Rooftops and fado

 In the words of a popular fado, it's the bairro mais alto do sonho, the highest quarter of dreams. From the narrow cobbled streets of the Bairro Alto you can look up to slices of blue sky 

and over the rooftops of Lisbon to the river on one side

view from the terrace in the Bairro Alto hotel

and the castle on the opposite hill.

view from Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcantara

You can drive up here, though good luck manoeuvring a car through the narrow alleys once you get here.

(I learned to drive as a 19 year old in this city and credit the experience with giving me nerves of steel behind the wheel). 

Or you can do it as we did -  the old-fashioned and more fun way - via a wood-panelled and brass interior-ed funicular. 

Elevador da Gloria

Look up at the windows here and there's always life going on

Girl drying her hair over the balcony

Student playing guitar for friends. I snapped these with my phone from where we sat at a restaurant table across the street!

Lunch at this place at the top of a steep alleyway in the Bairro was a mandatory ritual, as I had come here so often many years ago with my father on his lunch breaks from the office ...

Give me queijo fresco, azeitonas and pão caseiro with a glass of vinho verde and I'm all okay with life

Later at night in the Bairro Alto we had arroz de marisco (seafood rice) and listened, of course, to fado, the music invented here in the oldest, poorest quarters of the city.  

Lisbon, April 2014