Nineteen days to Lisbon
Good morning, Maya. It's 41° in Lakeview, the first properly cold Saturday of the fall. You're six days out from Chicago and nineteen days from Lisbon, and most of what you sent this week was about one or the other. Start with the trip.
Lisbon in late November. The Lisbon Dispatch makes the case that late November is the city's quietest good month. The last cruise ships leave by the third week, hotel rates in Alfama fall by about a third, and the weather is mild rather than warm: highs around 16°, with rain one day in three. The chestnut sellers start up around the same time, so most squares smell of smoke by late afternoon .
The piece is most useful on where to stay. Alfama is the Lisbon of postcards, steep and quiet at night, but hard work with a suitcase. Príncipe Real is greener and calmer, with the best bakeries. Cais do Sodré is flat, close to the metro and the river, and the easiest place to land at 6:40 in the morning, which is when you will. The writer's advice for a first morning: leave the bags, walk the riverfront to Praça do Comércio, and save the hills for the afternoon.
Packing for it. Carry-on's issue this week was about packing for cities where it rains one day in three . In Lisbon in November the problem is wet limestone more than cold: the patterned pavements get slick, so the one thing worth buying is a pair of shoes with real tread. The rest is layers: a thin wool sweater, a rain shell that packs into its own pocket, and one warmer layer for evenings by the river, which drop to about 9°.
It also has a tip for early arrivals like yours. Most hotels in Lisbon will hold bags from 7am, and several in Cais do Sodré let you shower before check-in if you ask when you book.
Your legs. Stride Weekly's issue this week was about the ten days after a marathon, which is exactly where you are. Soreness peaks around day two and fades by day five, but the deeper muscle damage takes closer to two weeks to repair, which is why runners who feel fine on day six get hurt on day nine . The advice is easy runs of 20 to 30 minutes until about day ten, no speed work, and an extra hour of sleep wherever you can find it.
It also makes a point you might like: the first week back is the best time for a gait check or new shoes, because your form is at its least efficient and the problems show. You're on day six. Wednesday is the first day it says to try anything quicker.
Night shifts. Night Shift Notes, the newsletter you signed up for in August, spent this week on the hardest part of the job: sleeping in daylight . Its main recommendation is an anchor block, four hours of sleep at the same time every day whether you're working or not, so your body clock has one fixed point. For a 7pm-to-7am schedule like yours, that's roughly 8am to noon.
The rest is practical: blackout curtains or an eye mask, a bedroom a few degrees colder than feels right, and no caffeine in the last six hours of a shift. The writer, a NICU nurse in Minneapolis, also suggests sunglasses on the drive home, so the morning light doesn't tell your brain the day has started.
At work. The Illinois Bedside walked through the nurse staffing bill that had its first hearing in Springfield on Tuesday . Most of it sets reporting rules for hospitals, but section 2 sets minimum ratios by unit and shift. For pediatric units at night that would mean one nurse to three patients, with a cap of four during surges, and hospitals would have to publish their actual ratios every quarter.
The hospital association argues the ratios would close beds in rural areas. The nurses' union says the reporting rules are the part that would change things fastest. A vote isn't expected before spring. The piece is behind a subscription, but section 2 is quoted in full near the end.
In the neighborhood. This week's Lakeview Neighbors was mostly about Clark Street . The city has proposed a protected bike lane from Diversey to Addison, which would remove about 140 parking spots and put concrete barriers between bikes and traffic. Businesses on the strip are split: the bakery near Belmont supports it, while two restaurants say their delivery drivers will have nowhere to stop.
There's a public meeting at the Lakeview library on Tuesday at 6:30. You run that stretch twice a week, so it's the rare city meeting that touches your routine. The newsletter links the city's map, which shows the barriers ending one block short of your street.
Dinner. Pantry Notes spent six months cooking with a $40 enameled Dutch oven alongside a $400 one. The cheap pot held heat within four degrees through long braises, with a lid that sealed nearly as well . The differences were in the details: the enamel chipped at the rim after a few months, and the handles get hot. For anyone who braises on weekends, the writer says, it's the better buy. Priya picked the same piece for her paper this week.
That matters because the short-rib recipe you saved from Salt & Ember needs exactly that kind of pot . Salt the ribs the night before, brown them hard in batches, soften onions and carrots in the fat, deglaze with a cheap dry red, then cover and leave the pot at 300° for three hours. The one thing the writer insists on is resting it overnight and skimming the fat in the morning. It's 41° today and 38° tomorrow, which is about as good as braising weather gets.
Worth listening. Small Plates, the cooking podcast you sent on Monday, has a 70-minute episode with a pastry chef from Belém on pastéis de nata . Most of it is technique: the dough is laminated with butter, rolled into a log and pressed into tins with wet thumbs, and the oven runs as hot as it will go, close to 300°C, which is why home versions never brown the same way.
The useful part for you starts around minute 41, when she lists the four places in Lisbon she'd actually queue for. Two are in Belém, one is near Cais do Sodré, and one is a ten-minute walk from Alfama.
Worth watching. The Recap Club's breakdown of the Villa Nights reunion runs 48 minutes, so here's the part that matters. The episode was meant to settle Tess and Jordan's breakup, until Marco walked back on stage with a ring at 4:12 . The hosts spend the next half hour arguing about whether it was staged. Their best evidence: the studio audience was told to stay seated before the break.
That's the paper. The shorter things you sent are below.