Three Years In: A Quiet Thank You, and a Looking Forward

There’s something about the end of the year that asks us to slow down, take quiet moments, and feel. To look back not at numbers or milestones, but at faces, conversations, small moments that stayed with us long after the tour ended.

This January marks three years since Soul Dreamers began. Three years since a simple idea turned into a living, breathing journey through Lisbon, the layered, imperfect, generous city that reveals itself only when time is taken.

This past year, more than any other, felt like a deepening. Not necessarily bigger but definitely truer. I’ve watched the experience change subtly with each season. Not because I forced it to evolve, but because people actually did. Each group arrived with different stories, different curiosities, different sensitivities, and the tour learned how to listen. It became increasingly more about holding space just as in a ceremony holding its emotional moments of connection.

Today, every walk supports 11+ local businesses per tour: artists, musicians, family-run eateries, tiny cultural spaces that don’t appear in algorithms or glossy lists. Places that open their doors not because it’s profitable, but because they believe in exchange in being seen, heard, and respected.

I’ve seen tourists arrive curious and leave softer. I’ve seen locals feel proud again of places they thought the city had forgotten. I’ve seen moments where language dissolved and only music, food, laughter, or silence remained.

What I’ve come to understand is that my role isn’t really to be a guide in the traditional sense. I sense myself more of a catalyst carrying a responsibility of connecting conscious explorers with Lisbon’s authentic beauty without flattening it, without gentrifying it, without turning it into spectacle. Protecting its contradictions. Its rough edges. Its tenderness.

This year also changed me. I became more aware of how much care this work requires. How each experience is a small ceremony shaped by timing, presence, trust. How every group brings a different energy, and how the beginning matters just as much as the ending. How storytelling, when done honestly, can restore empathy in a city under pressure.

And I felt gratitude. Deep, quiet gratitude. To the travelers who chose slowness over checklists. To the ones who stayed curious, asked questions, listened. To those who returned, or sent friends, or wrote messages months later saying the experience stayed with them.

And to the local places, the musicians, the cooks, the artists, the neighbors who welcome us again and again, even when tourism feels heavy. This project exists because of You.

As we step into the new year, I do not feel expansion despite increasing signs of interest. I feel instead a sense of root. To grow the Lisbon Secrets Collective, to host more gatherings beyond tours, to create spaces for conversation, culture, and social impact. The walks will continue, and they are our grounding but they’re now part of something wider: a community built on care, respect, and shared responsibility.

To mark this moment, the New Year and our third anniversary we’ll be sharing more stories and photos of the people and places that make Soul Dreamers possible. As an acknowledgment for the beautiful souls this experience attracts.

So here’s a thank you. To those who walked with us. To those who welcomed us. To those who reminded us why this matters.

And here’s to another year of listening, walking gently, and choosing depth together.

Happy New Year.

We’ll be here when you’re ready to wander again.

— Teddy

(A) Soul Dreamer(s)