Living in the centre of the old city means we are constantly surrounded by comings and goings and various goings on. Sometimes they can be quite annoying, but I never thought I would enjoy it as much as I have, though I do still long for a quiet village with lots of greenery and chickens in the back garden.
I was quite chuffed this afternoon when while Josiah was asleep, I decided to get some sun on the patio. The sun was amazing, and I was warmed up to the bone! And yes, I did put sun tan lotion on. A bit. But the really cool thing was that downstairs had a band practising. A Spanish band. Of a few people. (Think ‘La Cucharacha’ type music). And though it was quite loud, I knew Josiah would sleep through it as he sleeps through anything. In fact, on the way to and from Lisbon on the coach at the weekend Josiah didn’t cry once, and slept perfectly happy across his adoring parents’ knees through beeps and shouts and allsorts, after first staring at the interesting things beyond the window, and playing with the window itself. Anyway, I digress.
So I was sitting in the sun feeling very warm and cultured when something happened upstairs that made me quite amused. Our sometimes rather noisy nocturnal upstairs neighbours slammed the window shut and began playing club music rather loud (Oh no! Culture! Quick, block it out…) From that moment, it kind of felt like our flat was in the middle of music cross-fire. It didn’t last long though, and we were back to the peaceful quiet we usually enjoy here. I just hope the same thing doesn’t happen late at night with the tourist season coming.
When the fire engine first arrived
That wasn’t the only interesting thing to happen today. I went out to do some paparazzi photo taking for a different blog post I’ve had in mind, and to get a few random bits for dinner when a fire engine came hurtling round the corner. Instead of carrying on past the crossing as I expected it to, it turned onto the pedestrian road that is the main shopping street in the old town. It turned out that a building near where I was going was on fire. Of course, I didn’t hang around for long for fear of Josiah breathing in some nasty fumes, but I got a few snaps of the excitement from a safe distance as I passed by every now and then. It wasn’t long before there were about 4 fire engines and a whole crowd of people gazing at the smoke, looking for some action.
It reminded me of something similar in the same street a while ago- again, not literally dangerous for passers-by, but still out of the ordinary. Josiah was just two or three weeks old and we were walking with my parents down the same high street. Just as we passed by Zara some police cars came hurtling towards us. We were right outside Zara, where they screeched to a halt and pulled out their guns and looked like they were getting ready to exchange fire with someone in the shop. I didn’t need to see any more, especially with a new born baby in my pram I wasn’t about to risk any freak accidents involving stray bullets (that’s what American police dramas do to a new mother). Me, Mark and Mum hurried down the road, but our escape plan was scuppered by my incredibly curious and adventurous Dad who I am sure filmed the whole thing. He wasn’t the only one who stuck around to watch, there were loads of people there very quickly, but I’m fairly sure my Dad was the only one with a video camera. I was glad it didn’t last long, and someone who definitely did not look very Portuguese was bundled rather forcefully into a police car which went hurtling back down the road with an escort of about another 4 police cars. All very dramatic.
I do wonder why people are drawn to obviously dangerous situations. It’s quite strange, because I bet half of the people there would never go on the Pepsi Max or Oblivion, or love walking along walls on the top of cliffs as I do. And yet I was wanting to be as safe a distance away from these events as I could be, because I could see the potential for things going wrong. It can be quite exciting living in the city I suppose, but give me the village and chickens any day!
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