Belém: monuments and the original custard tart
The age-of-discovery riverside — the cloister, the original tart, the tower on the water. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Mosteiro dos Jerónimos
Start here, early. The Manueline cloister is the reason — stone carved as if it were rope and coral and seaweed. Queues build by mid-morning, so go straight in; it's shut Mondays.

2. Pastéis de Belém
The tart everyone copies, made here since 1837 to a recipe nobody else has. Don't take the first table — walk back through the blue-tiled rooms and sit. Warm, dusted with cinnamon, eaten standing if you must.

3. Jardim da Praça do Império
The formal garden between the *mosteiro* and the river. Cut across it to the waterfront rather than round it; the fountain and the box hedges are the breathing space between the cloister and the water.

4. Padrão dos Descobrimentos
The 1960 monument shaped like a caravel's prow, explorers lined along the ramp. Look down before you look up: the marble compass-rose and world map paved into the *praça* in front of it is the better thing.

5. Torre de Belém
The little fortress on the water, 1519, all balconies and rope-carved stone. You don't have to climb it — the queue is slow and the rooms are bare — but walk out along the breakwater to see it framed by the *Tejo*.

6. MAAT
Walk back east along the river to the museum with the low ceramic-tiled wave for a roof. Climb the roof even if you skip the galleries; it's free, and the bridge and the river open out from the top.

Belém: monuments and the original custard tart