When Dan, Rebecca, Johannes, and I sat down in a ballet studio-cum-dance club in Zurich back in January to book a 10-day trip to Portugal, it was so cold I kept my coat on even though our table was inside. We sat huddled over our laptops, cross-checking an itinerary that Rebecca had deftly stitched together from Instagram videos and hours of her own research. We booked our flights and ducked out into the cold twilight of a wintry Swiss evening, visions of sunny Portugal dancing in our heads.

The plan was this: fly from Zurich to Lisbon on March 26, then make our way north to Porto over the next week or so before flying back to Zurich from Porto on April 4.

I imagined sunny days strolling cobblestone lanes wearing loose blouses and listening to strains of Fado music as we sipped sangria on riverside esplanades. Apartments would dazzle in tangerine and gold, warm against cool blue and white azulejos.

The forecast for the trip was mid-50s, which meant lots of loose T-shirts and sweaters to throw over them. The forecast was also rain. Decisively, unchangeably, rain. I figured it would be like Switzerland: yes, rain, but passing showers, maybe even the occasional sudden downpour. I’d throw in a rain jacket.

To be clear, my packing was woeful. I was packing for Portugal in August, not Portugal in the rainy depths of spring.

Optimistically, we headed out of Basel and off to Zurich airport, where we met Rebecca and J at the gate. It was a largely uneventful flight until we descended into Lisbon – and then suddenly zoomed back up out of it.

“As you can see, we are unable to land,” came a calm voice, followed by the captain: “Due to another plane on the runway, we’ll be flying a pattern until it’s clear to land.”

Needless to say, I was grateful to be on the ground safely – and almost immediately under it. We claimed our baggage and zipped through the airport to the Metro. We opted for 24-hour tickets – all-inclusive on buses and subways – tapped them on the turnstiles, and were whisked 9 stops away to Alameda, where our hotel was located. The journey through Lisbon’s metro tunnels was surprisingly colorful; every so often, the subway would whoosh into a cavernous station whose walls were flecked with brightly colored tiles.

Once we emerged at Alameda, the blue sky disappeared and all the clouds in the sky raced to cluster above us and open up. Wiser locals sheltered under awnings, but we plodded onward to our hotel. I plodded directly into a puddle, and my sneakers were immediately soaked through.

It was a relief to arrive in the lobby of the Empire Hotel Lisbon, even if the hotel was underwhelming. We were only there for 2 nights, and it had its share of perks: breakfast included, free coffee vouchers, and a relatively comfortable bed. I don’t totally remember the room, but in my memory it is brown, with mould in the bathroom and a small window offering a partial view of the street below and several charmless, concrete buildings. The air conditioner gave the room the feel of a freezer. After blow drying my sneakers and changing my socks, we headed back out.

Originally, Rebecca had booked us a table at one of Lisbon’s oldest restaurants, Café de São Bento, which I had been excited about until she told us why she had cancelled it.

“I got an email from them saying that if we missed our reservation for any reason, they would charge us 200 euros,” she explained. “So I cancelled.”

Given the unpredictability of life, this seemed like a wise idea. Still, I was pretty famished and unsure when we’d get to eat, so Dan and I popped next door to a bakery where we ordered a ham and cheese croissant and a pastel de nata. We chowed down at a small table in the back corner while an angry woman shouted at the men behind the counter about something. It was clear our hotel was not in the nicest area, but Rebecca and J soon appeared and the four of us descended into the metro, which was only a 2-minute walk from the hotel.

We emerged 5 stops south in Lisbon’s quaint downtown under a cloudless blue sky at 5:30pm. Lisbon is an hour behind Zurich, so we’d managed to bank an extra hour and sunshine, a win that called for some kind of celebration. We weaved through the tight, winding alleyways of Alfama, stepping in and out of tram tracks and pausing to snap shots of beautiful azulejos. In the late afternoon sun, Lisbon’s hilly streets felt conquerable.

The alleyways spit us out along the Rua São Tomé, a wider street opening up to small plazas, including the Portas do Sol, a picturesque viewpoint that offered views of orange-tiled rooftops, the sapphire sea, and a humongous cruise ship that loomed over the harbor like a small planet.

But the view that caught our eyes was a bachelor party walking past us holding pineapples with colorful straws and drink umbrellas. They pointed across the street to a little wooden cart stocked with whole pineapples and a chalkboard sign promising to fill those pineapples with alcohol.

The cart was outside of Toranja, a shop on the corner, and it offered some kind of deal on refills. Dan ordered a pina colada for us to share, and Rebecca and J bravely each purchased their own pineapple full of mojito. To top the moment off, the historic yellow 28E tram clattered by at that moment, stopping at Portas do Sol.

We’d been wanting to see this tram, since it seems synonymous with Lisbon, and my Lonely Planet had suggested riding it. We decided to watch it instead, sipping our pineapples. The tram was small, and people were crammed into it. Those lucky enough to get a seat were pressed against the windows, while other less fortunate riders stood packed into the aisles.

And none of them had mojito pineapples.

We danced along the streets to the Miradouro de Santa Luiza, a beautiful viewpoint shaded by a wooden trellis dripping with freesias and tiled with the iconic blue and white azulejos. The views were chilly, but beautiful: tiled rooftops stacked on each other for miles, the sea, a smoggy horizon. A man strummed a guitar nearby. Couples posed for photographs. The sun was setting, and somehow, our pineapples were empty.

J and Dan discussed the economic benefits of buying refills on the pineapples, and decided it would be wrong not to. I opted out of Round 2, but helped carry a pineapple up the winding alleyways, past a man standing on a balcony serenading a crowd of tourists below. Around every corner, a surprise: beautiful tiles, people singing, the sun glinting off iron gates, graffiti on a derelict stone wall, a dog cemetery/training yard/hotel. Rebecca noted that she was getting hungry, and so we searched the map for something interesting.

Dan led us to Cerveja Canil Baixa, a dimly-lit and relatively crowded brewpub that managed to squeeze us in at the corner of the bar near the bathroom. What an absolute win. Crisp beers, an absolute knockout of a food menu, a surprising tequila proffered from somewhere under the bar?

Was it Lisbon’s oldest restaurant? No. But the bartenders were friendly, giving us tips on things to do and where to explore when we left Lisbon in a few days. Both bartenders were from Brazil, and one was ending her shift to go sing karaoke with her friends at a nearby Irish bar called Cheers! She invited us along, so at 10:15, we finally abandoned our seats for the cool streets of Lisbon.

It was way past my bedtime at this point, but J and I walked behind Rebecca and Dan as they raced up the steps past the Elevador de Santa Justa, an eye-catching lift right there in the middle of the street. You can ride it during the day, or you can do what we did and marvel at it (it was built in 1902 by Raul Mésnier, who was apprentice to Gustav Eiffel) in the evening before heading up past it to the Irish bar.

There was a live band playing covers on one side of the bar and thumping club music on the other side. To use the bathroom, I walked away from Queen and David Bowie and into the heavy bass and techno beat of a Lady Gaga anthem.

We did not see the bartender here, and it was after midnight, so we made our way back to Rossio Square where we grabbed a late-night snack before hopping on the metro back to our hotel. Our first night in Portugal was a bit of a hodge-podge, but there was plenty of laughter and loads of joy, and enough blue sky to keep our feet dry and our spirits up.