When I arrived in Portugal from Britain, I thought that, as I was moving to a latin and more laid back culture. I imagined how I would be spending much of my time hanging out, lounging around in cafés, slowly taking in the day with my newspaper and coffee and more importantly, my cake.

But as my other-half showed me round the must-sees of Lisbon as an introduction to things Portuguese, I discovered to my horror the proper procedure in the Portuguese café:  Go in. Order what you want. Drink it. Eat it. Pay. Leave. As you drink your coffee, what you may listen to is locals complaining to the café owner about the state of the government/football team/neighbours.

The Portuguese are obsessed with having enough to eat at all times, so they won't let you starve to death before your next meal. Whether you find yourself in a dingy café-bar, with two old grumpy men in the corner with their glasses of aguardente or in a more glitzy, elegant café, there is always a little something for refuelling.

A classic café that is essentially Lisbon, which I love, is the Casa Chineza on Rua do Ouro 274 in the Baixa (downtown, literally "low").  What makes it even more Lisbon is that it's right next door to the "Discoteca Amália", not a disco, but a Fado record shop, that blares out Amália Rodrigues songs on a loud speaker.  Stand there for a minute or two, while looking at cakes in next door's window. Just do it.

Inside Casa Chineza, the 19th century meets the 1970s and the main counter is a U shaped chiller cabinet stuffed full of brownish yellowish cakes and salgados (savouries). That was another of my initial disappointments; the cakes weren't the fancy fruity creamy concoctions I was used to. I discovered, though, that they are so much better than that. Almondy, cinnamonny, eggy, sugary things that will revive you after your walk down from Chiado or up from the river. Their in-house pasteís de nata (pushtay'sh de na'ttah) are pretty near perfect and try a broa de amêndoa too. A couple of those will keep you alive till dinner.

Metro: Baixa Chiado.

Shopping is a national pastime in Portugal, but, strangely, an indoors pastime. I hate the enormous, exhausting, artificially lit, themed shopping malls that mark the outskirts of the cities, full at all times except for when it's beach weather or when there are important football matches. Luckily, you never need to visit the malls if you're in Lisbon; as you can find anything you want within the city.

Rua do Carmo

Chiado is one part of the city that is always buzzing with people, and a great place for shopping. There are two main streets, Rua do Carmo and Rua Garrett, climbing from the Baixa up to Chiado where international chain stores and a small shopping mall, Armazéns do Chiado, can be found. But you've seen these shops before, as you've probably got most of them at home.

Rua Garrett

In between them there are smaller stores, from jewellers to textile shops, many of them still with original shop fronts, some with all the clutter of modern marketing vying for attention with 19th century decor. Oddly, most visitors stay on these two streets without straying off into the smaller, far less cluttered streets of Chiado. But that's where some real jewels of Chiado can be found.

In Rua Anchieta there is a very special place called A Vida Portuguesa: The Portuguese Life. At first, it seems that the dark 19th century shelves are filled with faux old-style packages, facsimiles of vintage products from Portugal. On closer inspection, though, they are the real things: real toothpaste, real tinned sardines, real schoolbooks, real soap, still in production. Designs idiosyncratic of Portugal and of the last century, creating a snapshot of Portuguese memories and culture and of Portuguese-ness.

Even I got all nostalgic, and I've only been in the country for ten years. The Portuguese are fiercely proud of their distant history, but because the Salazarist regime and the 1974 revolution are still warm in the memory of many Portuguese, you can't get them to talk too much about the last fifty or so years (not until they trust you, anyway). So to be able to see the objects together at A Vida Portuguesa is also like having a privileged glance into the Portuguese past that was not so long ago.

When I was in A Vida Portuguesa the other day, I was wandering around behind an elderly Portuguese couple, grinning coyly at each other, grinning at things they remembered from the old days and at things they had forgotten about. The Portuguese don't generally grin a lot, so this must be a good place.

A Vida Portuguesa, Rua Anchieta 11, Chiado.

Parklife in Campo de Ourique 

Considering that one of the principle ways the Portuguese identify themselves is by their cookery, it's rather sad that most people leave a Portuguese holiday behind thinking that the food's a bit dull and hasn't much of an identity. They're entirely wrong!

I was lucky: I got myself a Portuguese mother in law. She assumed that the English, namely me, needed to be educated about food. So she took it upon herself to introduce most of the Portuguese repertoire to me over the last ten years.

A Casa dos Passarinhos

My mother in law seemed almost disappointed when she discovered that I loved most of it. However there are a few bits of pig that I have difficulty eating, but that's more to do with aesthetics than taste. A pig's nostril poking out from the plate can be a bit off-putting. But it's not all awful looking offal.

Inside A Casa dos Passarinhos

If you want the real thing (and don't have a Portuguese mother in law to prepare it for you) you must eat where the Portuguese eat and not the fairly safe tourist menus found in Baixa.

Lunchtime (usually the two hours between 1 and 3pm) constitutes the most important hours of the working day here in Portugal. If you come across a típico restaurant that's full of people at lunchtime it's got a pretty good chance of being a good restaurant. You have the added benefit of being with REAL Portuguese rather than tourists, and can listen in on what might be bosses with their "secretaries" or just plain normal business people and their office gossip.

Inside A Casa dos Passarinhos

I needed to meet my friend, Célia, the other day, which of course was a perfect excuse for lunch. She works in Campo de Ourique - one of my favourite parts of Lisbon, (it's an easy to follow grid of streets, which is one of the areas where Lisboetas live, work and shop). To get their I caught the metro to Rato, walked up R. Dom João and after a (not very)  gruelling hour wandering round Campo de Ourique, we met at 'A Casa dos Passarinhos'.

