A word of caution: There are two reasons for not driving in Lisbon. One is that public transport employs all forms of locomotion to get you to every grand avenue, cobbled street and steeply widening alley. Buses and an expanding Metro reach into the furthest corners of the metropolis, trains extend the coverage from the centre to the seaside resorts of Cascais and Estoril, and to the fairy-tale palaces and wooded hills of Sintra. Trams fill in the gaps around town, and a mad inventor’s collection of venerable elevators, funicular railway cars and cable cars climb Libson’s steepest inclines. The second reason is that Portuguese drivers are the most lethal in Europe, and annually slaughter more of their fellow countrymen than all the plagues known to man.

Having said that, your average Portuguese pedestrian is a fine and amicable fellow, much given to fun and good fellowship. On a crowded bus, I hung from a strap in the midday heat. An old man held a shopping bag on his lap. Through the lid you could hear the unmistakable wail of a worried cat. Passengers exchanged glances as the wailing became more frantic and the old chap whispered words of comfort through the lid. “My god, what a life”, he sighed, before breaking into a wavering tune. The passengers started grinning openly. As the old boy got up to leave, a dog barked and the cat screamed. He was an amateur ventriloquist, amusing himself as well as a bored busload of commuters.

This was not street theatre, just people having a good laugh among themselves. Lisbon has that sort of spontaneity.
Lisbon has a thriving cafe life-style and a night life that sizzles like a popped car radiator. Bairro Alto is the place to head after midnight, perhaps ascending by way of a towering iron lift.
This, Libson’s “high quarter” is a grid of narrow streets over which tenements glower, and where a large variety of restaurants and clubs are found. Here the raunchy and the refined can be accommodated with equal facility as Lisbon displays its matchless versatility. Jazz, samba, funk and the music of former Portuguese African colonies are equally at home. Back at sea-level, the seedy streets around the Cais do Sodre rail station, and beneath the great stanchions of the April 25th bridge, are emerging as the new trendy late venues.

Lisbon ranks in the lower league for opera, museums and galleries, but as a feast for the senses it is second to none. Climb through the winding lanes of the Alfama. This old district is a maze of alleys below the castle. You might see a chicken beheaded and bled into a drain, or hear the plaintive, piercing cry of a “varina”. These old crones sell fish, fresh from the quay, but their trade is a drying one. Laundry hangs from flaking balconies, people converse and debate in public.

The Castelo de Sao Jorge sits on St. George’s Hill. From the battlements you can see the whole of the city. Directly below is the Baixa, the low town, where the 18-century shopping streets still bear the names of their speciality wares — Silversmith Street, Haberdashery Row and so on.

Rising behind is the elegant and atmospheric Chiado district with its fine old shops and coffee houses. To the left, the broad river Tagus flows toward the Atlantic under Lisbon’s Golden Gate-style suspension bridge, past the stunning Manueline monuments of Belen. Behind Eduardo VII park looms the Ritz hotel, a grandiose monument to the dictator, Salazar, and further still, the gleaming towers of Lisbon’s new commercial boom. Between and among these landmarks of progress, crumbling tenements survive, locked in time as the original leases, at peppercorn rents, were for life.

To get back to town, you can hop aboard the No. 12 tram. These stretchers, some of them built at the turn of the century, burn clean fuel, can negotiate steep streets and narrow alleys and are cute to look at. Unfortunately, they are on the decline, and routes are being axed in favour of the motor car and diesel bus. Motorways and ring routes now encircle Lisbon, responding to spiralling demand.
In 1755 a great earthquake destroyed most of Lisbon in one of the world’s greatest disasters. Today’s legacy combines the few surviving areas with an energetically re-designed and rebuilt 18th-century centre and some emphatically 1990’s commercial expansion. On industrial wasteland facing the Tagus, they are preparing the site for Expo ‘98’. The whole world will come to Lisbon, Europe’s most magical city, which seems on the threshold of its second rebirth in as many centuries.