Three weeks is a strange length of time. Too long for a holiday, too short to belong anywhere. But it's the right length for a four-year-old, we've decided, because by week two Ines had a favorite bakery, a favorite tram (the 28, obviously), and a deep grudge against the hills.

The hills. Nobody warns you. Lisbon is built like a dare, and a small child on cobblestones is a creature of pure leverage — she goes boneless at the steepest possible moment, every time. We bought a cheap stroller from a hardware store in Graça and retired it within the week. Now we just budget for one meltdown per incline and arrive everywhere slightly later than planned.

What worked: renting one apartment for the whole stay instead of hopping. A kitchen. A laundry rack. A bakery downstairs where the woman started setting aside a pastel de nata for Ines before we'd even sat down. Routine, it turns out, travels well even when you don't.

There was one hard day — a Thursday, rain, all three of us sick of each other in a small flat — where we genuinely asked whether we'd made a mistake. We hadn't. But we want to be honest that the question came up, and that it'll come up again, probably somewhere with worse pastries.

— The Okafors