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Elinor's Door

As we arrived in Lisbon by hired car, a friendly taxi driver showed us how to get to the Alfama district. He had us follow him!

The Alfama is the most beautiful district of Lisbon, a working class neighboorhood where families have had the same apartments for generations. People live on the stone walkways and roads, as well as on their balconies. There are always people just hanging around on the street talking, kids playing, dogs and cats to be petted. Their is always laundry hanging in front of the balconies. It all feels very little changed from a hundred years ago, or 500 years ago. Yes, there are cars and electricity and the like, but none of it seems to really have changed the look of the buildings or the way that people live their lives.

Anyway, once we met Elinor who showed us a place to park, we had to carry our lugguge up 170 stairs from the riverside street to the plaza in front of her house. Once in her front door, it was another 53 very steep and narrow marble stairs to her top-floor apartment. The streets near her house are closed to cars which don't have a special permit, and the little barriers in the road sink away for those cars and then pop back up to enforce the policy.

At the elevator in Lisbon, we found a postcard which shows Elinor's house, and in this photo similar to that postcard, Kathryn is standing in front of Elinor's door.


Here's the plaza in front of Elinor's door at night:


Elinor's apartment is truly amazing. It has fantastic views out each window, and each is different. It's huge by the standards of the European hotels we'd stayed in, and really is large even by comparison to San Francisco apartments. Here is a picture from her living room window...


Elinor was called to work at 1am on Saturday morning as we returned from dinner and drinks, just hours before her flight to San Francisco for a three week holiday. I've been with her before when she was called away to report on an Internet worm and had to go in to the local office to file a story. From Lisbon, she was reporting on something equally interesting.

posted by Dale L. Larson @ 5:55 AM