This will be less a review than a love letter, but I needed someplace to stay for 30 days in Lisbon, & every other hostel I contacted had a two week maximum. These people were kind enough to take a chance on me for that long, & even so, you know, here you show up the first nite in the pouring rain, not sure what to expect from the full month you signed up for...
You go through this old green door & up the stairs, it's a building from deep in time, & your room is simple & sweet, just like the breakfast every morning, & week after week you fall into a rhythm with the hilarious kindhearted mother from Brazil who cleans out your room for instance, or the clever Canadian dude who does music, or the young Portuguese gal who watches MTV & loves poetry & ice cream, & her streetwise young friend who stops by to share food with her & also works the bar in the little concert hall downstairs.
Ahh, & the concert hall downstairs...so much jammin' gorgeous awesome music comes out of that place, & sometimes it's packed to the gills, & better times it's more relaxed & open, & if you're in the mood you can put on shoes & go down & rock out a little, but either way you'll be standing at the tiny balcony waiting for your food to cook some nite, & the lilting strains of a world class cover of "So Rude" will come drifting up through the alleyway, & you'll wonder how you got to be this classy.
I don't want to embarrass him, but there's a guy who works there with his wife, who looks herself like an icon of vintage Italian cinema...& it's the most touching thing, whether it's her, or one of several other employees who do the overnite shift, it doesn't matter what's going on or what kind of day you might be having, they are always, always sitting there in the front room in the dark, sometimes with a full nest of blankets gathered up around them, just there on hand to let you in.
I think it's a little on the miraculous side, but in truth not once in all those 30 days was there even a hint that I was being a hassle to them, no matter what time of the night I might show up. You can hardly imagine it. My last nite a woman I'd spoken with a few times, who lived in the States in the 80s, she was the one on duty. It was 3 or 4 in the morning, I had to go get a cab for a very early flight. but she was still up & around to serve me a last beer from the little fridge & take my key & ease me through the pain of saying a very tough goodbye.
But anyway this guy, we were watching Portuguese news around the TV one lunchtime, & it was the latest from D to the T, & then it was some shooting at a Black Friday whatever, & footage of all these Americans with shopping bags running through some retail landscape screaming, & I said to this guy, just half-jokingly like "Man, what must you think of us after all this, for real...?!"
He responded with some candid & heavy words that I'll never forget, & he talked about some of the indignities of dealing directly with American tourists besides, which one can only imagine. Listen, the neighborhood goes late & loud, & it's definitely not ideal for young children & all that, but there's still a level of poise & decorum that I would assert is very native to Portugal & also very easy for Americans to blow past in their blind appetite for diversion & recreation overseas. Which is me trying to put it as diplomatically as possible. Graffiti from a wall down the block: ENJOY // BEHAVE
So I would just say that this place gets 10 out of 5 stars for me, that they allowed my experience in Lisbon to be the life-changing period that it was, by so many simple steady acts of kindness & welcome, & I would ask that if you go there, that you treat the place & its people with your utmost goodness & respect. 'Alface' is the Portuguese word for lettuce, & the designation 'Lisboeta' for residents is typically supplanted by 'Alfacinha'. As I understand it the exact history is somewhat shrouded, but one theory is that in a time of war the city was barricaded by a hostile force & lettuce was the only way the trapped people could survive.
That quiet strength & dignity I found among them, & it was so beautiful, & I drank it deep. I could have walked away with a much more mediocre experience & still been pretty happy, but instead, & massively because of Alface Hostel, it was perfection. Thank you. CR read more
