Winter, and Christmas is Coming

With these rainy gray days it's great to spend a day at home, lighting a fire, watching the storms, feeling cozy.  It reminds us of storm watching on winter days at the Olympic coast.

And when we're not sitting around feeling cozy there are a handful of projects to coordinate: major garden and irrigation upgrades, bugs in the solar power system, getting our driver's licenses transferred, preparing for customs and final trucking of our goods when they arrive in Porto, deep cleaning, preparing for the upcoming flood of boxes, and planning for the bungalow.

Our solar power system has been demonstrating a new feature: at indeterminate intervals of between a day and three weeks, it shuts down the entire backup network (main water pump, internet, house lights, refrigerator, access into the garage) for 20 minutes or so, whether the grid is up or not.  Is that any way to treat the circuits which are the most essential to keep powered?  The solar sales people tell us it is, it's a "perfectly normal regular safety check" but we are not convinced.  So the battle is engaged.

Our shipment from the US has become even more circuitous and we're not sure why.  It was bad enough initially, going clear through the Mediterranean to unload in Italy and then to go overland from there, but now we see the ship and itinerary going back through the Straits of Gibraltar, south hundreds of kilometers to the Canary Islands and then back north all the way to Leixões (next to Porto)!  Wacky!  We've asked our shipping agent about this, but no reply yet.

We have both been sniffly and coughing for several weeks, mostly Pat, almost constantly but especially at night.  We've cleaned the HVAC (heater) filters, vacuumed carefully, and washed mold out of some hidden corners, but the only thing that helps is to shut off the HVACs entirely for a couple days.  Gerrit and his new best friend Gemini have found the procedure to disassemble the HVAC housings for thorough internal cleaning, and that's next on the list.

We want to move the bed out of the middle bedroom and to the garage, so we can stage and store all the stuff which will be showing up here shortly.  There is also a bookshelf needing purging to make room for our coming books and other things, and the garage needs to be cleared out as much as possible so the boxes can be loaded directly from the truck into the garage.  And this is just the start...

We're still undecided on exactly which bungalow we want.  Our friend and architectural connoisseur Bernardo has convinced us that we should go for a modern look to match the house better.  The cabin manufacturer we had settled on has a significant number of credible bad reviews, too, all of which is making us rethink the whole thing.  Again.

On Wednesday Dec 10 we met our friends Jess and Julian in Porto for lunch.  They have been doing farm work for room and board (and their own education) here in Portugal for a while, and are just wrapping that up to head to the warmer south.  The weather for our lunch was comfortable, sunny, and beautiful, and we had a great time catching up over a delicious meal.

Ponte de Lima is gearing up for Natal (Christmas).  We were there on the nice evening of Dec 10 and took pictures of some of the spectacular lights they're setting up.  All this public expense and time, in a small town, simply for the enjoyment of its citizens!

Watch the lights "drip"

Some Portuguese greeting tips: "bom dia" means "good day" and is used as a general greeting.  Until noon.  At that moment everyone shifts to "boa tarde" (good afternoon).  If you wish someone "bom dia" after noon they will reply "boa tarde".  Then there is a looser transition, around 8 PM, to "boa noite" for "good night" or "good evening".  You can say "olá" (hello) along with these greetings, and even ask "Tudo bem?" (Everything is well?).  The reply is generally "tudo bem" as a statement (Everything is well.).  A group getting together can sound like a chorus of "Tudo bem?,  Tudo bem!" as greetings go around.

By popular demand (from Ron, anyway), here is a little run-down on the ways Christmas is celebrated in Portugal:

• Like everywhere, they have Christmas trees, lights, and nativity scenes (presépio), incessant Christmas songs on background music, and they exchange gifts.
• They are a strongly Catholic country, so church and Christmas mass are important.
• Some houses are decorated with lights, but not so much as in public areas, towns, and the streets leading into them.
• The common greeting is Boas Festas! (Happy Holidays)
• The Christmas season starts off with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on Dec 8.  It is a major holiday, a quiet time at home with families, a little like Thanksgiving.
• Christmas markets are becoming more popular, where gifts, treats, and Christmas trappings are sold from little barraquinhas (market stalls) in a sort of farmer's market setting.
• Kids put out shoes for Santa, not stockings.  Also, Santa was only adopted in Portugal about 30 years ago!
• Many places, including churches and towns, celebrate with big Christmas bonfires.  Sometimes they are huge.
• Of course there are special Christmas pastries and sweets.
• The traditional Christmas Eve dinner in northern Portugal is called consoada.  It consists of prepared bacalhau (dried salt cod) with potatoes, cabbage, and hard boiled eggs.
• 
  In parts of northern Portugal young men called caretos dress in wild colorful costumes to celebrate the solstice (photo Rosino from flickr).  They throw water and hay on bystanders, strut around the town accompanied by rattles, pipes, and drums, and "squash" the girls.
• The “Bananeiro” comes from a store in the city of Braga called “Casa das Bananas” (House of Bananas), which used to be a banana warehouse. The owner had a small counter where he served Moscatel, a sweet Portuguese wine, as a way of attracting customers. When they requested something to eat, he would offer them a banana.  His son then started a tradition with his friends to have a glass of Moscatel and a banana before Christmas Eve dinner. It quickly became popular and is now celebrated by thousands.
• Christmas Eve is usually the height of celebrations, when gift-giving and family togetherness rule the day.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Family Fun & Food for Thought

On Monday Nov 24 we met with our friend Bernardo for lunch in Porto before his girlfriend Carolina's final showing for her master's degree in art.  The restaurant was a charming old style nook with much wood and stone, and we all had delicious spiced chicken over rice (which we again forgot to photograph for you). 

