Beautiful Ugly - Scratching the Silver-Plated Surface of Lisbon

This was my first visit to Portugal. For years I have been travelling to neighbouring Spain, always with a mental note to 'must go west', cross border, but it has just never happened. So, the opportunity to do some business in Lisbon, I was excited and delighted.

I guess I expected it to be the same. Similar, at least, to Spain. Same coastline, same peninsula, just an invisible border separating the two. And in many ways it is. I even got by with my Spanish to get around, although my subconscious somehow began pronouncing my 's' with more ssjizzzz. I was fooling nobody, my Portuguese clearly needed work.

My first glance at Lisbon was rainy, at the airport. Everywhere is glum in the rain, but I could still see the Mediterranean flair and the tourist signs and English decorated busses. I taxied to Parque das Nações, once again feeling the Paloma Blanca was flying nearby - ocean side, high rise hotels with shiny silver signs, franchise coffee shops and modern architecture from Vasco da Gama tower, as far as the eye could see.

In the other direction, the beauty of the 25 de Abril bridge, so close to Golden Gate in design it just missed the fog to be an identical twin. Lisbon had a holiday feel, even in this post-Expo business hub of new Lisbon.

I could easily have stayed anywhere along this strip. A business area new-build with all mod cons, it was a sure thing. But I had a feeling I might be missing something, and I took the gamble to head inner city and spend the night in the old part of Lisbon.

This was not what I expected. Vasco da Gama might appear Barceloneta-like but the glitz stops at the sea front and the concrete slabbed roads turn to cobbled pathways and tired tramlines. Grandeur ended and the Lisbon I uncovered, albeit briefly, was crumbled and flaked and yawning in a way I experienced Budapest and Belgrade, for the first time. But I was so glad to see it. Like stripping back wallpaper to find original art or knocking off plater to find old tiles and cornices. 

Staying in Nações I could have been in any tourist city, anywhere in modern Europe. Just 15 minutes in a cab, I was steeped in a history I am now dying to explore, to return and wander through catch clunky trams and climb twisted streets, visit tiny shops that have bells that ring when you open a door, and old men sitting outside with coffee and cigarettes. 

Time hasn't fully caught up with Lisbon. You want to arm yourself with a DIY team, spruce up the broken plaster and give Lisbon a lick of paint. I hope the government does that, in the right way. There is beauty and culture than needs protected for future history. But the city is vast and it will take time.

A new start is spreading, however. My own hotel, opened in June, The Beautique has taken dilapidation to innovative decadent design, the polar opposite of anything else on Praça da Figueira. 

Beautifully restored facades, freshly painted in green, it pops out of the square's grey and cream walls. Inside, walls and surfaces appear like liquid mercury, draping around rooms like Dali cheese clocks, fluid and inviting and bathed in sexy low lights and cool tunes. Upstairs, modern technology takes over and wraps corridors in HD holograms of figs, as a continuum of the fig frescos that dominate the mirror and walnut rooms. A little corner of modern luxury on an imposing plaza of history. It's minutes from the new town, but miles from what I first encountered on the doorstep of the airport, by the sea.

A quick city tour fed my craving for the real thing. Lisbon is statuesque, dark and alluring and full of intrigue. A city now placed firmly in my bucket list to come back, explore and fall in love.

'Til next time, Pandora