We changed the route again, and walked the wide streets of the business area around Marquês do Pombal.

Went by movieStar’s office, but also walked by two of my old newsrooms. The building where I landed my first job in the newspaper business, now turned into a fancy apartment complex. Close by is one of the spots where Público had an office. We had a few over the years.

That first one, a newspaper over 130 years old when I joined in 1995, has moved on many years ago, to the outskirts of the city. In the meantime they fired most people, stopped having a daily printed edition, got back to a daily printed edition, but the sales are still tiny. Not good.

The building is a landmark, so the new owners kept the facade, and turned the whole thing into luxury condos.

This area has taller buildings, as tall as they come in the city. We’re not a skyscraper town.

Lots of people out and about, but still nowhere close to the old numbers, but plenty of cars, buses and scooters.

The back streets are littered with empty businesses. You can tell some are paused, but a lot seem to be gone forever. They catered to the throngs of salarymen, but those are nowhere to be seen at the moment.

Just yesterday we found out our darling Cerveteca, a place where we spent a lot of time, and had a ton of fun, is looking for a new location, unable to afford the current one.

It will take a long time for this place to look the same, if it ever does.