CASA DO VALLE

My husband loves books and pictures of Sintra way back. Buildings in their glory, people dressed in old fashioned clothing - but mainly he likes the ones where you see the way the city was laid out - and maps. In many pictures, from afar, you can see the whole mountain very bare, almost treeless - but in the closeups you can see some trees and bushes and vegetation. And fountains. The trees have come and gone according to fires and cutting - the most glorious gardens and parks we have now have been planted specifically by Kings and famous men who chose to establish themselves here. The climate was perfect for the near tropical vegetation - and the water was plenty. There is plenty of water in the mountain and all of the habitants of Sintra throughout the years have known to channel it to serve their purpose, be it a public bath house or gardening; or simply a place where the citizens could come to collect water when there was not proper canalization. Many of the fountains no l...

In the last few months I have blogged very little. Not that there is nothing to say, quite the contrary - I have been really busy, both at work and on holidays. And there are plenty of new things coming along and happening. Some things are still in the developmental stage and it is too early to speak about them but some are coming right out wanting to be mentioned... This last year was a good year to us. We built very few new things but were improving a lot: new garden furniture, new fruit trees planted, new pillows, some new rugs and curtains, new blankets, new dishes, ... We painted some walls, inside and out. In the marketing side, we changed our site some, and started working with some agencies. A notable change was starting to work with A Vida é Bela and later the Smartbox - both are gift voucher companies, and both have picked up nicely. They have changed our strategies a bit, too, as they have changed our clientèle, especially during the winter months, to more national from...