The Little Mountain Gettaway - In Squares

Girl Reads // How to be a Parisian

This week my sweet other half gave me a book he quickly leaved through in a bookstore, before firmly deciding that it represented most of my feminine beliefs and habits. 

A guide filled with french wisdom and humour on how to be a strong woman, without ever losing your femininity (or your snobbism, for that matter), including advice such as How to Make Him Think You Have a Lover and How to Own Your Bad Habits. 

A few of the golden advice: 

¬ Don’t be afraid of aging.

¬ Wear a black bra under your white blouse, like two notes on a sheet of music. 

¬ One must live with the opposite sex, not against them. Except when making love. 

¬ Go to the theatre, to museums, and to concerts as often as possible: it gives you a healthy glow. 

¬ Be aware of your qualities and your faults. Cultivate them in private but don’t obsess.

¬ Take a deep breath, and keep it simple. 

¬ Never give too much away. When it comes to revealing herself, she follow’s one golden rule: less is definitely more. 

¬ Leave a party when it’s in full swing. (Even your own) 

¬ Solitude can be a luxury. 

¬ Don’t follow trends. 

¬ Be friends with people of different generations. (Both young and old, but especially the old.) 

¬ Embrace your inner snob! 

P o r t u g a l // C h i a d o + S i n t r a

Pictures taken over the holiday with a Nikon EM 35mm.

Trip to Porto (Day ONE. Part TWO)

Another thing about Porto (and another reason I simply adore the city) is how it has not only kept the old habits, the old shops, the old buildings, etc, but it has given a modern twist to them as well. 

For instance, this old bookstore, which has been turned into a coffee/tea shop, still selling books, has kept the facade, the signs inside and outside the store and even some of the objects that belonged to the original bookstore.

 Then we found this huge and beautiful shop called A Vida Portuguesa, which sells really old portuguese brands - from soaps, to notebooks, to liquor, to pencils, to shaving creams, to whatever you can think of - while maintaining the original, beautiful and even naive branding and packaging style.

 Their mission is to "create an inventory of brands that survived the passage of time, to highlight the quality of Portuguese manufacture and to showcase Portugal in a surprising light".

These are "products that have been passed down from generation to generation and are still in our hearts today"!

Trip to Porto (Day ONE. Part ONE)

Another weekend, another chance to be a dorky tourist in a city. This time, we hopped on the 8pm train to Porto (also known as Oporto, don't ask why).

We rented a studio apartment for the weekend. Two friends who decided to buy, re-model and rent out a few apartments for tourists. They were super nice, and one of them gave us a lift from the station to our studio. But first, he was kind enough to show us a bit of the city. Naturally, we forgot almost everything he had said the night before and got lost a couple of times... In spite of the extremely acute sense of orientation we both possess. 

Even though we had been to a Rolling Stones concert the night before and woke up super early the next day to work (please read: we were extremely exhausted), we decided to enjoy the night and use that time to start getting acquainted with the city. 

We headed towards the center and, along the way, we found this little street called Rua do Almada, with tiny little shops and bars and cafés. Oh, it was just adorable. We couldn't resist and just had to hop into one and take a look. For some reason, instead of building more floors above, many of these buildings have underground areas, so most bars are in the ground floor and a sort of basement. The one we entered was so cool. It had this retro feel to it and the walls had pick-up lines written on them, perhaps to help those who, after a long week, go in completely uninspired. 

On Saturday, we headed straight into town. Porto is unbelievably charming during the day. Something about the way the light hits the buildings, how different in colour they are, the people who spend time by their window, watching people walking by...

Then again, the really cute cafés along the way. Like this one, in Rua do Almada:

'I'd rather have wine, than be in bad company.' 

At least two things are a must-try in Porto. 

The famous port wine. And a francesinha, which means "little frenchie". Seeing as I have recently gone vegetarian and that a typical francesinha normally contains a lot of meat, I was sad that I wouldn't be able to try one. 

But, as we walked down the street, this rustic, tavern like restaurant caught my eye. I went to look at the menu and (fireworks!!) - they had a vegetarian francesinha! I have a feeling that I emotionally blackmailed my partner in crime into going inside, but I bet he doesn't regret it one bit. We ended up sharing one and not only was it delicious, but the couple who owned the restaurant were really nice and sweet to us. 

Ah, got to love raw instincts... 

Above: the infamous vegetarian francesinha!

Weekend in Squares ( II )

Weekend in Squares ( I )

  I haven't been in the blogosphere very much lately. With a special visitor in town, I've been trying to keep my hands off technology as much as possible, and focus more on the short-term company I won't have around for much longer.

  Last Sunday we took a stroll around Lisbon and pretended, once again, to be tourists for a day - this time speaking English and all.

Souvenirs of a Tiny Bookshop

Two Saturdays ago, at some point during this rainy gloomy day, we found a charming old bookstore in Chiado. The shop was tiny (the space was the size of a small room) and when we walked inside, only two people were there: the owner and another customer. As we slowly entered, we found a mad universe of books everywhere - from the shelves, to the floor, and even stacks of books in chairs. 

I headed to the end of that little room, where I found a basket with some old postcards. Let me explain why this was my first destination. 

I've always liked postcards. Sending them, receiving them, writing them... Unfortunately, given the generation I was born in, postcards give me a sort of melancholic nostalgia of a tradition I know I will never fully experience. 

Sure, every now and then I might send or receive a postcard in the mail, but it's obviously not the same. Recently, though, I've come to find a deeper interest in other people's postcards. People I have never met, will never meet, and of whom I have no information about. Maybe they're alive, maybe they're dead. Maybe they were abducted by extraterrestrials. What it all comes down to, and what I find fascinating, is that in these postcards I get a glimpse of a story, a piece of someone's life, of what one person had to say to another... (Is this hobby of mine some sort of "new age voyeurism"?, I wonder.)

I was in between a groupie's postcard to a musician and a proud grandmother's postcard to her grand daughter (who had just passed her exams), when the owner of the shop started speaking to us.

As he showed us his collection of Black Magic books, Music books and History books, we talked for ages. 

One of the things we learned about this man, was the fact that he almost married a frenchwoman (apparently an heiress of Perrier water family), but ended up marrying a portuguese woman. His french fiancée could not leave Paris behind and he could not leave Lisbon. "It's okay. She was more of an aperitif", said the other customer, a 92-year-old book collector. 

As the men continued talking, I found two old 1940s almanacs that ended up coming home with me. Inside each one of them was a world filled with poems, short stories, quotes, articles about absolutely every subject you can imagine, jokes, puzzles and a calendar. 

Take a look: