Albuquerque to Chicago….to Madrid…finally Lisboa!  We got in on Friday morning and checked into the Yes! Lisbon hostel.  Their theme colors are yellow and black.  That means yellow and black rooms, signs and wristbands.   The wristbands replace keys.  It lets you into the main door, the room and opens the lockers under our bunks.

Our first real activity after eating lunch was a ride up a funicular to a viewpoint of the city.

Later in the evening, we went to the Alfama neighborhood near to our hostel.   The streets over there are tiny and they wind up and down through the neighborhood.  First, we went to a bar called Supercalafragilistic.  The signature drink (namesake of the bar too) was champagne with limonata.  I didn’t try that because I accidentally ordered a liter of wine!  It was cheap (6 euros) but I think that’s more than a regular bottle. The bar itself was intimate and small, with lamps on the tables and great music going in the background.  Our waitress was nice in a genuine kind of way that’s not common in restaurants, especially near tourist areas.  The bar seemed new and a little unknown, but it was great.  There were some local folks eating dinner in another room closer to the kitchen.  I liked the view of the street from the front room.

Our real aim for the evening was to go to a fado show.  That’s a traditional type of Portuguese music that we heard would be sung by locals in the bar we were headed for later.  The show was fantastic.  A small, narrow bar with wooden tables and a long bar running along one side.  The fado players and singers squeezed into a space between the bathrooms and the end of the bar. There were several sets of songs and some of the people around us even joined in on the chorus (at least that’s what it sounded like to me!).  The music was amazing and exactly the type of show we were looking for – not something over the top for tourists.  By the time we headed out at midnight, the bar was really starting to fill up but were were exhausted from the long trip over and needed to get ready for another full day!

–Sarah