The Lido Bar was awash in tangerine and beige. Tangerine colored bar stools flashed themselves as a cross section of Paraguay saddled themselves up and down around the Lido's beige speckled horseshoe shaped counter. Tangerine aproned women, under tangerine caps waddled amongst each other delivering empanadas, sandwiches and Paraguay's national dish Sopa paraguaya (corn bread cake) from behind the bar.

Tanned and quaffed women sipped fruit drinks next to laborers drinking beer. Entire families all dining leisurely in silence. Native Guarani darted in and out of the air conditioned bar for a quick drink of free ice water before returning to the streets to hock their beaded jewelry and the like.

The cool fans near the entrance blew with such force you had to clutch your napkin while eating softball sized empanadas filled with meat. The Paraguayans smartly clutch these fried pastries inside the napkin, thus keeping the napkin from blowing away and the grease from soaking your hands. The food and fruit drinks were cheap, delicious and filling.

Across from the Lido Bar are four intersecting plazas. Sitting on a bench near the plaza de Los heroes under the guise of reading a book the rest of Paraguay seemed to be trying to beat the afternoon heat under the plaza's canopy of fruit trees.

At a nearby bench a young man strummed his guitar and serenaded the plaza and the two lovely ladies either side of him. Unfazed by the sun little shoeless native kids ran around making the most of a nearly deflated soccer ball.