LX Factory: The Ler Bookstore.
Sunday, the day to visit LX Factory, described in various places as Lisbon's happening place.
Woke up pretty late, headed out of the apartment around 11. Walked to Praca de Figueira, where spent a few minutes waiting for the 15E bus to arrive. Boarded the bus, got seats. The bus took some time to load and then to get going, but once past the Praca da Commercia, it was pretty fast. We got off in Alcantara, where, right under the big bridge across Tejo the LX factory is located.
The 15E bus at the Carvalio stop in Alcantara.
Walked towards the bridge, found the entrance to the LX factory compound - a small arch in a wall.
The portal to LX Factory.
The LX factory is basically a bunch of old industrial buildings repurposed for shops, some co-working space, restaurants and other hipster activities. On Sundays it also serves as a location for flea market, which actually is just an arts-and-crafts market. Today it featured several vintage clothing dealers, some handmade jewelry, and ceramics, etc... Fortunately, none of the mass-produced souvenirs. Unfortunately, not much to buy. I liked some jewelry, but it was not Olga's style. I did buy one azulejo from a booth representing a studio that does azulejo work around Lisbon.
The open air market part of the LX Factory.
After circling around the open air market a couple of times, I went back to the main LX Factory drag, which features several crafts stores, a bunch of restaurants and bars and the jewel of the place - the Ler Bookstore (and the Jazz music store inside it).
The Ler bookstore: outside.
Inside, the bookstore has a high ceiling, and a wall of books going bottom to top. There is a second floor that gives access to the top part of the wall of books, has some old machinery in the middle, and hosts the jazz record store.
Ler bookstore: view of the second floor. Note the weird machinery on the left.
The Jazzmessenger record store on the second floor of the bookshop.
The wall of books.
Spent some time in the store, while the rest of the party settled in one of the factory's many restaurants for a few cups of wine and beer. I did not have too much time to explore the end of the factory space, choosing instead to turn back and join them.
MatchMama - an asian fusion restaurant with a really nice garden-like patio right under the bridge.
Found everyone at MatchMama - an Asian fusion restaurant not far from the entrance to the LX factory compound. It is tucked almost right under the bridge, and has a nice garden-like outside space where Olga, Yuri and Tatiana were sitting. I joined them and ordered a Moscow Mule, which in Portugal apparently comes with a twist (see alcohol section below).
We spent a total of about an hour at MatchMama, drinking and enjoying the day.
Olga at the patio.
Eventually, we paid, and left the LX factory compound. We walked the two blocks to Largo do Carvalio, where the bus/tram stops are. Olga and Tatiana spent about 40 mins shopping at the Humana store and another store located there. Yuri and I chilled on a bench.
A decision was made to visit an Eastern European food store located off of Arroios metro station. As a result, we decided to call an Uber. The car came quickly, picked us up, and after a bit of circling around Alcantara, took the road north, parallel to the big bridge road, and curving around the main part of Lisbon, passing under the aqueduct, and past the Universidade Novo de Lisboa (where my 2017 RE Conference took place), Praca da Espania, and Avenidas Novas, going through a long tunnel, before coming out at Avenida Alma Reis, passing Alameda, and dropping us off right outside the Arroios station (around the corner) in front the store, which wound up being open. After purchasing some food there, we walked the Arroios neighborhood a bit, eventually getting back to Av. Alma Reis, and taking it to Intendente and our place.
After spending about 30 mins at home unpacking and resting, Olga, Tanya and I went out. We stopped at the Josephine Cafe right next door to our apartment, and had lunch there.
I am studying the menu at Josephnine's.
Less of a restaurant, and more of a watering hole, the menu was limited. We stopped because one of their few main dishes was a tagine of legumes, and Olga decided that she wanted a tagine. Tanya had their one salad (salad Josephine), while I ordered some appetizers, and a burger.
My burger at Josephine.
Also had a couple of Sagres lagers. Olga liked her tagine. The burger was good as well - as far as burgers go.
Following lunch, we headed out towards the center, stopping for a bit at the shoe store between Martim Moniz and Praca Figueira, then walking through some back streets behind Praca Figuera, until we hit Lisbon's oldest (according to the plaque) ginjinha watering hole, where I got a cup of ginja and drank it right next to the sign.
