Well, it ended up being quite a wild weekend. Bairro Alto is as crazy as ever, actually crazier. Friday began with me arriving at my cousin´s house and us going out to dinner with our old friend Sofia. Sofia is a wonderful friend of mine who runs a theater production company and has quite a lot of culture and insists that she speaks English with a French accent. She doesn´t. We went and had Italian food, which was all done by folks from India. Most of the Italian food in Portugal is made by Indians, and most of the Indian restaurants serve Italian food as well. You can order Samosas and Ravioli. There is a strange culinary synergy between Indian and Italian food in this country that I really can´t fathom. Then we went to Bairro Alto. I can´t even begin to describe the anarchy of this neighborhood - narrow streets hundreds of years old with clubs of every variety open all night, people of all ages on every corner and completely blocking the road in a lot places. There are old fado clubs for the above fifty crowd, folks of 80 years old and even older drinking wine traditional style. Then there are clubs for ravers, rock and roll clubs, tequila bars serving Mezcal from windows, house clubs. Everybody talking and drinking and going from club to club. All very peaceful as well. It was about forty degrees out and it was still like an all night festival for blocks and blocks. We went and heard Brazilian reggae at a club called Óka. Just two guys - one with an electric guitar and one with a conga bringing down the house singing original songs in Portuguese. The evening finally winded up around six in the morning stumbling back to my cousin´s house. Woke up at noon for breakfast in a beautiful garden at the Museu de Arte Antiga, very old-school with lots of weather worn statues and carefully trimmed bushes overlooking the River Tejo. Quite a lovely place and a great way to wake up. Then it was off with my mother and her old friend Zé who I have known since I was a boy. We went to Cabo de Roca, the westernmost point in Europe, really quite impressive with huge cliffs and beatiful mountains falling into the sea. Then it was up the mountains into Sintra where the royal families of Portugal lived. It´s a fantastic old village with Moorish architecture and even a 1200 year old Moorish castle on a hilltop. Wandered around this very ancient and magical place for a while, looking for someone who could tell me where the Celtic ruins were. Everybody knew that they existed but nobody could tell me where, oh well - I will find them. After a good night´s sleep we celebrated my Grandfather´s 84th birthday and as we were driving back from the restaurant it started snowing. This has not happened in Lisboa for over fifty years. So much for a nice warm Meditarranean vacation. Most Portuguese have never seen snow fall so it was quite the scene. Everybody all over the country learning how to make snowballs and snowmen and all of the things that they had seen people do in the snow in movies. Tomorrow morning I´m heading off to the south of Portugal to a lovely little town called Tavira. It´s been occupied since the Phoenician times and has a lovely old roman footbridge that is still in use as well as lot´s of islands that are completely empty with crystal clear waters and beautiful windswept sand dunes stretching off as far as the eyes can see.
´til next time,
Luke