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| Who is Pessoa now ? |
Lisbon is, like Prague, a city where I could easily live. It has charm, culture, it is close to a mythical river, it is very animated, vibrant and even bookish.
I travelled
several times to the Portugese capital and now again, when touring the country during my summer holiday, it was
an obligatory stop.
A few years ago, I noticed at the Praça do Commércio, a terrace
under the spacious arcades, with cool stone floors, hidden in the deep shade and
cooled by the swirl of the wind coming from the mouth of the Tagus river. It
stands in stark contrast with the more fancy terraces along the east and west
side of the grand plaza.
The fact
that it was older locals sitting at the tables, and not tourists, meant that
the quality of the food and the prices were probalbly more than acceptable and
I made, over the years, Restaurante
Martinho Da Arcada my traditional resting place.
I never
bothered to go inside the restaurant.
Sitting at
one of the tables last week, having a small snack and a large drink, I
stretched out and looked from a safe distance at the stream of tourists following
each other behind flag- poled guides.
Enjoying
the relaxing place and congratulating myself on my good choice, I started looking
around and noticed for the first time, beside the name of the place painted
above the green framed glass doors, the year that the restaurant was
established : 1782.
It was in fact the oldest restaurant of Lisbon.
As I stood
up to make a picture of the door, one of the waiters beckoned me inside and
brought me to a table in the back of the restaurant. Proudly he explained to me
that it used to be the table of Mister Fernando Pessoa. They kept the table
dressed exactly how it had been when Pessoa was immortalized in a picture,
which hang above the table.
The place,
I was told, was regularly frequented by the likes of Manoel de Oliveira, Júlio
Pomar, José Saramago and Eduardo Lourenço.
I am an
absolute sucker for such literary tourist trivia. Pessoa does for Lisbon what
Joyce did for Dublin and Kafka for Prague. Without knowing my fascination for
such things the waiter insisted that I sat at the exact place of the famous
poet and took my picture.
I sealed the moment with a huge smile and a golden tip.
http://www.martinhodaarcada.pt
