Tom Tom - or the navigator blues
For a few years I was very fortunate to have the task of driving my husband's 100-year+ old grandma through Sintra; from her place to ours and back. She always wanted me to go very slowly, as she rarely traveled in the car, so she could see all the places she used to walk by, live in and work at. She would tell me stories about how Sintra used to be, what it looked like, and of course how it has changed. One of her favorite topics was the traffic. She said she remembered when there was only 1 car in Sintra, when taxis were horse-drawn carriages, when the tram was the major transportation in to the Historical Center (now it no longer comes this far), then called just 'Vila'. She told me how you had to have a license to get into Vila by any form of transportation: there was an area in the entrance to the town, in Lourel, where people had to place their goods in public or hired horse-drawn trucks to bring them into town. Interesting! It still would be nice. A few year...