Our pension, in the heart of the Baixa, overlooks a handful of busy restaurants that spill into the mosaic streets and hop until 11:30 pm sharp. Locals and tourists crowd the tables, sucking back platters of caracols – the tiniest snails, boiled in the shell with a pinch of salt and a sprig of oregano. Heaps of hundreds are piled and speared with toothpicks or a spine carved from a palm leaf. Along with mounds of other seafood specialties like grilled sole, swordfish and squid, the diners devour mountains of batatas fritas – fresh cut fried potatoes as well as whole chickens roasted on a spit or barbecue. Bonjardin, or the King of Chicken, seems to have a bit of a reputation. It smokes below our window, and from three storeys up I watch the careerist waiters carry plates of fried potatoes and chickens to eager regulars and delighted foreigners from noon until 11:30pm, when the kitchen closes abruptly and the tables and chairs are stacked as fast as they were set up nearly twelve hours before. The street, decked with strollers, diners, locals sipping port and spilling onto the pedestrian way, shoe-shiners, and passionate Fado musicians, simply fizzles out into silence at midnight, inviting a sound sleep in the heart of Lisbon’s beautiful old centre.

Seville