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For those of us with an eye for romance, coming in to Lisbon harbour by boat presents one of the finest sights in Europe. From the wide River Tagus the visitor is welcomed by a vista of white stone buildings under burnt amber-tiled roofs, which carpets an amphitheatre, scooped into the hills.

In Lisbon the architecture is Gothic or baroque, or a crazy combination of both. In Sao Roque Church the chapel of St. John the Baptist is constructed from jade, alabaster, lapis lazuli, amethyst and a hundred other semi precious stones and marbles. It’s as if there were not enough materials in the world to express what the artists wanted to say. The interior is cool and quiet.

Lisbon is a walking town, but after climbing its steep hills to see all the museums and churches, you might be tempted to hire a car. Fine in theory, but in practice driving means joining the mad and unpredictable flows of traffic. Driving around Lisbon on a hot afternoon is not funny: securing a parking space requires the kind of luck normally needed to win the national lottery. People fight over parking spaces, and I mean with fists.

Despite the temperamental attitude to traffic, the Portuguese can be gentle and chivalrous. Unlike the Spanish, the Portuguese don’t produce extrovert painters like Salvador Dali, nor gauche filmmakers like Almodovar. Instead, they honour dapper poets like Fernando Pessoa. In the bullring the Spanish tilt the odds in favour of the matador by allowing the picadors to weaken the neck muscles of the bull. In Portugal they do it the old fashioned way: man with square piece of cloth versus half a ton of rage with horns. At the end of a Spanish bullfight the bull, which has put in all the work, is skewered with a small sword through the back of the head. This has never seemed fair. The bull provides the entertainment even though the odds are stacked against it, and it still ends up as dog food. The Portuguese prefer to herd the bull out of the arena.

One of the best areas to get food in the evening is Alfama. It’s the most ancient part of the city and it has recently had a facelift. Not everybody is happy with the results. I was fortunate enough to have a locally based friend to guide me through its cluttered back streets.

We entered a murky tabernas, thick with the smoke of strong tobacco, and walked straight into the back where there was an adjacent establishment which sold food. The waiter was wearing an apron, white in name only. He looked like Bluto from the Popeye cartoons. The food and wine came in a torrent. The idea seemed to be that the customers had to keep up with the waiters rather than the other way round. The background noise in the restaurant was huge; it swelled up like the Atlantic Ocean outside.

All the food was grilled sardines of one guise or another. Lisbon specializes in small grilled fish. There were also large misshapen loaves of bread, salad tossed in olive oil and copious quantities of the much under-rated Portuguese wine. My share of the bill came to a little under US$10. This means that the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Portuguese sardine is pretty good.

Recovery time was spent on a beach on the Costa Bella, about 30 kilometers south of the city. It was the weekend and the rest of Lisbon had had the same idea. Beach culture is the preserve of Latin countries, a place to hang out with friends, play sports and socialize. On the beach outside Setubal a tall, perfectly proportioned Portuguese woman attempted to explain the essence of Mediterranean culture: the green sea, the blue sky, the sand, the music and the grape. Everything she had said seemed like a strange patter in my head. When I got off the plane at Heathrow, it was raining.

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