A final round up of Lisbon

by Layla

For shame, for shame - we completely failed to write the rest of the blog! And Roz has been gazing reproachfully at me ever since, so with the holiday photos to help me, I shall try to remember what we did...

After the aquarium etc, and restocking of books at the bookshop, we went out to what turned out to be one of our favourite Lisbon restaurants, Lisboa Noite, in Bairro Alto. It was packed full and the atmosphere was lovely, as was the food. I have a particular recollection of the cheese. The next photos are not until the next night, when we went to a Mozambique restaurant called Ibo which was probably our other favourite restaurant in terms of coolness (Tavares won in terms of excellent food). I believe that in the interim we read lots of books, had lunch in a cool cafe called Pois in the Alfama, went to the cinema to see a truly rubbish film called Last Night (that we walked out of and retreated home to watch a much better DVD, And Roz was chatted up by the taxi driver: humph).

Ah, Sunday now comes back to me. We walked up to the Alfama and had lunch in the same cafe as yesterday. Then we walked up the hill and strolled around the Alfama in the sun (and without a sprained ankle this time). Undecided about what to do, we headed down through little sidestreets filled with charming houses to the waterfront. We strolled along, enjoying the day, til we decided to sit down at an outside cafe and it started to rain torrentially. We were far from a taxi. After quite a long time, it stopped and we fled homewards to indulge in books and DVDs. Our last night was of course Sunday and we had absolutely not learned our lesson from the previous Sunday's dining angst. Instead we tried to go to Tamarind again. After a walk down a hill so steep that it has its own funicular train, it turned out - just like last Sunday - to be closed. So we hiked up the hill again and proceeded to go on a ridiculously long walk in search of a range of places that were either closed or nonexistent. Most unfortunate. After a long trek, and getting a little bit lost, and a big bit hungry, a street looked familiar. Indeed, it was the street our flat was on. And right next to our home was a perfectly acceptable little fondue restaurant. We ordered cheese fondue with grapes, bread and quail eggs, which was a bit bizarre, especially as they claimed to have no quail eggs, but when we complained about ordering under false pretenses, magically produced a whole bowl! We had a random but cheery night, and it was a very short walk home.

On our last day we couldn't bear the thought of going home. But hated to spoil our last day with such feelings. So in a mad whirl of impetuousness, Roz leapt onto the computer and randomly booked Toronto for July! After that excitement, we packed, stored our bags with the concierge, and strolled round Principe Real and down to the Flores square where we booked in for a final lunch at the gay and vegetarian-friendly Charcuteria Francesca. After a pre-lunch cup of tea (and, ahem, a custard tart) at a nearby cafe, we settled down for what we had planned to be a glamorous final meal. Alas it turned out to be a buffet, and our attempt to order champagne brought us only sparkling wine, but it was nice, cheery, and tasty (and rather cheaper than our planned posh meal). Afterwards we wandered around town, and the rain chased us into a little art deco cafe where we devoured books (including a Lonely Planet for Toronto which we'd hunted down in the bookshops of Lisbon after lunch). Finally the sun came out and we emerged into daylight and headed for our favourite miradour and our favourite mohitos. We sipped our drinks, gazed out over the view, and decided we'd had an excellent holiday, despite it being rather random...