June 12, 2009:
While in Lisbon we got to celebrate the city’s Feast of St. Anthony holiday. The evening kicked off with a parade starting at 9pm along Avenue Liberade. The parade is actually a contest among the neighborhoods for the best song and dance routines. I was impressed by the elaborate costumes! We ended up standing a ways away from the bleachers, so it was difficult to see the dance routines, and we finally gave up and moved on to the food part of the festivities.
We headed up the windy stone streets into the old town area in search of grilled sardines.
After weaving through massive crowds of people we arrived at the top of a hill where a huge crowd of people had gathered to enjoy fresh grilled sardines and a few drinks! We each had a grilled sardine sandwich and sangria. There is a technique to pulling out the spine and larger bones before eating the sardines, but we still ended up with lots of little bones stuck between our teeth :D. The fresh grilled sardines are much better than the canned kind! George and I also tried sandwiches with a type of traditional Portuguese sausage, which were tasty, as well. As we headed home around 1am crowds of people were still showing up for the street party.