Driving down from Koeln, the valleys turn brown and then yellow. That yellow comes from hundreds of neatly packed rows of autumnal vines, plunging down steeply to the river below.

In the failing afternoon light, the glassy river surface is disturbed only by a water bird too far and too dim to determine.

It’s already dark by the time we pull into the city and at least three degrees colder than it was when we set off earlier. Fire-lit, low ceilinged taverns tempt passing visitors. There’s nowhere to hide even in a thick coat.

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Trier

Germany's oldest cathedral in Germany's oldest city: we visited Trier on a cold autumn Sunday morning.

Trierer Dom

Next morning we visit the Dom, Germany’s oldest cathedral in this, Germany’s oldest city. There’s a service in progress – it’s Sunday of course – so we don’t get too far inside.

The Dom is built on the firm foundations of the ancient Roman city – which dates from about 30BC – and was itself founded in 326AD on a much bigger plan than we see today, which easily occupied the square in front.

Porta Nigra

The remains of the ancient city gate still stand today at the northern end of Trier.

The gate was built before 200AD but it has since been substantially reduced in size. The stone used in its construction has blackened over the centuries: the structure was already described as ‘black’ in medieval times.

Rua Afonso de Albuquerque, Lisbon

The proud Padrão dos Descobrimentos (“Monument to the Discoveries”) at Belém almost strides right off the waterfront and into the Tejo. A jostling line of artists, scientists and sailors queues for a view of the sea with sponsor and founder Infante Henrique at front. This is the pride and heritage of Portugal as represented by Salazar’s Estado Novo.

At Cais do Sodré they built the carracks and caravels to navigate the still unknown seas. From Belém they sailed for new worlds and brought back untold riches. Africa, India, Malacca, China and possibly Australia. Gold, silver and pearls. Nutmeg, cloves and cinammon. With the proceeds they built a great faraway empire, ruled from the great city of Lisbon.

Like Rome, Lisbon was built on seven hills, though most of these have considerably steeper gradients than their Roman cousins. Those less inclined to inclines can always take it easy on the funicular.

Lisbon spreads from the valley floor by the Tejo estuary, up and along the sides of the seven hills. The hilltop bairros each retain their own distinct character.

Cut to today. As we scaled the narrow, hot streets of the central districts, I had the impression of slow decay. Broken pavements, cracked walls and graffiti. Exposed wiring and struggling scaffold. Proud ceramic and stucco façades peeling off. Grass growing in gutters. Odours of cooking oil and dust and urine.

These are the small details that give Lisbon a gritty, candid sort of charm. Unpolished as it may sometimes seem, it’s safer and a whole lot friendlier than many other European cities. There’s also ample evidence of new development, particularly down at the dockyards by the Avenida de Brasília. The renaissance of the Chiado quarter after the destruction of a massive fire in 1988 also points to a firm future.

Architecture

To any Lisboeta with an awareness of history, architecture must appear ephemeral anyway. In 1755, a massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami destroyed almost the whole city and much of Portugal’s thriving southern region.

As a result, little evidence of Lisbon’s ancient structures remains. In addition, the Marquês de Pombal’s reconstruction programme, which recognised the necessity for speed and economy rather than inspiration and elegance, ensured what now seems an rather unenduring rebirth of the urban landscape.

Later, a sustained period of economic decline due to expensive wars and the early independence of rich Portuguese colonies did little for the civic engagement and patronage. Pombal’s Lisbon has consequently grown rather tatty, while the jarring, modern experiments of the Amoreiras district do little for the outer city.

Yet the very paucity of Lisbon’s older architectural heritage has meant that the architecture that did survive beyond 1755 is rightly cherished.

The Sé de Lisboa, whose western façade dates from the original version of 1147, has undergone numerous additions and transitions throughout its history but it has never been laid low by nature.

Less fortunate was the Carmo Convent, whose buildings and legendary library were ruined by the earthquake. However the site was never cleared and the ribs of the nave vault still stand tall today, like the bones of some enormous, forgotten beast.

