Figueira da Foz ... the town of my childhood ... or dispersed images and memories of my childhood ...

I have been wanting to write about Figueira da Foz ... (my hometown ...  and the town of my childood) for quite a while, even if it no longer means what it used to  ...

The coastline as seeen from Serra da Boa Viagem is entirely different ... huge buildings have been "planted" by the sea, annulling the typical one storey houses that once proudly stood along it, with Grande Hotel da Figueira (the tallest building then) turned into a mere and almost unrecognisable building squeezed inbetween blocks of cement ... 

The salt pits and  the endless rows of codfish being dried out on netted partitions which could be seen  across the bridge (Gala) have given way to abandoned stretches of land  crying out for help ...  

The beaches that stretched along Gala which we used to ride to on our bicycles, because of being "isolated" ... and under no vigilance of any sort, are still there ... not as "untouched" as before ... though still under no vigilance ... a recently discovered paradise for  young surfers (the only ones who dared ride those waves then were Australian adventure tourists) ... 

The lacustrine wooden huts standing on piles are no longer to be seen, with the exception of one which now houses the tourist office of Gala ...

The sea and the river have been "withdrawing" ... invaded by the sand,  so the outstanding city lighthouse which once was close to the sea is  now at the crossroads of two avenues having been turned into a "Museum".

A commemorative entrance sign enhances the role it played in the past when  a group of volunteers from Figueira and  the neighbouring villages of  Montemor and Tentugal took over this fortress against the  Napolean oppressors enclosing them in and forcing them to surrender... (ironically enough many of the tourists who "invade" these beaches every  Summer are in fact Portuguese immigrants who have long ago chosen France to live and work in ...).

My brother, my daughter Mia and I drove up to the mountain in search of the lighthouse  my grandparents used to take us to when we were children and to our surprise it  was there and it still looked the same ...  though it may not have impacted us the same way it did in our childhood ...

From the lighthouse of Vela we continued towards the beach of Murtinheira, which used to be amongst some of the nicest in the area ... and despite the fact that we didn't  bathe in its waters the "magic atmosphere" still remained ...

Our house  is still standing ... as empty and as "decadently" beautiful as never before ... there are no longer resident servants to look after "us"  ... a weekly nurse to help my mother in her medicine practising ... a gardner to tend the garden-beds and trees that used to surround a lake with geese and swans (offered some time ago to the public garden) ... a cook that often came to help the servants ... the piano accords as played by my uncle and sometimes any of the three of us ... though ...

the beauty of the painted ceiling in my mother's working room, which fascinated me as a child, still impressed me ...

... and so did the upper part of fire place in the Music room ... I so often used to look at ...

 

Old photos and paintings of my mother and my aunt (who still inhabit the house) ... were to be seen everywhere ... and  amongst those the one that still impressed me today was  the painted portrait the day she got her Medicine diploma ... 

A weekend of dispersed images and memories ...

(to be continued ... one day)