Several people have, quite rightly, pulled me up for my grumpy blog from Gatwick Airport yesterday. Well they will be pleased to know this is now a grump-free zone!

We arrived in Lisbon after a trouble free flight. The British media recently has been full of stories about long queues at several European airports because of new more rigorous identity checks and Lisbon was cited as a particularly bad example. This was all, of course, another example of how hopeless the EU is at organising anything. Well we sailed through immigration in seconds - there was no queue at all and the electronic passport readers worked first time. In contrast to the hour we queued at Stansted recently. Which just shows you shouldn't always believe what you read in the papers.

Lisbon is very attractive. The weather is just right - temperatures in the mid to upper 20s. Good, cheap public transport so it's easy to get around.. Our Airbnb is compact and has everything we need and is just a few minutes walk from the river. Our host has been sending us voluminous suggestions for our stay and, following her advice, we caught the tram to Belem which is on the river. It was from here that Vasco de Gama set sail in 1497 to become the first European to reach India by sea and where Columbus landed on his return from America in 1493 (although only because he was forced to by a storm). These discoveries inaugurated a so-called golden age in Portugal's history (less golden for their colonies) and this is commemorated both in the magnificent Mosteiro dos Jeronimos and by the, more recent, Monument of the Discoveries. The latter was built in 1960 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the death of Henry the Navigator but also, one suspects, the then dictator Salazar who espoused a doctrine that included the defence of colonialism. We forget, perhaps, that Portugal is one of a number of European countries that are relatively young democracies - Salazar was overthrown in the revolution of 1974. One of the reasons many Europeans are so supportive of the EU, for all its faults, is because they see it as a defence against the return of dictatorial regimes.

Anyway the Monument is undoubtedly dramatic and the views from the top are justly described as panoramic and include the impressive suspension bridge over the river which looks very much like the Golden Gate Bridge.

Cocktails and beer in a little mobile tapas bar by the river were followed by fish in a little restaurant that featured in a recent guide to Lisbon in the Guardian. So there are times when you can believe the things you read in the papers.