Downstream and beyond the dockyards in Belém, the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (begun in 1502 and mostly complete by 1580) is another survivor of 1755. Clearly visible in a Renaissance map of the city which hangs today in the Decorative Arts Collection of the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (see Art below), the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos is depicted in a location on the banks of the Tejo.

However when the high waters of the 1755 tsunami receded, this extraordinary monastery – constructed in white lioz limestone in the Manueline style – now found itself several hundred metres from the waterline.

These same receding waters came close to leaving the Torre de Belém high and dry. Also built with lioz limestone in the Manueline style, this tower has always reminded me of certain Indian religious structures such as the Harimandir Sahib at Amritsar – a curious comparison given that the Portuguese expeditions to India began here.

Together, the Mosterio and the Torre were classified a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.

Food

With so much coastline, much of Portuguse cuisine is synonymous with fresh fish. Beside the beach at Portinho da Arrábida, both J and I had very tasty peixe espada or cutlassfish straight off the grill with boiled potatoes.

Later in the trip, I tackled a large plate of prawns at local cuisine specialist O Fumeiro (Rua Conceição da Glória, just off Liberdade), followed by a stew of cod and beans. Simple but delicious.

Apart from seafood, Lisbon can also boast of a disproportionately high number of excellent vegetarian eateries. Our best (and most simple) meals were enjoyed at Jardim de los Sentidos just above Praça da Alegria and the excellent buffet at Terra near Principe Real.

For lunch, we made a couple of refuelling stops at the renowned Pois,Café in the Bairro Sé and currently for sale. Excellent gazpacho for a super hot day!

Art

At the home of Portugal’s foremost modern art collection – the Berardo Museum – we were unlucky enough to find the permanent collection closed to the public. Temporary exhibits were accessible in the meantime.

The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga covers art from medieval up to modern.

In addition to minor works by Lucas Cranach, Memling, Dürer, Gonçalves and Piero Della Francesca, the MNAA displays a broad range from the Flemish Late Gothic period, most of which are atelier productions.

The highlight of the whole collection is Bosch’s triptych masterpiece The Temptation of Saint Anthony (c. 1500).

Decorative arts and religious devotional artefacts are contained in a fascinating separate collection, foremost of which is the recently restored Custódia de Belém (a Catholic monstrance) dating from 1506.

My personal cultural highlight, on a path less travelled by tourists, was the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian.

Gulbenkian was an Armenian businessman and petroleum expert. He was one of the last great entrepreneurs in a time when personal fortunes were increasingly replaced by corporate, indeed national interests. Fortunately for the city of Lisbon, where Gulbenkian lived from 1942 until his death in 1955, he was also a collector and philanthropist. The eponymous Museum a few blocks north of Parque Eduardo VII now hosts his art collection.

The collection is eclectic, consisting of artefacts from the ancient civilisations, decorative arts from the Near and Far East and paintings by artists including Van der Weyden, Bouts, Ghirlandaio, Rembrandt, Guardi, Turner, Millet and Renoir. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the museum comes last of all: a small chamber entirely dedicated to the jewellery and glasswork of René Lalique.

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Lisbon

Once the grand embarcation point for the world's explorers, today Lisbon is a quieter yet still exciting city.

Palácio da Pena, Sintra

The train out of Lisbon’s Rossio station heads through a succession of dormitory towns and tower block estates before finally the broad plain opens up and the greenery thickens. The only grey clouds we’ve seen so far on our trip now hover in a heavy sky. Finally the train halts at the end of the line and out on the platform we don another layer: it’s much cooler here than in Lisbon.

Palácio da Pena

The bus grinds improbably up through the switchbacks towards a misty summit. I’m feeling a bit queasy as the enormous, flabby arm of a Frenchwoman reaches across me and grabs the handrail to steady herself. Later, after we’ve climbed the rest of the way to the castle on foot, after we’ve negotiated all the stairwells and narrow passageways, we’ll see this same Frenchwoman again, only just arriving at the entrance.

