This is from the book I just wrote about walking the Portuguese route in February from Lisbon.
The Poets Inn boasts the best location of any hostel in the city of Lisbon, surrounded by small art galleries, alternative designer décor shops, nightclubs, obscure concert venues, and trendy restaurants where customers can be found chain-smoking at the outside tables. I took the subway from the Lisbon Airport, switching from the red line to the green line and exiting from the metro underground at the Largo do Chiado exit. I walked in the wrong direction for two blocks before asking a Lisbon policeman for directions: he pointed me back in the direction from which I had come, toward A Brasileira, or the “Brazilian Lady Café.” Later, I was to learn that Café A Brasileira was one of the oldest and most famous cafés in Lisbon. A native of Brazil, Adriano Telles opened his shop in 1905 in order to sell “genuine Brazilian coffee,” which was an underappreciated luxury at the time. Telles offered a free cup of strong espresso-like coffee called a “bica” to any customer buying a kilo of ground beans. In time, the café became a nexus for intellectuals, poets, writers, and academics. As I approached the café, I could see the bronzed figure of the famous Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa among the outdoor tables in front of A Brasileira’s iconic façade. The sculpture includes a bronzed table and chair as well as Pessoa sitting in his usual spot where he was known to drink absinthe as he wrote. Both the theater and the school of fine arts (Faculdade de Belas-Artes) are nearby, giving the trendy area a decidedly upbeat, youthful, and bohemian flavor.
The Poets Inn takes up the fourth and fifth floors of the same building that houses Café A Brasileira on the ground floor. There are shared accommodations in small dorm rooms (two, four, and six people to a room) running sixteen to twenty euros. However, on the fourth floor there are pension-style rooms with shared baths where I took a private room for forty euros. I had discovered on my Camino Francés that I could not get a good night’s sleep in a dorm room with other people. At my age, a full night’s sleep is pretty much a requirement after a day of walking twenty kilometers. After checking in, I was given a little tour around the hostel, which had photos and paintings and posters of famous writers hanging everywhere. I liked the literary theme and the feeling that I had just become a member of a club.
Terence Callery
Maybe the other way around .
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