‘Is it expected to rain today?’ I ask the liveried porter at our hotel. ‘I’ ‘ope not, Sir’, he replies. ‘I also hope not. But will it rain today?’ I persist, trying to find out the weather forecast. ‘Sir, that is what I am telling you, I ‘ope not.’ I abandon my meteorological quest.

His hope turns out to be true. As we step out for our first day in Lisbon the weather is gorgeous, like the Delhi winters of my student days in the early 1970s, with blue skies and an invigorating nip in the air. Lisbon lies sparkling in the sun, like an old feudal mansion, jaded, gutted, overrun by crowded homes, but still undefeated and proud of its history. Castles jut out from hilltops and splendid marble statues with chipped edges adorn the piazzas.

Our first day is spent walking aimlessly in the city. Alfama, spread along the side of a hill, is a rundown old part of Lisbon, crisscrossed by narrow lanes. There one comes across old women leaning out of windows, chatting with their neighbours across the road, raising their voices freely to counter the sound of the breeze that coasts in from the Atlantic and the flutter of clothes drying on clotheslines flung across the lanes. The lanes give way in places to stairways, where there is a particularly steep slope to negotiate, and then, spectacularly, to the miradours—marble terraces, where the passerby can stop to view the ocean.