The bright palette of colours and the architectural whimsy for which the Palácio da Pena is justly famous are rather lost in the grey mist. There was a small monastery here until the 1755 earthquake, which did so much damage to the city of Lisbon, all but rased it from the rocky outcrop on which it stood. The monastery chapel survived and was incorporated into new buildings erected by Ferdinand II in 1848, who bought the estate.

Ferdinand engaged a German amateur architect called Eschwege who brought from his home country the sensibilities of Rhinish castle architecture. To the construction Ferdinand himself added Moorish and Islamic elements.

In contrast to the fantastical façades, the interiors are generally less exciting. With the exception of a couple of spaces including the lavishly restored chapel, my general impression was one of rather sober utility. Moreover, probably due to the limitations of the mountaintop site, the palace feels almost cramped with its low ceilings and surprisingly small rooms. Entering the palace after a stroll around the walls and courtyards feels like entering a tent!

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Sintra

A visit to the beautiful village of Sintra and two of the castles for which it has become famous.

Castelo dos Mouros

From the battlements of the Castelo dos Mouros, one can normally see the Palácio da Pena across the ridge but today it was invisible in the mist. Though it may have spoiled the view of the distance, the same mist lent considerable atmosphere to the Castelo itself.

Moorish in origin as its modern title suggests, the Castelo was occupied by Afonso I whose forces gained control of Lisbon in 1147. In peace, its military importance was diminished and it fell into ruin, only to be substantially restored by Ferdinand II at the same time as the Palácio da Pena was being built.

It is difficult to say today how much of the restoration matches the original plan, though the towers are apparently quite authentic. We also noted recent excavations, in which were unearthed Moorish water cisterns and a cemetery postdating the Moorish occupation.

Unfortunately we had neither the time nor adequate weather conditions to acquaint ourselves with Monserrate or Quinta da Regaleira.

At a (vegetarian-friendly) café called Casa Bernardo (Rua Gomes Fernandes), we met a couple of British folks who were running the place. They described their gladness at escaping from Britain and living a different sort of life. They could hardly have chosen a more fascinating alternative than Sintra!

Such was the pleasure we derived from seeing Madrid by bike and such was the shortness of memory over the saddle discomfort we suffered that we decided to do it again in Lisbon.

Having planned the whole trip in secret, J booked a couple of excursions with Lisbon Bike Tour, an adventure company run by the delectable Filipe Palma.

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Lisbon bike and kayak

Lisbon is great to visit by bike - provided you start at the top of a hill. And when you're done with the city, the beautiful coastline awaits!

Arrábida

The first day was split between a mountain bike ride along the tracks and (quieter) roads of the Parque Natural da Arrábida.

The parcours ran from the vineyard village of Vila Fresca de Azeitão to the slender beach at Portinho da Arrábida, where we enjoyed a fresh fish lunch.

During the afternoon, we headed out from the beach in our kayaks as far as a sand spit off the coast of Outão. The return journey was much easier thanks to a favourable wind!

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Lisbon

On the second day we picked up the bikes again, this time at the Miradouro do Parque Eduardo VII, whence Filipe took us on a tour of Lisbon.

The ride was not particularly difficult, with the first half being downhill all the way from the Parque Eduardo VII to Praça do Comércio, with intermittent stops for historical background. Even so, negotiating paths shared with pedestrians and traffic crossings did require a certain amount of caution and coolheadedness.

We stopped briefly for a little glass of ginjinha and some classic pastéis de nata at Martinho da Arcada, a café frequented by intellectuals, artists and writers. Both Fernando Pessoa and more recently José Saramago had reserved seats there.

After refreshments, we headed out along the riverside through Cais do Sodré and the dockyards, under the Ponte 25 de Abril to Belém. The tour ended splendidly at the Torre de Belém, from which point we picked up our own itinerary by heading to the Museu Berardo, the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos and of course the “official” Pastéis de Belém shop for another (well-earned) dose of pastéis.

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Boa viagem!

François I ruled for thirty two years and during that time the character of Europe changed dramatically. His impact on the Loire region was also dramatic, as a result of both his presence in the area and his own projects.

