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Arriving in Lisbon is like hurling yourself into a medieval portal. Weaved into precipitous hills, the Alfama is where Lisbon began, a bewildering medina of jumbled houses, cobblestone streets, vertiginous alleyways, and becos, barely wide enough for the passing of a fat goat. Beneath the castellated mass of the iconic Castelo de São Jorge, serpentine streets rise and fall to countless miradouros where suddenly, with surreal drama, a hazy mirage of architectural marvels rises gloriously from honeycombed red roof-tops. In the valley below Lisbon unfurls like an amphitheatre along the River Tagus, casting its spell of antiquity. Arthritic trams chug up ludicrous gradients, zigzagging before a concertina of squat dwellings where gypsy-eyed boys leap-frog over chunks of Roman walls. Washing is strewn like origami from gritty tascas encrusted with lustrous 16th-century azulejos tiles. Alongside hole-in- the-wall grocers, where smelly sheaves of codfish hang from the rafters, a pristine baroque cupola soars above an arboreous Renaissance park.
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