Day Six – Meat Sweats at Midnight

Day Six – Meat Sweats at Midnight (January 1, 2011)

The day may have dawned brightly or otherwise, there was no way we were going to see it this morning. We didn’t actually turn out the lights until after 3am, and 9am was far too early to get up, so we slept till 11:30. Despite this extended lie-in, neither of us were feeling particularly healthy after leaving the hotel, so our first mission (as it is on so many mornings) was coffee and pastries at the first pasta shop that we could find (see Day Five for the explanation).

After much confusion and angst in buying our day pass for transit (they raised the rates for January 1st, we didn’t plan for this and didn’t have enough change, info-booth girl was informative but not particularly helpful as she couldn’t break a twenty) we found our bus and went into town for completion of our primary objective (coffee and sweets).

It seemed, much to our dismay, that much of Lisbon had also had a late night because almost nothing was open. We got off the bus at Restauradores and meandered all the way up to Baixo-Chaido without finding a single cafe or pasta shop open. Incredibly frustrating, especially given the enormity of the hangover-driven-caffeine-deprived headache I was working on.

We eventually, after much wandering down deserted streets and alleys (all of which were hilly), stopped at a tram shelter, for the consideration of options. As we waited, an incredibly full tram arrived, absolutely packed with people. Not on our list of things that we wanted to do. Oddly, however, there was an almost completely empty one just behind it, so we got on that one and got a seat.

We decided to take the tram as far as we could before getting kicked off, to see where it went and if anything there was open. We were on the number 28, which goes up the hill in Alfama, exactly where we were yesterday. For some reason, pretty much everything over there was open and bustling – I guess there are enough tourists in Lisbon to convince some people to open up, even on New Year’s day.

We stayed on the 28 until it terminated in Graca, a mostly residential neighbourhood past Alfama where not many tourist stray it seems. We did find a pasta shop, but it was closed for lunch apparently. We walked back towards Alfama, looking in every restaurant door on the way to see if we could find something that didn’t offer salt cod exclusively – not much luck to be honest. We ended up at an embarrassingly naff touristic cafe just below the entrance to the castello, where I had a hamburger and coke, much to my own horror.

Lunch finished, we went down the hill again (per the rule in Alfama), looking for photographic opportunities and possibly some wine. We stopped in a fermented grape superstore partway down to buy liquid supplies for the evening, and eventually ended up at the base of the Santa Justa elevator (the giant famous lift in the Baixa, which serves no apparent purpose as far as I can tell other than as a tourist draw). The queue was giant, so we walked around and up the hill to get on from the top (it connects to one of the back streets and is free if you have a day transit pass, no point in standing the queue for an hour).

The views were fantastic, and the whole thing was dramatically rickety and old, which was excellent – enough to give a little jolt of adrenaline without being actually unsafe. Twenty minutes or so taking very high photographs of the city, and we were parched, I can tell you.

We found an open street cafe on one of the pedestrian streets below (Rua Áurea) and ordered 1.5 litres of water and a litre of red sangria, to take the edge off. We had an excellent hour or so watching the locals and not so locals wander up and down the road – it seems that many get dressed up in the their finest for the walk. It was getting on, so we decided to head back to the hotel for a bit of a rest and to clean up some photos before dinner. The bottle of wine we’d bought came in handy for this.

Eventually, we decided that it was about time for dinner. We’d found a Brazilian rodízio place just down the road called “Costellao Gaúcho” which looked not too bad. We went in and were greeted by one of the best signs for a restaurant in a city where English is not the native language – almost no one spoke English at all.
Rodízio is a type of Brazilian meat restaurant where there tends to be a salad bar buffet, and the servers wander around with giant rotisserie skewers of meat, slicing off strips of whatever you want as they walk past. For a set fee, you can eat more or less as much as you want.

We had the cheapest option on the menu – the Mini Rodízio for only €12 each, which resulted in enough meat to choke a donkey. Full-on meat coma. We had a few different types of steak, Brazilian roast beef, a few types of pork, chicken, sausage, cooked pineapple, deep-fried bananas...absolutely fantastic and absurdly good value for money – all the meats were excellent and the buffet salad bar wasn’t too bad either.

After eating quite a bit more than our fill, we admitted defeat and paid the tab. We rolled back to the hotel, not even concerned that we are completely out of wine. I think both of us are regretting the sheer volume of the meat we ate....