What's Doing in: Lisbon
Without a doubt Lisbon is one of the more relaxed cities of the world. It has a genuine joie de vivre that does not seemed forced as in some cities, and hustling-turned-hassling seems to be at a minimum.
Relaxing in the Portuguese capital can be as simple as taking long walks, for there is much to see, or patronizing sidewalk cafes where tables are set out even before the weather turns warmer, or sitting in the lobby or bar of a grand hotel such as the Ritz or the Tivoli.
Yet another diversion is listening to the national music - melancholy fado, which is very moody and bluesy and mostly about hard times. One should not leave Lisbon without going to one of the city's fado clubs. Perhaps the best is Fado Menor (Rua das Pracas 18), an appropriately small room on a back street, where dinner for two plus the show costs about $45.
The City
Lisbon's great boulevards such as the Avenida da Liberdade are no longer as grand as, say, Madrid's Paseo de la Castellana or Paris's Champs-Elysees, but its sidewalk cafes remain attractive.
Elsewhere in the city's older sections are narrow, steep, cobbled alleyways reminiscent of casbahs in Arab cities, and the cable cars scaling its hills (there are seven) make an American visitor think of San Francisco. If one tires of walking, getting around by taxi is easy and fairly inexpensive: about $4, for example, from the airport into downtown.
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