Alentajano House

Ah, I forgot to write about the house where we stayed in the alentejo. The house itself was amazing. It was long and sort of skinny, with a part in the middle raised up to provide a second story and a deck. There are many ways to enter along the long front face of the house, with no one main front door. On one end of the house are bedrooms, kind of like cowhand rooms at a cattle ranch, with one communal bathroom between them. Next the house divides itself in two longwise. The front half leads into a giant living room with a big open fireplace, couches and tvs. The back half looks out onto an empty pasture and has a large dining room. Next is where one of the entry ways comes into the house and this cuts the house again in to two peices but in the other way, shortwise. There is a small study at the beginning of this hallway and as you follow the hallway you´re lead into the kitchen. The kitchen is the realm of the maids, they are about 7 strong and if you do anything even slightly wrong, well, it doesn´t even have to be something wrong, if you do anything in their view any where in the house you can expect to recieve a long stern look of dissapointment or a quick slap on the hand. It was one thing I didn´t understand very well, just walking down the hallway one time I passed one of them holding a laddle for the soup pot, as I passed I´m sure I didn´t do anything out of the oridinary, perhaps I even gave a friendly smile, sebi was walking towards me from the other direction and he told me after I passed her that she stood behind me and pretended to wack me on the back of the head with the spoon. I didn´t even notice and sebi just stood there laughing. They are just funny people, really part of the character of the whole setting. Well, to get to our room which was part of the second story converted attic we had to pass through the kitchen and climb up a wooden ladder. When you surface through the floor you enter into a main play room complete with a couch and a tv, and a ton of toys. On the other side of this is the door to our room. Our room was quite big, with a tall cieling and about ten beds with plenty of room inbetween each one. Back to the hallway downstairs, you turn back following the long spine of the house past more bedrooms and then enter into the main food room. This is where all the old, beautifully painted plates are hung on the walls sorrounding a big table constantly filled with food. Here there is another giant fireplace and two more doors. One of the doors leads to the big main dining hall with the long tables and giant fireplace. The other door leads to another living room with couches, a tv and tables for the little kids to eat and play and another big fireplace. Above the Tv and fireplace in this room is a big loft where a huge amount of animal hides are kept. There are elk heads hanging from the walls and pelts from all kinds of animals from deer to fox. This is where the house ends and the wine shop starts. And thats all for now. More coming soon, still got a tooon to write about, stay tuned!