I am just enough of a cultural theory geek that I really could not resist this one. Sandy and I came down to Lisbon from Porto by train this morning and decided, for some forgotten reason, to walk from the train station through a very sunny and hot dock neighborhood to the main plaza and from there back to our hotel.
About half way back, by the main plaza (Praça do Comércio), we saw this invitingly shady arcade with a delightful-looking cafe, Martinho da Arcada (little Martin of the arcade), which a guide book tells me is the oldest cafe in Lisbon. So we gratefully plopped down for a drink.
Apologies to Walter Benjamin, whose epic arcades project was really about the early modern shopping arcades of Paris as a way of talking about the whole modernity project -- although if this is indeed the oldest cafe in Lisbon, under a still wonderfully shady and attractive arcade on a square old enough that the Inquisition used to burn people there, then it seems like early modernity had more staying power than the Inquisition, at least, thank heavens.
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