowder and the difference between the one in London. (The thing I spent the most time on was finding restaurants that would suit everyone. Lisbon restaurants were tricky. I noticed they had a Gunpowder, a modern Indian restaurant that I also tried in London. I’m glad I booked it. This one was better and it’s actually one of the best meals that I had in 2025. I wanted to check out Bloco, a wine bar next door, but sadly, we had to go pick up the aforementioned cell phone.)
You don’t have to hide that you’re using my ideas. (Well, this was the end of that. Then he got distracted as he made the bartender make him what he refers to as his cocktail (it was mine, but I guess we can now say it was ours): Mezcal, Montenegro and St-Germain stirred on a large ice cube with an expressed lemon.
Hope you’re all doing well and your year is off to a great start!
Shannon