Up a narrow street in Belem, Lisbon, and just yards away from the hungry tourists queuing for their Pasteis de Nata (the custard tarts which are a Lisbon speciality)  there is a chapel which re-opened as a gallery in September this year. Its outer wall has been transfomed by an art installation inspired by wood type. Chunky sans serif lettering of differing heights and depths has been applied to the wall and then given a coating of bright white render. The bold capitals are stacked into arrangements vaguely reminiscent of Henrik Werkmann.

The Chapel of the Immaculate Conception was dedicated in 1707. Unlike much of central Lisbon, it survived the catastrophic earthquake of 1755. The messages which now cover much of the outer wall are mostly religious, and more rigidly arranged than Werkmann's anarchic experiments. The piece is called 'Vai com Deus' (Go with God) and is the work of Oporto studio R2 Design.

It must have been a nightmare to specify and install. The letters have been individually pinned to the wall and are not always spaced or aligned with the kind of perfection we are used to. Perhaps this is why it has yet to feature on the web site of the award winning designers.

Some stunning images in BBC Two's new series presented by Francesco da Mosto in which he sails the great Venetian trading route all the way to Istanbul. In the second episode the journey begins with Pulia in Croatia - a vast Roman ampitheatre where a careless thumbs down from the crowd decided the fate of countless hapless gladiators. Da Mosto goes on to the Istrian chapel of St Mary near Bevam where 15th century frescoes depict the dance of death that comes to all, rich or poor, gladiator or not.

After visiting a solitary lighthouse keeper passionate for the sea, Francesco arrives in Split, the city built around the remains of Diocletian's vast retirement palace. 

It brought back memories of my visit there and to nearby Trogir - both sparkling backdrops to some of the most aggressively opulent yachts I've ever seen. Sometimes the television camera goes to places ordinary tourists never see. We visited the Temple of Jupiter in the palace, but didn't get to the first floor living room of the man who shares his space with a fragment of the temple's pediment, complete with a recently discovered carved portrait of the building's architect.

For once the fairly constant background music (mostly by self-styled 'emotive music creator' Chris Nicolaides) didn't get in the way. It compliments the superb HD images and da Mosto's passionate and honey-tongued presentation style. Next week he covers the island of Korcula and Dubrovnik. 

On the beach where I swam, da Mosto played picigin (a kind of variation on water polo) with the good-looking crew of his sailing boat. Nearby is a lido with the charged atmosphere of all those special places where swimming is taken seriously. Take me there now.

Ivo (or Yves or Ives) of Kermartin, the patron saint of lawyers and abandoned children, is said to have been commemorated with the inscription "St Ives was Breton/ A lawyer and not a thief/ Marvelous thing to the people." It's somehow reassuring to know that lawyers were mistrusted even in the 12th century, and that there was at least one that broke with convention.

However, that St Ives has nothing whatever to do with the Cornish town of St Ives, which is named after a notoriously tardy 5th century Irishwoman who literally missed the boat that was supposed to take her to Cornwall with her chums St Erth (patron saint of gardeners and electricians) and St Uny. St Ia gamely made her own way across the Atlantic in a coracle, an act of such monumental foolishness that the townsfolk of St Ives decided to name the place after her.

Cornish people still honour her when they say they'll do something "d'reckly" - meaning at some vague time in the future, when they feel like it. Two days in St Ives this April converted me (again) to the relaxed ways of the place. People take the trouble to say hello just because they saw you out walking the day before; the staff at the Barbara Hepworth Gallery are happy to chat; and even the man who sold me tea took extra trouble to make sure it was just so.

Hepworth picked up on it when she wrote "St Ives has absolutely enraptured me, not merely for its beauty, but the naturalness of life". She loved the sense of community as well as the:

"remarkable pagan landscape...which has a very deep effect on me, developing all my ideas about the relationship of the human figure in the landscape - sculpture in landscape and the essential quality of light"

In the mid 20th century these key ideas - about connection to the land, community, and light, drew dozens of artists to St Ives. Nicholson, Garbo, Frost, Heron and the patron saint of British pottery, Bernard Leach, were the most notable, but you don't have to be a painter to appreciate the light in St Ives. It has a remarkable clarity - a sharpness that dazzles. Spoil from tin-mining and powdered granite in the dazzling sand are the prosaic explanation.

That light, the fresh sea air, the art, and the friendliness of the locals make St Ives just perfect for a break away from it all. We watched the surfers, walked the coast, visited the Tate St Ives and stayed in the Ped'n Olva hotel, on a rocky promontory with wonderful views of Porthminister beach and the harbour. The train from the London and the Thames Valley takes around 6 hours and costs as little as £30 return, including a trip on one of the loveliest branch lines in the country.

“If you start to take Vienna - take Vienna” said Napoleon. A tall order for the art-lover with just four days in which to attempt to do justice to the major sites. The Kunsthistorisches, the Albertina, the Belvedere, the Imperial Library, the Ephesus and the Musical Instrument collections, the Hofburg, the Schönbrunn. The Cathedral, the Karlskirche or the Peterskirche? Canova, Dürer, Caravaggio or Vermeer? Baroque or Secession?

All the booty of empire gathered within the 4km ring, lined with palaces cascading with statuesque caryatids and writhing atlantes. Churches with walls coated with plaster angels forever tumbling into the inferno. A Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven or Strauss commemoration on every corner. And the cakes!

Vienna oozes history and its unconcerned citizens embody a favourite word of Queen Victoria's. They and their city are 'Gemütlichkeit' - contentedly belonging, polite and unhurried. On the plane a Viennese offered tips on getting the best from his home town. In the Graben, the city's busiest shopping street, half a dozen people stopped and waited while I pointed my camera up at a building across the street. At junctions cars halt and pedestrains are waved across. Gentlemen of a certain age wear hats. Their ladies are impeccably (and somewhat conservatively) dressed. Even the frock-coated touts for Strauss concerts are polite in their salesmanship.

We marvelled at the Prunksaal of the Imperial Library with its ravishing ceiling decorations and perfect proportions, justifying the claim that it is the finest library hall in Europe.

Mohr in Hemd (chocolate pudding) or Kokosbusserln (Coconut Kisses)? The cakes are as elegantly refined as the Viennese. We ate Sacher torte in a relaxed and splendidly old-fashioned café by the rear entrance of the Hofburg Palace. A Secession facade there so offended the emperor with its 'plainness' that he reputedly never passed it again. 

We resisted other temptations including the discrete entrance of the exotically Turkish Centralbad which was a haunt of the Archduke Ludwig Victor, a brother of the emperor Franz Josef I, who 'was famous for his love for beauty'.

We admired Canova's tomb for Maria Christina at the Augustinerkirche. It was such a success that Canova himself was buried in a copy in the Frari in Venice. In the Kunsthistorisches we ate more cake and lost hours in the galleries. Not one but three Rembrandt self-portraits. Exquisite Roman cameos and gold jewellery quite unlike anything I had ever seen. 

An incredibly myopic Jehovah's Witness seemed to be stalking us in the clock museum. All three floors are choc-a-bloc with chiming timepieces. He was a museum warden and seems to spend his days reading scripture, held at about 2" from his nose. In the museum of musical instruments (rooms of shawms, serpents and Beethoven and Chopin's pianos) another warden was nervously writing who knows what never to be published masterpiece on scraps he carried round with him.

Austrian Art Nouveau toyed with plainness but finally embraced ornament with relish. We admired Otto Wagner's Majolica House which is a riot of coloured tiles and ornamental balconies. The secession building has a glorious gilded dome of glittering laurel leaves. More pictures here.