Answer — Exercise 7

a)

• Location → southwestern coast of Portugal, overlooking the Rio Tejo
• History → old quarters of the city, the poet Pessoa, 1930s-era cafés
• Nearby sights → Sintra, beaches, fishing villages
• Architecture → Gothic and Moorish, cathedrals, monasteries and a castle, narrow streets
• Things to see / do → visit museums and cathedrals, walk through the narrow backstreets, eat at a small patio restaurant, listen to fado, sit in a 1930s café, go to bars / restaurants in Bairro Alto, or to nightclubs in the docks or in old mansions, go shopping in Chiado, watch the sunset from the castle
• Food and drink → fresh bread and wine, fresh pastries and espresso coffee

b)

1. Present tenses for giving information and facts about a place. Makes the description more immediate.
2. Fairly informal, and friendly (words like stroll, revellers partying until dawn, scattered) - also contractions like you'd, they've.
3. The writer likes the place very much. We can see this from the positive language he / she uses to describe it.