You have to experience Fado. I went to Sr Vinho (www.srvinho.com) on Rua do Meio à Lapa. It’s hard to say why it’s so popular with the Japanese and the Dutch. And no one really knows how it started. Similar in expressive intensity to both the tango of Buenos Aires and the flamenco of Seville, fado, meaning fate or destiny, aligns itself with the word saudade meaning a longing for things that were or might have been. The slaves from Brazil may have yearned for their homeland and certainly Brazilian mandolins resemble the ‘Portuguese guitars’, though they use nine rather than twelve strings. Prostitutes historically descended on tavernas wrapped in a shawl, partly as they were too poor to buy a jacket but also to protect themselves from the clutches of the audience in whose close proximity they sang these impromptu songs known as desgarradas.

I spent my first morning in Belém to see Lisbon’s main attraction, the Jerónimos Monastery. It has 16th century sprung vaults and separate conical pinnacles at the top. The church has its light coming through the stained glass, its cloisters with their unusual Manueline or ‘Late Portuguese Gothic’ rounded rather than pointed arches, and its yellow-tiled refectory. They are all enchanting in their own distinctive way.

I read a lengthy Portuguese dictionary to find words to depict the wealth of her wonderful characters. I liked janeleiro for one who spends much time at the front window, especially a young woman who is something of a coquette and certainly I witnessed an espreitadeira, a woman who spies on her neighbours. Luckily I had no reason myself to spy on and identify a pesamenteiro, one who habitually joins groups of mourners at the home of a deceased person, ostensibly to offer condolences but in reality to partake of the refreshments which they expect will be served!

I stayed at the Lapa Palace (www.lapapalace.com). A study in elegance, this perfectly pink hotel has the feel of a well-run private house with fresh flowers, polished tables, and telepathic staff in their traditional multi-buttoned uniforms who went the extra mile or more in helping me secure a particular coat from a local shop. And wonderful at breakfast to enjoy those lovely pastéis de nata which are custard tarts filled with sweet egg cream and dusted with cinnamon for which the city is famous!

The hotel is set in the exclusive, residential Lapa district, impressively beside the Chinese and American embassies. It’s within walking range of the vast neoclassical monument that is the Basilica da Estrela and across the street from the gates of the Jardim da Estrela that‘s home to age-old tropical banyan trees no doubt brought back from India or Brazil. When entering make sure you get a bench decked with sunlight as they are keenly fought over!

Intricate mosaics pave the city’s streets and squares. In Portugal these glazed tiled pavements were used since the 13th century and were made of geometric pieces of plain colours. Then by the 16th century they used azulejo as wall revetment, based on patterns of the Hispanic Moorish techniques from Seville and Toledo before gradually the Islamic motifs of knot work and geometric patterns were replaced by European ones of vegetal and animal elements. Magnificent small, cubed tiles emerged in the 19th century and were made by calceteiros out of limestone and basalt. Indeed the whole of Lisbon is like a tile museum with its colourful panels.

I strongly recommend getting a Lisbon Tourist Card (www.lisboacard.org) to cover many of the museums, shops and modes of transport. With mine I jumped on the trams, surely the best way to experience the city and used as much by locals as tourists and decked with wooden panels with the driver presiding with pride over his old-fashion controls.

I enjoyed the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in the north of the city. It houses a collection of fine art and has an impressive array of both Corot and Guardi while the eponymous Turkish founder has bequeathed many amazing Ottoman treasures including Iznik tiles offering an interesting cultural comparison with the local variety.

For a different way to explore the city, I hopped in an electric ‘tuk-tuk’ with Hills on Wheels (www.hills-on-wheels.com) with its high-pitched shrill resulting from its three wheels to neighbouring Alfama, the original Arab settlement, to walk up to its steep streets. Here I came across Armazem das Caldas, a lovely ceramics shop, in Campo de Santa Clara. On Alfama’s summit is perched the Church of Santa Engrácia, known as the National Pantheon as it looks proudly down across the Tagus estuary.

