Feira da ladra

Even though I have my very own rise and shine rooster, it took me awhile to get up Saturday morning, crawling from the bed to the couch. We had thought it through the night before: wake up early and do as much things as possible on the weekend.

But, Saturday mornings in Lisbon always mean one thing: a walk to the Feira da Ladra. You can find the most amazing things amongst other people's junk!

And negotiating the prices is always fun:

- how much?

- it’s 15€
- I’ll pay you 8€

- 8€? (#%&*... ???) ok, take it!

I have a list of stuff I always look for: scarves, a sugar bowl, old photo albums, picture frames, linens, tin cans, vintage cameras, film, and anything nice that might catch my eye.

This Saturday I bought a beautiful hand embroidered handkerchief from Madeira and a tin can just like the one my mom puts all her buttons in. It now holds walnuts and almonds.

Since I’m always on the lookout for old photo albums, this time I got lucky and bought someone else’s family album, filled with black and white photos from the 40’s and 50’s. It’s a family vacation album. I still don’t quite know what I’m going to do with it but, for now it’s just the curiosity of looking at another family's special moments and trying to recognize the places they were taken.

Peter Piper bought stuff he had been looking for, a Swiss knife, a small moleskine notebook and a black ink pen that came with a bonus: a bottle of shampoo!!

On our last visit, we came home with a bunch of things: an old fashion toaster (the type with flaps that open to the side) cause the one we had burnt to melting point, stencils, a traditional blue head scarf from Viana, a salt and pepper mills, a black paper photo album, which got me a name for this blog and black and white photos Pedro is going to transform into lovely postcards.

The stroll back home is always the same. Maybe next time we’ll stop for an urban picnic with bread, pumpkin jam and cheese… what do you say Peter??