These hills are giving us a great work out!  Today we started out going northeast towards another park.  I was Easter mroning and there were’nt many people around until the late morning.  We passed through the Rossio square full of food-selling kiosks.  Some of it looked very good but we had a big plan for an early lunch so we passed.

Next we stopped at the Martim Moniz Square.  This place has some significance in bringing immigrant communities together, especially the Muslims and Jews of many years ago.  There is a big sculpture which looks like a menorah across the square.  Here is just a part of it.  

There were booths (mostly not open yet) selling all kinds of multi cultural stuff—hippie type foods and massages.  The neighborhood, as we walked on includes Jewish and Indian families.  The women dressed in saris and the smells in incense were a dead giveaway.

We arrived at the Campo di Martires Patria, a small greenspace up the hill.  There was a wonderful statue there surrounded by small marble notes of grattitude to Dr. Sousa Matins who apparently has a cult following after his work, with the poor,  in the late 18oo’s.  We sat on a bench and watched as people came to pray, light candles and bring flowers to the statue.  

I aslo did a bit of yoga on the flat soft grass.

Lunch!  We were excited about eating the “Cozida” traditional Portuguese lunch, at Cantina Ze Avillez, where we’d had drinks the day before.  The set up is like a buffet.  It starts with rice, beans, potatoes and a few other boiled veggies and procedes to a full array of pork cuts (I even tried pig snout) and one beef, which they called veal flank.  So, you put everything into your bowl and then pour this super porky clear broth over it.  We sat outside on the perfect day and had a bottle of perfect red wine suggested by our very cute waiter.  We were 2 happy campers!  But so full! This was my view from the restaurant seat:

After some down time we walked up to the Castel St. George, passing by the Roman theater ruins on the way up:

It was super crowded on the top so we didn’t stay long.  Back home early enough to watch 2 episodes of Sneaky Pete.

Favorite tiles of the day:

Tomorrow on to Porto.