SINTRA, Portugal (AP) — The doorbell to Martinho de Almada Pimentel’s house is hard to find, and he likes it that way. It’s a long rope that, when pulled...
SINTRA , Portugal — The doorbell to Martinho de Almada Pimentel’s house is hard to find, and he likes it that way. It’s a long rope that, when pulled, rings a literal bell on the roof that lets him know someone is outside the mountainside mansion that his great-grandfather built in 1914 as a monument to privacy.Travelers idling in standstill traffic outside the sunwashed walls of Casa do Cipreste in Cintra sometimes spot the bell and pull the string “because it's funny," he says.
Cue the violins, you might grouse, for people like Pimentel who are well-off enough to live in places worth visiting. But it's more than a problem for rich people. Japan set records for tourist arrivals. In Fujikawaguchiko, a town that offers some of the best views of Mt. Fuji, leaders erected a large black screen in a parking lot to deter tourists from overcrowding the site.Tourism is surging and shifting so quickly, in fact, that some experts say the very term “overtourism” is outdated.
Virpi Makela can describe exactly what happens in her corner of Sintra. Incoming guests at Casa do Valle, her hillside bed-and-breakfast near the village center, call Makela in anguish because they cannot figure out how to find her property amid Sintra's “disorganized" traffic rules that seem to change without notice.
More than 3 million people every year visit the mountains and castles of Sintra, long one of Portugal's wealthiest regions for its cool microclimate and scenery. Sintra City Hall also said via email that fewer tickets are now sold to the nearby historic sites. Pena Palace, for example, began this year to permit less than half the 12,000 tickets per day sold there in the past.
NEW YORK — In 1974, Harlem’s deserted streets and tumbledown tenements told the story of a neighborhood left behind. Decades of disinvestment had culminated in a mass exodus known as urban flight and residents watched as their wealthier, more educated counterparts left the New York City neighborhood in droves.
Martinho De Almada Pimentel SINTRA Portugal Pena Palace Overtourism Virpi Makela Casa Do Cipreste Pimentel Rich People Problems
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