The vast and rather baffling Château de Chambord was intended as a mere hunting lodge, an early example of a castle built for grandeur and pleasure rather than for defence.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Chambord for me was the roofscape. Consider the north façade. Below the roofline, Chambord appears symmetrical, solid and even formal. Contrast that with the roof and we see instead a riot of chimneys, towers, arches and windows. Taken together, the harmony of the whole is nevertheless striking.

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Château de Chambord

Perhaps the definitive residential château, the vast Chambord complex is both magnificent and preposterous.

We took a few days off at Easter to visit a portion of the Val de Loire. Not for nothing is this region called the Garden of France. What few parts of the landscape are not given over to rich agri- and viniculture are either covered by lazy green rivers or grand châteaux.

The colours of spring were particularly vibrant during an unseasonably hot weekend. Even if the gardens we visited had not yet reached their full flowering potential, they were always full of activity.

l expected everything to be busier than it was. Only an hour or two south of Paris, the Loire is also a great place to graze on the fruits of other people’s labour.

The wines here are fresh and fizzy. At Azay-le-Rideau we tucked into a couple of bottles from my near-namesake Domaine Paget: a deep-fruited Touraine and a vintage Côt if I recall correctly (with a fuzzy head).

Too many folk at Chenonceau though. Spanish, Portuguese, French, Brits, Poles and Americans. No choice but to join them, filing through the corridors and gawping at all the wallpaper and fancy drapes. Also increasing evidence of the new scourge of tourism: the Chinese. Loud, ignorant and dreadfully dressed. Time and money will no doubt refine them.

Couple of Japanese kids in full bridal array outside. Posing for a photographer in the garden of Diane de Poitiers. Impossible to tell if they were really getting hitched or just modelling. No sign of any perspiration in the broiling afternoon sun: very professional.

In Amboise we walked in the footsteps of the aged Leonardo da Vinci at Clos Lucé. We watched the faces of kids light up as they discovered his novel contraptions for destroying things.

Over in Blois, I decided just once to eat a locally-produced andouillette. Just to get the t-shirt, so to speak. It was despicably rich but it went surprisingly well with the Gamay we ordered. A week later, I can still taste it now…

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Val de Loire

Not for nothing is the Val de Loire called the 'Garden of France'. Blooming flowers, lush pastures, rich vineyards and lazy old rivers.

Dating from around 1536, the château at Villandry is the last notable example of the Renaissance period to be built beside the Loire. Just over two centuries later, it passed from its original owners the Le Breton family to the Count of Castellane who drastically modernised the buildings.

The Castellanes kept the château only 35 years before selling it on in 1789 to a coffee baron named Chénais who had been ruined by the Haitian Revolution. Chénais’ luck never improved and he was forced to sell to a profiteer named Ouvrard who failed to pay off the sum required. Napoleon I stepped in for the debtor but gave Villandry to his brother Joseph who himself sold it on to the newly-ennobled Hainguerlot family in the early nineteenth century.

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Château de Villandry

The Carvallo family quite literally spent a fortune on this château, restoring both buildings and the amazing gardens to splendour.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Villandry was not in ideal condition. Joachim Carvallo, the doctor who bought it in 1906, wrote: “When I came to settle at Villandry and looked closely at the château and the estate, I was terrified by the crushing burden I had taken on.”

Villandry was to be a labour of love for Carvallo and his wife Ann. Together they restored the château to its original Renaissance state, carefully reversing all the later development done by the Castellanes and others. From the parc à l’anglaise they refashioned richly expansive herb and flower gardens à la française in keeping with the restoration work.

Villandry has been a designated historical monument since 1934 and the gardens are also protected on a national register. Though it receives close to half a million visitors every year, the château retains a peaceful, intimate atmosphere. In good weather, walking in the gardens with the fragrance of the herbs in the air is a genuine pleasure.

I haven’t been here since I was twelve on a school exchange. The Meunier family from Arras looked after me as a shy, terrified kid from Yorkshire for a week or so.

