I could blame it on the full moon I suppose, but it lacks a lot in terms of explanation.

It's a holiday today in Lisbon and Cascais, although not for the rest of Portugal. Other cities and municipalities also have local holidays that we don't have, so it evens itself out over the course of the year.

Today's festival is the Feast of San Antonio, and it's quite the party. In fact, it started last night. The way to celebrate the feast of San Antonio is to go to the Alfama district downtown and wander the streets, drinking and partying and eating grilled sardines. The Alfama district is the old Moorish districts, one of the oldest in Lisbon because it wasn't destroyed by the huge earthquake in the 1700s, and the district in which the Feasting for San Antonio started. These days, of course, the festival has spread out from the Alfama into other districts, including the old town of Cascais. The streets were packed with people and charcoal grills loaded down with sardines.

There is also something to do with carrying around pots of basil, but the details are hazy on that one. I asked around last night, but no one knew why-- not even my Portuguese friends.

We didn't go into Lisbon for the festival, unfortunately. We could have gone, and a bunch of our friends did, but by 10:00 or so, we couldn't be bothered. It was very, very warm out last night, so we ended up at an outside table in the Square, quaffing ice cold beers that got warm way too fast. Elvis abhors sardines in any case-- the way they smell, at least, which is admittedly rather pungent. It's much better to cook them outside, I would imagine.

It doesn't look like we'll be going downtown today, either. It's still warm out, but very cloudy and it looks suspiciously as if it might rain. This is a shame, because I also had visions of lazing by the pool this afternoon. Although, if I really wanted to, I suppose I would have no problems getting a chair with one of the good cushions. It's not much fun without sun, though.

There are a lot of holidays this time of year. There is another one next Thursday. I'm not sure what it's for, so I'll have to find out. There was also a holiday on Tuesday, which we spent at a barbeque party thrown at the home of Mr. And Mrs. Evil, of LNBOE fame. It was, as you might expect, quite the party. There were steaks and real German sausages and vats of a tasty and lethal sangria. The music wasn't very loud out of consideration for the Evil's neighbors, but it was good. We spent a lot of time in the pool batting around a beach ball. Miss Kitty refused to go in full stop ("I'm not letting the patrons of the LNBOE see me in a bikini!"). Lady Jane was thrown back in forcibly after changing out of her wet swimsuit and back into dry clothes. Seems the white linen trousers weren't such a good idea, although if I had a body like Lady Jane's I wouldn't be all that upset. She was good natured about the whole thing, though, and she had come prepared with two sets of dry clothes.

She's been to the Evil's annual barbeque before.

Actually, we went to another barbeque last Saturday as well, which was held at Sam's house. Popeye did the grilling, although he didn't eat much as he doesn't believe in mixing eating and drinking. No pool, but we hung out in the back yard, which was sunny and very, very warm. In addition to my salsa, I brought devilled eggs, as per my resolution made at the last barbeque we went to.

There's no barbeque scheduled for this weekend, though. Considering that we've been to three of them in the last few weeks, it makes this weekend look oddly bereft. I'd be happy to throw one myself, but since we have no backyard and only a tiny balcony it wouldn't be much of a barbeque. I suppose we could hang out by the apartment pool, but I have no idea if there is a rule on the number of guests you can bring down there, and think they'd draw the line at hauling down a barbeque grill, even if we had one.