 |
Our neighborhood park looking towards our
apartment
|
First, where is Alverca? See this map (or look it up on Google)
The Tagus River (Rio Tejo, one of three major rivers in Portugal and the longest on the Iberian Peninsula) empties into the Atlantic Ocean just west of Lisbon. Alverca is upriver from Lisbon about 25 kilometers and is officially Alverca do Ribatejo, incorporating the name of the river that runs near by.
 |
| Jumbo, our favorite grocery store, with plenty of mini-shops around it |
Our little town of about 31,000 people is conveniently located near the intersection of two major freeways with a national highway running right through the middle. We have a couple of large box store shopping areas on the edge of town and a beautiful wooded park in the middle. We live right on the edge of that park (see above and below).
What does our house and neighborhood look like, you ask? The
best way to answer is with photos.
We live in an apartment building with 8 units. We live on
the top or 2° floor on the right. The specific address for each apartment (and
this is pretty much universal in Portugal and probably much of Europe) is given
by: The street name, the number on the street, and the specific apartment,
identified by floor and unit on that floor.
Thus our address is: Rua Boca Lara, 45 2° Dto. Dto is short
for direito or right.
Most common are left, sometimes center, and right on each
floor, but occasionally you get letters A-F or however many there are on a
floor.
Outside the front door (which remains locked) is a panel of
buttons you use to buzz the apartment you want to visit. Newer buildings often
have an intercom system and maybe even a video camera to allow you to
communicate with the occupant. We have neither.This photo to the right is just inside our front door showing a variety of green house plants placed to create a very welcome feeling.The mail boxes mounted to the right of the door (not shown) is where we pick up any mail sent to our address.
Our apartment building is in a line of similar buildings that follow the street as it turns to the right (see photo above).
Directly across this street is the main community park of Alverca. It is called Jardim Municipal José Álvaro Vidal, or just o jardim.
It has plenty of shade trees, paths, park benches, a play
pool with a water spout for hot days, a small outdoor café, and in one corner,
the municipal swimming pool.
We have been able to get acquainted with all the paths and
the pool. We occasionally cross the park on our morning walk, or to walk to LiDL,
the closest grocery store, or to get to the Elders apartment.
 |
| The LiDL Store and apartments on the other side of the jardim |
The swimming pool is open for swimming most days of the week, but not when we are free to go. We have swum there a couple of times on Monday mornings, our P-day. It is a decent pool, 25 meters long, but does not have more than 6 lanes. If we go the first thing when the pool opens there has been room for us. Strangely it is closed for much of July and August.
Inside our building we climb the stairs to the second floor (the first floor is the first floor above the ground floor which is called R/C or rés-do-chão) you see our door on the right. Next we are looking through the doorway into the apartment.
We have shown previous photos inside the apartment, but here are a couple more:
Notice some of the beauties of our neighborhood. As I study in the mornings I often enjoy the beauty of the sky from our top floor view. The jardim and surrounding areas have a number of flowering trees that bring color and beauty throughout the year.
Our chapel is not far away and also constitutes part of our neighborhood. It sits above the oldest Catholic church in the city, Igreja de São Pedro. Other homes nearby have copied the pink color of our chapel and, like a number of homes in the area, have ceramic tiles painted with beautiful scenes like the one you see here:
We were treated one Saturday with a display of Scouting skills and creations. Scouting in Portugal is open to both boys and girls. On the steep side street just up from our apartment they were having a soapbox coaster car display. It looked like much of the challenge was course navigation, but I believe they had stop watches going to record their travel time. The youngest group we saw were the three little girl Scouts selling homemade cookies. Where have we seen something like that before?
As a final display of the beauties of Alverca, here are some photos of the wild flowers that grow throughout the hills above our apartment. These wild flowers are spectacular in April and May. We have seen other flowers since then, but nothing quite like these poppies.
