Found the hotel, walking around the narrow lanes near the castle, met for drinks at 1am – this city runs late for sure – and a quick visit to the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum this morning and here I am at lunchtime looking forward to my first Tango lesson this evening.

So what are my thoughts having never been to Lisbon before.

In many ways it seems to be exactly what I expected, a city with so much history but suffering from long periods of neglect, the recent economic problems – and perhaps most worryingly the fact that most young people no longer want to live in the city centre – they are running for the newer, safer houses in the suburbs.

All this creates great potential for just the kind of photography I love to take – I look forward to the next few days.

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My great surprise is the language – just how different it sounds from Spanish. Having an extremely basic vocabulary in Spanish from a long time ago, I expected at least to be able to understand something of simple basic conversations – but no – not a word.