Drinking up the ginja.
Following this, we walked past the Restoradores to Avenida da Libertade. On the east side, we spent some time watching people dance at a spontaneous dance stop playing some Portuguese-influenced dance music.
We then moved to the west side of the avenue, where the entire length of the avenue was filled with open-air market booths - significantly larger number than at the LX factory (!). Most of the booths were selling souvenirs of different kind, but there were also plenty of jewelry booths, and - more importantly - there were several booths selling antiques, and one table selling coins and stamps. I bought some stamps as a souvenir (and some - as a present), as well as a cachet of old Portuguese coins (escudos and centavos, with the oldest being from 1950s and the newest - from 1990s - just before the Eurozone kicked in). A nice excursion into the coins (I'll do a separate post later, once I have a chance to take some individual pictures of the coins I got) of Portugal in the second half of the 20th century, showing, among other things, the levels of inflation that Portugal had - the 1 escudo coin from 1960s is a hefty piece of coinage, big, heavy, etc... The 1 escudo coin from 1990s is smaller than a US penny, and is made of a much cheaper alloy than the 1960s coin. Also, mildly interesting to me - Portugal had a coin for 2.5 escudos for quite a while (I have two or three versions of the coin in my small collection).
As 7:30pm was approaching and the booths were closing, we sat at the northernmost Banana cafe on the Avenida for some coffee. Following this, we crossed Avenida and took a route consisting of Rua Alexandre Herculiano -> Rua do Conde de Redondo -> Rua Joaquim Bonifacio -> Rua Jacinto Marta -> Rua dos Anjos -> home. This was, in its entirety, a walk around the part of Lisbon we've not been to (last year we walked from Arroios to Marques de Pombal and passed a block or two to the north, but without changing the altitude much). This walk involved quite a bit of gradual altitude change. While the intent was to avoid walking through the top of the hill between the Avenida and Av. Alma Reis, our route involved walking surprisingly wide (I thought most of the streets in that neighborhood would be purely residential, but in fact, only Rua dos Anjos was like that), full of commerce (stores, restaurants) and traffic (mostly, cars, although some people too) streets. We were not at the very top (some cross streets would have taken us higher), but we definitely climbed quite a bit of the hill in the first half of the route, hitting the downslope in the middle of Rua Jacinto Marta and eventually reaching the Av. Alma Reis level when we got to Rua do Anjos which runs adjacent. A nice walk through a cool neighborhood. As a followup, I looked at the map and realized that the wedge between the Avenida and Av. Alma Reis contains - in addition to the Military Academi which we passed by, at least six different hospitals - the largest density of healthcare establishments in Lisbon.
Got home around 8:30, pretty much called it a day.
Steps. 19,245 steps according to the phone. The watch had me at around 18,000, I think.
Alcohol. A few things today.
1. MatchMama's Moscow Mule with lime foam. Not what I expected. Served in a mug as it should be, it had two major differences from the Moscow Mules I expect. One is good - the foam, which was the highlight of the drink and absolutely delicious. I asked for Passion fruit foam, they were out, I told the waitress to surprise me, and presumably got that "vanilla" or "stock" version with the lime foam. Nevertheless, that foam was the highlight of the drink. The second difference was the lack of any recognizable ginger beer - especially the fizz associated with any self-respecting ginger beer. So, the cocktail was flat. not fizz at all. I could not taste much ginger there either - I suspect they had it, but the lime flavor was kinda crushing everything else. Overall verdict: w/o the foam - C-, with the foam - a B, simply because the foam was awesome.
Moscow Mule with Lime Foam.
2. Sagres lager. I've had it before (last year). It's very agreeable - one can drink a lot of it on the spot (I had two in a row, could have easily continued).
3. Ginjinha Espinhera. A return to a place - I had ginja there last year as well. I'll do a separate post comparing Lisbon-style ginja (including the service) to Obidos-style ginja. For today, suffice to say that I kinda like the taste of Obidos version of the liquor more, but I very much prefer the Lisbon experience of drinking it. More details later, but generally speaking, an enjoyable experience.
Next. Finally... The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum.
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