I myself had a few days extra to spend: a puente if you like. Puente is the Spanish for bridge and the Spanish have their bank holidays on a Tuesday so that Monday will, on most occasions, be treated as a bridge day (an extra day of holiday) ensuring a four day weekend. There is also a viaducto, which is when two holidays fall on Tuesday and Thursday thus enabling someone to take the entire week off.

Most tourists go to experience the magic of Sintra for their excursion. But I chose to take myself an hour south to Comporta where all the trendy Lisbon crowd now gather for their weekends and holidays. At dawn and dusk, storks rest and nest famously on every available telegraph pole and church steeple. I came to my next resting place Quinta da Comporta (www.quintadacomporta.com) A quinta is a country villa or estate. And here I found pool villas and town houses all designed for an authentic wellbeing experience.

Opened in 2019, it has two super-sized ancient rice warehouses under terracotta-tiled rooftops where once the rice, before being dried across its burnt orange terracotta brick courtyard, was dressed and finally stirred. Now redesigned the buildings are still set behind working rice paddies, brown and golden in their different stages of harvesting. Bang next to which was the extra-long forty-metre infinity swimming pool all held in glass and allowing me simultaneously to swim and experience the outside world.

It reminded me of Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire appealing to chic and trendy guests seeking urban comforts in a rural setting. Of the two larger-than-life barns, one was to eat in and the other to exercise and be pampered beneath its vertiginous ceiling. The serene setting of the Oryza Spa and Hammam provided a fitting focus for its diet of wellness on offer. Lit up at night it resembled a Tuscan church one end with its curvaceous façade and a monastic ruin the other with its lack of a roof, allowing me to savour the breeze and spot the stars snug within the warmth of the outdoor pool. My spa treatment was inspirational as I experienced a defoliating scrub made from rice granules and the massage that followed. Impressive in every sense!

In the other barn the hotel’s massive Eira and Mar D’Arrozal restaurant is set in sand, sea grasses, and palm trees and lit up inside at night by giant string lanterns and wooden beams that are recovered from railway sleepers. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows lent it a gloriously liberating indoors-outdoors sensation and I enjoyed, from paddy to plate, a tataki ’pounded’ tuna with marinated mango, red onion pickle, toasted almonds and coconut slices, before a grouper with avocado purée and home-grown vegetables, followed by an eclectic selection of cheeses.

From here I reached the local village of Carvalhal to get to the beaches of Pego and Carvalhal where pristine white sand allows horses to ride among shifting sand dunes. Nearby the town of Comporta, literally meaning a lock or a gate that holds back water, has trendy boutiques with clothes and homeware and the area has now become an ‘under-the-radar’ celebrity retreat.

I ate one night a mere ten-minute drive away at Sem Porta Restaurant (www.sublimecomporta.pt/restaurant-sem-porta). Set in pine woods and with luxurious surroundings of brick, wood and leather, with frayed rattan lanterns resembling jellyfish and a roaring fire, it’s lit up among olive trees outside with two smaller ones within this mammoth former barn.

I always like to eat fish when close to the sea as I know it will be super fresh. So I enjoyed spider crab and Russian salad followed by a grilled turbot with coriander rice, capers and razor clams before indulging fully in a dark chocolate fondant. My guilty pleasure after a weekend online doing something my receptionist convinced me to try: a breathwork and meditation class we did together online with Evolve (www.evolvehealingandmeditation.com). Both heavenly in their different ways.

I returned to Lisbon with ease beyond the other side of the river Tagus determined now to share with the British this wilderness of coastline already popular with Germans and the French. Lisbon instinctively conjured up for me the Portuguese proverb cão picado por cobra, tem medo de linguiç meaning a dog that has been bitten by a snake is afraid of sausages. Effectively meaning once bitten, twice shy, for me, being once bitten, means I am forever attached to this delightful and truly romantic city. I must go back whenever but soon!