Journal transcript
Saturday 4th June, 2005.
Part A - Yesterday evening (June 3rd)
Back to the edge of the Alfama yesterday evening, to the restaurant we
had spotted in the afternoon which was offering Fado from 8.30 pm.
Hearing some Fado in its home city was one of the reasons for
travelling to Lisbon, but we are both still feeling tired from the virus
that hit us during the last couple of weeks, so felt that an earlier
start than those beginning at around 10 pm (the usual time for the music
to begin, apparently) would suit us more right now. By the time we
arrived at 8.45, the first "set" was already finished.
If I had been writing this yesterday evening, I would probably have written
only about the wonderful time we had....and indeed we did. The soulful sound
of Fado in the heat of the evening just wrenches the heart out of me.
But it was at a price. I think they must have seen the neon sign
flashing "Tourist" on both our foreheads! I give them credit, though,
for lifting quite so much money from us quite so easily - our own
gullible fault, not theirs!
The singing was full of raw atmosphere from
a fairly elderly woman, an even more elderly gentleman who eased his way
to the side of the two guitarists by means of crutches, only to sing in
a gentle but very sweet voice, a man in his forties and a younger one in
his mid twenties.
We dined on spit roast squid and prawns, after the automatically-provided proscuitto ham and cheese (which is not inexpensive, and is all discreetly added to
the bill, of course). The wine flowed freely, so much so that Alec became ebulliently full of praise and generosity - we ended up buying all three of their CD's - which magically appeared towards the end of the evening - plus buying "drinks for the guitarists" who Alec expansively felt were being left out of the praise. They (not being fools) chose triple brandies each - ahem, so that by the time we left, we had been relieved
of around 170 Euros, or 120 UK pounds. ($200.00?). As we had dined royally on five courses the night before for 65 Euros, profligacy rather than gastronomy seemed to be the order of the evening for our two course meal (plus rather a lot of wine)..... but it was worth every penny of it to see Alec really letting his hair down!
Most irritatingly, they did not accept any credit cards (unlike
virtually every other restaurant that we visited, big or small) - so
paying for the meal meant cutting into quit a large chunk of disposable
cash. Never mind - ATM's on every corner, so it was no problem to fill
up on the readies once again.
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