During that time, I actually came to Paris twice: once with the family in their planet-sized Citroën CX to visit the Palais de la découverte and the other with my class to see the sights, many of which I would repeat this weekend!

L’arrivée

Impenetrable fog over the flat plains of the great Nord. Watery greens and browns and somewhere beyond that fog, the old coalpits and battlegrounds, criss-crossed by a web of shaky cobbled roads.

Arrow straight like the Romans down to the banlieues stewing in shades of grey on this early Saturday morning, the colours of Le Corbusier and the Fourth Republic. Block on block passing us by until we reach the Paris we think we want to see.

Le matin de Paris

Now the Métro, wider than London and older than Brussels. Still early but the people are starting to appear albeit underground. Les Halles will stay a ghost town for an hour or so yet. Rain falling steadily until then, while empty streets come to terms with the previous night and a freezing wind off the Seine, only a block away now.

Gutters full of dirty water, soggy flyers and clumps of shredded tobacco. Trees embarassed and naked as if caught out by an empty cab rank in the early hours. The terrasses of bars struggle on without their neon make-up and a chic black backdrop, stacks of stained chairs out front like bad teeth.

Lurking behind massed ranks of mixed-use buildings and set in ample space is the Centre Pompidou, an edifice of eccentric gauche on the rive droite, looking like a practical joke that works. Opening at the fashionably late hour of eleven, for now it stands mute and slightly preposterous until finally justified by long queues.

We take shelter in a café while the streets cough into life. The café interior makes vague provincial references and when not serving customers, the owner does the accounts with strong coffee and a biro. Other shopkeepers pick up their coffees, sometimes making furtive, with or without milk phone calls to colleagues elsewhere. Their own customers will have to wait until this caffeine conspiracy unravels and the new day is finally stamped, validated and worth living.

We’re the aliens here, the only sitters in a steady tide of takeaways. A hapless break from the norm. A coloured moment in a rail crash of Saturday mornings.

Comme chez soi

Later lost in St Germain with the rain mocking our feeble scarves and hats until our hotel comes along and scoops us off the street with a smirk. Checking in with a nervous hotel manager who calls the lift and the lift doesn’t come. We take the stairs and he follows on behind to seek out his lost lift, which has absconded to the top floor.

Then the access card for our room doesn’t work. We collar the manager moments later. He’s recovered the lift but, quite inexplicably, he’s taking the stairs back down to reception. He eyes the useless card doubtfully. He sympathises. He’s as confused about his hotel as we are. This is what makes him successful.

The delay had me noticing things we’re not supposed to notice in hotels. On the wall outside our room, there’s a Mutual Security Agency Pictorial Map of North America Showing Principal Resources, Features and Products.

Synthetic rubber, Charleston and the home of Booker T. Washington. Sugar beets in Sheridan. Molybdenum in Grand Mesa. Lava beds, Pocatillo and the Shoeshone Falls.

Nice room with a bureau for writing. However, the toiletries are white-label and the little bottles of Evian are three euros a go. The hotel information folder contains hotel stationery and a couple of postcards featuring classic views of Paris and an inset photo of a better hotel room than ours.

Help us to Save the Earth. Our common areas are equipped with low energy bulb. Our staff are sensitised to reduce energy loss. Being a part of it is easy if you act for eco-friendly. Thank you.

No, thank you.

Our room is decorated with prints of illustrative engravings whose original context was long since lost. And Sleeper in the Valley, a poem by Rimbaud printed in a nice font, doubtless chosen for its frequent references to lush grass, babbling streams and other reposeful themes. The “sleeper” in question is a soldier who, rather than asleep, actually turns out to be dead with “two red holes in his side”.

Le Panthéon

Then from the rain emerged Paris. We passed Saint Sulpice, famous for its miraculous namesake and a mention in the Da Vinci Code, then on through the Jardins du Luxembourg with their fantastic tennis courts. We headed for the Panthéon, a French equivalent of Agrippa’s extraordinary Roman edifice, where the grateful nation honours its most distinguished men. And Marie Curie.