Jaquinzinhos

It's not the fanciest looking place from the outside, nor is it a palace on the inside but in Lisbon, the best places usually aren't. As the busy noise rose around us until we had to pretty much shout at each other. I ate my favourite, the alheira, a delicious smokey spicy kind of sausage made from non-pork meats (invented by Portuguese jews, escaping the Portuguese Inquisition of the 16th Century, by pretending to eat pork sausages just like everyone else). Célia had the Joaquinzinhos which are small carapaus, a sardine-like fish, fried and crunchy as anything, with bean rice. At A Casa dos Passarinhos they also do Massadas and Arroz de, which are filling, soupy stews of fish with pasta or rice, among plenty of other típico things.

The restaurant is always full at lunch time so gettting there before 1pm is essential if you want a table.

A CASA DOS PASSARINHOS, Rua Silva Cavalho 195, Lisbon

Go further: If you have a soft spot for sardines, you would probably like to know where you (according to Martin Toenner) get the best sardines the world. Find out here

I adore Lisbon though I'm not such a fan of her hills. The city is built on seven of them and looks very pretty for it. But when I'm going to arrive at a meeting all hot and sweaty because I've had to march up a hill to get there, I'd rather Lisbon was flat, with canals and bicycles.

Luckily, there is plenty of public transport and it's fairly cheap, so I duck down onto the metro or grab a bus or a tram when I can. The easiest way to get around these days without pockets full of coins or dozens of separate tickets is with a "7colinas" card (named after the seven hills) that you can buy in metro ticket-machines and ticket-counters. Ask for a sete colinas com zapping (yes, it's really called zapping) and charge it with up to €10.  It makes life very much easier.

The Ascensor da Glória funicular railway climbs one of the steeper slopes on the Chiado side of town. It has an early twentieth century tram carriage and the only modern equipment inside is the ticket scanner and the driver in company garb.

Tourists and locals trundle up the hill together, and middle aged men get all misty eyed with the century old workmanship.

Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara

Last year, I was showing a friend from the blogosphere round the city. I was keen to show her one of Lisbon's more useful monuments. The Ascensor da Glória was going to take us, sweat-free, from the Baixa up to Chiado and Bairro Alto where there are dozens of shops and restaurants. 
 
When we got to the ascensor it was annoyingly closed for repairs, due to a wall starting to collapse on top of the track. We walked up the horrendous hill anyway, instead of taking the longer, but gentler, route up of Rua do Carmo, Rua Garrett and Rua da Misericordia.

View from Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara

It almost killed us. The old ladies who overtook us didn't help our egos much, either. The sightseeing spot, Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara, is just next to the top of the ascensor, so we at least had somewhere spectacular to catch our breath.

Ascensor da Glória re-opened a few months later.  I was happy.  So were my legs.

The closest metro to Ascensor da Glória is Metro Restauradores.

There are two other ascensors/funiculars in Lisbon: Ascensor da Bica and Ascensor da Lavra. 

Go Further: Read Meg's guide to her favourite miradouros in Lisbon with the most spectacular views. 

Lisbon abounds with sleek bars – places like Lux, owned by John Malkovich, that have widescreen views over the water. But my favorite places to drink don’t have any windows at all.

Miradouro is the Portuguese word to describe a scenic viewpoint. In most cities, such spots are designated by a sign, maybe a pair of coin-operated binoculars. In Lisbon, miradouros are adorned by cafés. Like decoration on a batch of cupcakes, these spots are sprinkled atop the city’s seven hills and nestled in crannies overlooking the water. The open-air terraces serve a multitude of functions, as I discovered on a recent mirodouro crawl.

Miradouro das Portas do Sol

We arrived 'early' in the morning at the Miradouro das Portas do Sol. True to its name, the terrace had already attracted a fair number of sun seekers at 11am. A number of sofas – modified beds, really – had been placed around the patio. Bodies were draped over these, unmoving except for occasional gestures toward fruit juice. “I think what we have here is a hangover recovery center,” I noted, while also admiring the views of Alfama rooftops. We worked on our tans for a while, but then left in search of a more gastronomically-minded miradouro.

Miradouro do Adamastor

Photo by Zöe_Alexandra

The Miradouro do Adamastor offers what many argue is not the best view on the Tejo. It makes up for this by instead providing a tasty lunch spot. The Noobai café is reached by stairs winding down from western side of the miradouro. Outdoor tables and fake sunflowers are planted all over the terrace, with a DJ spinning some relaxed tunes. I chose a salad from the good-looking menu and had another icy glass of fruit juice. In the hot mid-day sun it was difficult to imagine anything else, but locals curl up here in the cold months with hot drinks and complimentary blankets.

Esplanada da Graça

After a short break for some cursory castle inspection, it was time to continue the crawl. We wound around to the Esplanada da Graça, which gazes back at the Castelo de São George. The basic café set-up here includes metal tables and cold beer. The stunning view and some classical guitar kept us happy for several rounds.

Miradouro da Santa Luzia

A bit later we headed east to the prettiest lookout in town. Decorated with ceramic tiles and brightly colored blossoms, the Miradouro da Santa Luzia was very quiet when we arrived. A few solitary old men were staring out to sea, and a young woman was reading. We sat relishing the cool air blowing in from the water and were soon so relaxed that our heads were rolling forward.

"What this one really needs is an outdoor bed,” I joked. My friend grinned, and then reminded me of the morning’s first miradouro. “Das Portas do Sol!” we cheered, and then rose to make our return. And thus the crawl came to an end exactly where we began, sprawled on outdoor sofa-beds with white sheets blowing overhead.

Go further: Find out how Lucy Pepper prefers to reach the top of Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara here.