‘Any port in a storm,” I punned dreadfully as we dived from a rain-lashed street into Lisbon’s Ginjinha Sen Rival. In fact, though there were many varieties of Portugal’s celebrated fortified wine to be had here, my taste today was for something stronger. Naturally, this had to include the morello cherry brandy that lends its name (more simply ginja) to this atmospheric little boozer. I also tried the delicious Macieira brandy and left clutching a litre bottle of it. This survived the journey home on Tuesday packed in my suitcase. In my hand-luggage were bottles of ‘duty free’ Gordon’s gin, bought for half the price we pay here.

On my first visit to Portugal’s capital — indeed, to Portugal full stop — drink and food loomed large in my experiences. So attuned is the country to the needs of the gourmand that I can’t think why I’d stayed away so long.

Anyone eager to share my happy experience might like to know that ours was a Cresta city break, booked through the friendly staff at the Co-op travel shop in Botley. For an outlay of less than £400 each, we enjoyed five days at the four-star Hotel Mundial, with scheduled flights (at very civilised times) from Heathrow.

As a reward for our comparatively long stay, we were even offered a free dinner on one night. At this I added juicy steaks of salmon to the other ‘s’ fish — sole and swordfish — I had already enjoyed. Not sardines, note, their best season now being over.

A refreshing absence of large chain operations was a notable and welcome feature of the restaurant scene. I recall, for instance, seeing only one McDonald’s, and this was pleasingly empty. Why go under the yellow arches when you can enjoy freshly cooked food at any number of cheap, friendly, family-run establishments?

One of our lunches, for instance, consisted of bowls of carrot and potato soup with excellent bread, followed by (for Rosemarie) a huge helping of açorda de gambas — a risotto-like bread ‘stew’ with prawns — and (for me) two huge pork cutlets, with chips fried in olive oil, boiled rice and a dressed salad. With half a litre of crisp white wine, the cost was 19 Euros.

In the delightful coastal town of Caiscais, where I ate superbly fresh swordfish for Sunday lunch, Rosemarie had a creamy fish pie packed with the salt cod so widely used in Portuguese cooking. We found this in great quantity on Saturday afternoon in the once-a-month food fair held in the square behind our hotel. This is designed to show off the wares of suppliers too small to cut deals with the supermarket chains. Among the stallholders were purveyors of smoked meats, hard and soft cheeses, a glorious variety of sausages and some of Portugal’s wonderful crisp-crusted bread which for me rivals the best that even France produces.

We were joined at our table there quite by chance, as we sipped red wine, by the market’s organiser Francisco Silva. He and a pal were running a coffee stall. Their eye-catching ‘uniform’ of checked shirt, braces and flat caps was in the style favoured by peasant traffickers in the days when a big difference in the price of coffee between Portugal and Spain made smuggling a profitable activity.

I liked the look of the caps, and over the next day or so made efforts to acquire one myself. In fact I bought two, which joined the Macieira in my case for the flight home. This might truly have been considered a journey into the unknown, I suppose, with vague reports having reached us of floods in Osney. Happily, these proved to be exaggerated — thus far . . .