Praça Luis de Camões and environs/Praça Luis de Camões e arredores

This Plaza is between our apartment and the Baixa/Chiado metro stop. We walk through it a lot. So who was Luis de Camoes? He is a Portuguese literary hero, perhaps the most famous of all such figures in a country that reveres its writers.
He was alive in the 16th century, when Portugal was still very much a global player on the high seas. He is most famous for writing The Lusiads (Os Lusíados), an epic tale of a seafarer's adventures around the world. Camoes himself did make several sea voyages, he travelled through Egypt, India, and Indochina. The best legend I've heard about Camoes (and I have no idea if it's apocryphal) was that, fighting to stay alive during a shipwreck, he had to make a choice between saving his lover and saving his manuscripts. He made the choice to save the manuscripts, holding them above the water to keep them dry until he made it ashore, while his lover perished in the sea.

Anyway, this is the Plaza:

Here is the statue of Camões:

Detail:

Running east from the Praça is Rua Garrett. This street is famous for housing several cafes that at one time were the favored haunts of the Portuguese literati (and now are haunted only by tourists). Foremost among them is "A Brasileira" which often hosted another beloved Portuguese writer, Fernando Pessoa. It's been kept up well and so it has a certain luxuriousness that most Lisboeta cafes don't. However, it's always crowded, overflowing into the street. I haven't tried eating there, but my understanding is that the food itself isn't worth the wait. Anyway, here it is, followed by a close up of its sign.

(There weren't any crowds there when I took these photos because it was Christmas Day. This is very abnormal.)

Rua Garrett is now partially pedestrianized. In the middle of the street sits a statue of Pessoa, with a open bench beside him. Every time we pass by, people are getting their picture taken with Pessoa (and this is one activity popular with both locals and toursits). Here's Liz leaning in.

Finally, this is a knick-knack shop near the Plaza. It's got the front end of an old taxi sticking out above it. I thought it looked cool. Unfortunately, the shop itself sells nothing special, just the same old tourist thingamajigs...