Lisbon, 21.12.2024: Ancient Grottos and Pickpocket Warnings

Alfama scene

We continue to find touring daunting. As we did yesterday, we slept this morning until 9 A.M. and then got up, still feeling somewhat jet-lagged. I got wise and put earplugs into my ears last night, and had a more restful evening that I had the previous evening, though even so, at 2 A.M., some absolutely gormless lout slammed a door so loudly near us that the floor in our room shimmied in response.

Once we’d gotten ourselves up and dressed, we walked once again to the nice small café near the hotel, Docelândia, and had breakfast there again — another steak sandwich for Steve, an egg sandwich for me today in lieu of the ham and cheese I had yesterday. The coffee is good, though the Portuguese custom seems not to be to put milk into coffee sufficient enough to tame the brawn of the dark coffee, and the milk tastes as if it’s condensed milk. We eschewed today the pastel de nata we had with breakfast yesterday. The orange juice is fresh-squeezed and comes in a nice tall glass.

After we’d eaten and returned to our hotel room to prepare for our morning touring, we walked to the Marquês de Pombal metro station and took the subway to the Santa Apolónia stop in the Alfama. I had read in Rick Steves’ guidebook about a flea market, Feira da Ladra in the Campo de Santa Clara, which is open on Saturdays.

Alfama scene

Finding the flea market proved to be a challenge. The guidebook contains no directions about how to reach it, and the map in the guidebook does not show the location of Campo de Santa Clara. We did find it on Google maps, but instructions for reaching it — by walking — from Santa Apolónia were murky. As we set out along Avenida Infante Dom Henrique, hoping we were heading in the right direction and looking for a crossing point for the busy and wide avenue, we stopped at a stoplight where we saw we could cross, and asked a young man waiting to cross the street how to find Campo de Santa Clara. He spoke very good English (as Steve noted, he had a uniform on that may have meant he works in a nearby hotel) and put us on the right track, told us we were walking the wrong way on the wrong side of Dom Henrique.

Alfama scene

We followed his directions and walked along the avenue to a point where we were unclear about the next turn, and saw a young woman setting up tables at an outside café. We asked her for directions, and she very helpfully provided them, telling us as we set off from there to watch out for the many pickpockets in the area. I had already wondered about this, since a woman was right behind us as we headed out of the Santa Apolónia station, so close she was almost touching me, and I told myself she was likely looking for a way to pick my pocket.

Colorful bench in front of Alfama shop

From that point, from the café with the young woman working in front of it, we turned uphill and began climbing steep hills with winding sidewalks and narrow laneways. There were fascinating views up streets running from the streets we were walking on, very narrow streets with washing hanging over them from windows on either side of the street. 

We made one more stop to ask for further directions — still confused, everything still murky and our destination elusive. We asked directions from a very engaging man standing in front of a restaurant he owned, Gruta do Paraiso at R. do Paraiso 62. With his help, we finally found the market, winded and sweaty as we were from the long uphill climb, and began walking through it.

Feira da Ladra, Campo de Santa Clara

Feira da Ladra, Campo de Santa Clara

Feira da Ladra, Campo de Santa Clara

What was offered for sale at most of the tables was far more in the realm of tawdry tat than alluring knick-knack. It was also overpriced. The market was teeming with shoppers and had a slightly ominous feel, since it was never clear whether someone walking right behind us was a fellow shopper or someone eyeing us as possible game to poach for a robbery. 

We did buy four azulejos tiles, blue with some yellow coloring, interconnecting tiles in a long row that show an angel standing on a flowery pedestal. I doubt seriously they’re high art, but they appealed to me as a souvenir of our time in Lisbon, so I proposed that we spring for them at what seemed the high price of €40 for the lot. 

Mercado de Santa Clara, Campo de Santa Clara

Mercado de Santa Clara, Campo de Santa Clara

Mercado de Santa Clara, Campo de Santa Clara

Mercado de Santa Clara, Campo de Santa Clara

After having purchased our tiles, we spotted a building in the center of the flea market called Mercado de Santa Clara and went inside. What we found was a very appealing airy and well-lit large open room with more tables offering things for sale, but in this case, things worth buying, good handcrafts, home-baked cakes and pastries, etc. At a table featuring artwork of a young Singaporean woman named Sara Ko, we stopped and looked and bought a collection of postcards with her botanicals on them, and a larger reproduction of one of her botanicals. We spent time talking to her and found her really interesting and nice. She also spoke excellent non-accented very colloquial English.

After having made the round of the large room, we decided we were flea-marketed=out, and that we should head back downhill and stop at the Gruta do Paraiso place whose owner had been so helpful to us, stop to thank him for his assistance and sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee. By this point, it was past noon, and when we stopped and ordered coffee, he suggested we might want to look at the daily special he was offering and have a full meal.

Soup, wine, bread, olives, Gruta do Paraiso restaurant at R. do Paraiso 62

Pork with clams, french fries, rice, salad, Gruta do Paraiso restaurant at R. do Paraiso 62

He then prevailed on us to order a meal, though I can’t say I was very hungry, and we were very glad we did so. It was excellent, a vegetable soup with cabbage and shredded carrots in a broth that may have contained puréed lentils and potatoes, cubes of pork cooked with clams in a sauce that may have had a bit of cumin flavoring served with rice, french fries, and a good mixed salad, with a big pitcher of red wine on the table, a basket of bread, and a bowl of olives. As we ate, both the restaurant owner and his wife (or so we took her to be) came to the table a number of times and talked to us.

Crème brûlée, Gruta do Paraiso restaurant at R. do Paraiso 62

We learned from those conversations that they were Nepalese and have a son studying at University of Texas. Another young man we took to be their son was assisting them in running the place and, it seemed, doing much of the cooking, and he was extraordinarily nice. The lavish meal, which we couldn’t eat fully, so that we asked for a container to take leftovers back with us, ended with a delicious serving of crème brûlée. 

After we had eaten, the restaurant owner, whose name may be Ramji Poudel — we’re guessing that from his email address, which he wrote on a business card and gave to us — wanted to take photos with us standing in front of the restaurant, and he asked his son to snap them. A clownish man eating inside the restaurant insisted on photo-bombing some of these and put his arms over Mr. Poudel’s shoulders. We were the only non-locals in the restaurant, a sign that it’s a local, valued institution offering good food at reasonable prices. Our entire meal, with coffee thrown into the daily menu offering, came to just over €20, an amazing price. 

Gruta do Paraiso restaurant at R. do Paraiso 62

Interior of Gruta do Paraiso restaurant at R. do Paraiso 62

Grotto in Gruta do Paraiso restaurant at R. do Paraiso 62

The restaurant itself is wonderful inside, light, full of air from the street, with a big marble archway over part of the ceiling, an archway that must date far back in time. The back room of the restaurant features the grotto for which the place is named, again, a feature that we think dates to times very long ago. The whole experience at the Gruta do Paraiso could not have been more pleasant.

Then, more tired than we had expected to be and not interested in touring more of the Alfama today, we took the metro back, took long naps, and walked several blocks from the hotel to a small convenience store where we got a fresh cheese that looks like the fresh Portuguese cheese we use to buy in Toronto and liked so much, several rolls, some raspberries, blueberries, grapes, apples, oranges, and pears, and some breadsticks with sesame seeds in them (and, of course, chocolates to finish our meal!). We then went to the wine shop next door and bought a bottle of red wine from the Douro region and are sipping that now as we think about eating some of the cheese and bread and fruit for our evening meal.