J’s here on a pilgrimmage to visit the final resting place of Résistance hero Jean Moulin. Moulin’s ashes are interred in a chamber that also includes the remains of Jean Monnet, a forefather of the European Union.

I imagine a sort of intermingling among the great spirits in the crypt here. Braille reading quietly while Zola, Hugo, Voltaire and Rousseau argue over literary ideals. Soufflot takes time – an eternity indeed – to examine his own handiwork that in life he never saw finished. Sadi Carnot, Jaurès and Moulin all now at peace. Everything to the gentle beat of Gambetta’s heart. The heart of a nation, with many empty chambers waiting patiently to embrace the future greatness of France.

La proménade

Downhill on Rue Saint Jacques, the grand old Sorbonne and then the banks of the Seine, where the river parts around the Ile de la Cité and Notre-Dame de Paris, whose nave is almost dark even in daytime.

Alongside the Seine as far as the Tuileries, dodging the heavy Sunday traffic of runners and rollerbladers. Exercise, like everything else in their lives, taken at speed.

At Trocadéro, a severe, staring man stands in traffic minding a fancy car outside Le Wilson. His stance that of a footballer facing down a freekick or a simply a man awaiting fruition astride a urinal. Opposite Le Wilson, they’re chanting for democracy in the Middle East.

More or less like they do in Brussels, except instead of demanding an end to European ambivalence, today they’re demanding an stop to European interference. All is a confusion of voices, flags and camera phones.

Democracy translated into repeated slogans. Democracy represented as touchpad gestures.

Non-plussed Africans hawk their little plastic tours Eiffel against the backdrop of the big iron one, silently demanding an end to Arab protesters intruding on their patch.

But this is Paris and Paris decides what goes.

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Paris

A cold and rainy February weekend in Paris, a city I last visited when I was 12 years old!

From across the river, I catch sight of Salzburg’s fortress straddling a high ridge above the old city like an arched eyebrow. It’s almost as if Salzburg’s thumbing its nose at me.

Perhaps there’s something of the snob about Salzburg, a city apparently well aware of its poise and elegance.

Scrupulously clean streets, neat window displays and rather proud hotel managers.

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Salzburg

Prim and proper Salzburg is a well-preserved city and a World Heritage Site.

Good times brewing

Salzburgers have to let their hair down sometime, though they go to the most unlikely location well beyond the city centre to do so. At the Augustiner Bräustübl in Mülln – a former monastery, no less – the monks may be gone but the beer still flows from the barrels.

The process is simple and unfussy and therefore unusual for this most fastidious city: grab a tankard, pay the man, have it filled and then drink deep. Buy some food accompaniments in the corridor outside the drinking halls. Rinse and repeat. Several times. Nobody would thumb their nose at that!

The slow train deposits us on a small platform late on a February afternoon in Austria. The sun has already plunged behind the mountains opposite. Everything this side of them is cold and blue.

For the last hour or so, we’ve been watching in fascination as the landscape outside the window of our compartment transformed itself seamslessly from rolling pastures to jagged, snow-capped mountains and icy green lakes.

No time to waste standing about in this air. We descend the path to the lakeside and climb into a boat. We pay the captain and take a seat in the aft.

In the golden light that still reaches the far shore, we make out the rooftops and tall, narrow spire of Hallstatt.

Less than a thousand people live there, on the steep sides of a mountain that rears skyward in a near vertical from the waterline.

Once they came here to mine salt. Now it’s only for peace and tranquility. As did we.

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Hallstatt

Surely one of the most picturesque places in Europe, this Austrian village is particularly beautiful in winter.

We reach land once more. Hallstatt in late winter is silent but for bird calls, rushing meltwater and water lapping idly against the empty quayside. When summer eventually comes to this deep valley, Hallstatt will abide the influx of tourists in good spirit.

Trinket shops will open, traffic will increase and spoken languages will proliferate. Yet the shops will be respectable, cars will park well outside the village and everywhere the Hallstatters will understand but politely reply in their own tongue.

For now though, the kiosks stay locked and the cars stay away. Everything is just wonderfully quiet. And that’s what we came here for.