A small cafe bar in Mouraria, Lisbon, Portugal

We are back in Lisbon now. We arrived at our hotel too early to check in so we decided to look for somewhere to have some lunch. This is our 4th visit to Lisbon. We love this city. Usually we head to the same restaurant to have grilled sardines for lunch (please see my earlier blog - Grilled sardines in Lisbon)  but we decided to try a different place today.

We were walking from Praca da Figueira toward Tejo River when we saw a sign of a restaurant that says the best sardines in Lisbon.  Interesting....

So we turned left to follow the sign but I became distracted by a narrow staircase with murals and graffittis up the hill leading to the castle in the old Lisbon neighbourhood.

There are many alleys and unique staircases around the old neighbourhood in Lisbon (a bit like Edinburgh's old town ...?) so we decided to go up and see where this would lead us to ...

Doing laundry too ....

The area is called Mouraria, which in the 19th century used to be known for its prostitutes, seedy tascas and fado (Portuguese songs) houses according to a guidebook, now with some bars and restaurants with walking tours about fado.

As we were walking by we found a small rather quirky cafe bar (?) so we decided to stop by to have a glass of vinho verde (local green wine ... but colour is white, just mean new or fresh).

A local guide of walking tour group explaining about Mouraria district 

 A glass of vinho verde only 2.5 euro!! That's like £2ish!! Why not, let's chill here....

Inside is like someone's lounge cum a bit of small antique shop cum coffee shop....

we thought about sitting inside and then changed our mind. It was such a nice sunny day with lovely breeze, we decided to sit outside.

Whilst we were relaxing and enjoying our wine, there was a guy who was playing the guitar to provide us background music adding some ambience. He was rather good...

You think that being surrounded by graffiti's and murals may make you feel strange, but not here.... you got to be here to understand it.  It's actually rather relaxing and the place has its own unique charm of typical Lisbon old neighbourhood.

We enjoyed our glass so much that we went back again after lunch for more glasses of wine! We actually stayed on till after 4pm and realised that we should be going and go back to our hotel as by then our room should be ready.

I can only see Cafetaria a Mouraria at the entrance so I assume that's the name of this place but when I tried to search on TripAdvisor, I could not find it.  Anyway, the cafe bar is by Sao Cristovao church in Mouraria district.

By the time we were leaving, the place was starting to get busier. I can imagine that this place would get very busy at night or weekends with young people and tourists.  A guy came and was also setting up his stall selling Lisbon pictures to tourists.

 

I am sure this is not going to be our first and last visit to this place.  Wine is good, service is good, background music by the guitar is good (and it's not expensive neither!). They also do some cheese platter and sandwiches etc if we may fancy having something light instead of fish for lunch...

Anyway, we really enjoyed our wine here .... I must also need to talk about our lunch next  ...

That's al forks!


p.s.   We went back to this place a week later to spend our last free day in Lisbon and now found out what this place is called.  It's called Boutique Taberna!