 

The exhibition subject was exploring the theme of trauma in art, inspired by a terrifying 8 m (24 foot) fall from a waterfall and a broken back which Carolina experienced in Brazil years ago.  She is primarily a ceramics and mixed media artist.  She had explanatory cards in English next to each of her many works, and the overall experience was truly moving.  She invited people to release their own traumas by writing them on cards and burning them in a ceremonial pot.  She had shattered some illustrated ceramic works of hers and invited people to take any pieces which spoke to them.  A video loop rolled, describing her experience (in English text) in poetic and evocative terms.  Speeches were made, including from her professors, little of which we understood, but the flowing sound of Portuguese was soothing and good for us to be immersed in.  A little jarring too, when everyone suddenly laughed at a joke you entirely missed.

One piece

And its description

The walkway from our pool had been a little hurriedly finished up a few weeks ago, so the contractor offered to replace it at no charge.  The masons did a very nice job this time, and their craftsmanship and honorable conduct was appreciated.  (See below for the way to properly handle this, which Gerrit accidentally maneuvered.)

Tuesday Nov 25 through Friday Nov 28 Pat worked on her Portuguese Thanksgiving feast.  She roasted some turkey breasts and legs, made stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, a sweet potato and spinach bake, appetizers, a Portuguese orange square dessert (Quadradinhos de Laranja, or "little squares of orange"), and pumpkin pie.  She is making vegetarian variations of some dishes too.

The Quadrinhos dessert she actually made years ago in Seattle, not realizing that it was a Portuguese recipe.  She got a little choked up here when she realized that, at how we are completing some kind of circle or continuity here.

Friday Nov 28 Gerrit had to get another blood test to make up for one on Tuesday which was incomplete.  He went to the clinic and did the whole transaction in Portuguese, saying things like "I want a blood test, no prescription, no insurance, I pay directly", providing information, and even making small talk with the nurse.  He says this is really getting fun, and he often makes up imaginary dialogs in Portuguese.  With his imaginary friends, Pat assumes.

We have some new rotating composting bins outside the back door so we can compost kitchen waste.  Pat adds ground up cardboard to the waste, which reduces smell and provides a better compost.  Gerrit has been cranking out the cardboard for this, tearing it and using the wood chipper.

Saturday morning Nov 29 we both got ready for our pseudo-Thanksgiving.  There was plenty of work to do to make desserts, make the potato dishes, and reheat food already prepared.  Everyone arrived at 1 PM, we chatted and had appetizers until 2:00, then sat for the feast.  And once again, we forgot photos.  You should find a blog on Instagram with young people photo-documenting their lives; we just can't seem to get the hang of it.  The feast was all delicious and well appreciated.  Then we had a stimulating, wide ranging conversation until 5:30 or so.  It was great fun, and we good friends became even closer.

On Monday Dec 1 Gerrit's son Elliott and his family passed through Ponte de Lima on their way back from Andorra to Porto and their flight home.  They had spent Thanksgiving there with Gerrit's other son Ian and his family.  We had two days and a night with them, playing at our favorite Ponte de Lima playground and at home here.  Gerrit made the traditional Portuguese Bacalhau à Brás for dinner and Pat made a squash, broccoli, and grape casserole.  On Tuesday the kids were on their own for a few hours while we went to a doctor appointment, and they did some shopping and walking around historic Ponte de Lima.  It was a fun, brief goodbye till next time.

The cousins meet for the first time in Andorra	Andorra dad & daughter on the left, Colorado on the right
Colorado kids in Braga with us	Meeting some goats across the street from our home

Rasslin' with Dad

Granddaughter Avie in the statue's basket

Wednesday Dec 3 we met our new family doctor in Viana do Castelo.  Our old doctor was in Porto, convenient when we lived in the apartment in Vila Nova de Gaia but not so much now.  We gave our new doctor our current medical information and learned a little about the system here.  They don't have video doctor appointments in Viana and there isn't a way to transmit documents electronically, so the standard method is the old-fashioned visit to your doctor with printed documents.  We will be doing that regularly to report medical procedures and to provide her with blood tests, etc.  It sounds like a nuisance, but it's kind of sweet and personal too.

Pat found an interesting essay about the differences between Anglo and Portuguese work cultures.  It was written by an American who has been here for five years.  He sums up the Portuguese culture this way:

• Honor-based shame avoidance
• High-context indirectness
• Hierarchical authority preservation
• Liability-averse bureaucratic instinct
• A cultural tradition where fixing the problem IS the apology

Anglos feel that admitting fault and making a public apology shows good faith and honesty, but that runs counter to the Portuguese way.  Apology and directness are considered undignified and a source of shame here.  Instead, indirectness, formality, context sensitivity, and a lack of apology are the rule.  When a problem arises a vague and dissembling reason is given, and instead of an apology the problem is simply fixed (you hope).

There isn't a right or wrong about this, it's just the way the different cultures are.  There is more to it than the bit we've related here, too, so see the whole essay here if you're interested.  It's pretty long, but thoughtful and insightful.  We think understanding all this will be helpful in our dealings with Portuguese services and our understanding of the culture.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Smoke & Family Fun

Gerrit discovered an annoying trait of our pool cover.  Dirt and leaves which land on the top side of the cover get transferred onto the underside when the cover rolls up as it retracts.  Then when the cover is unrolled to cover the pool again half the dirt and leaves from the top side end up washed into the pool from the bottom side.  That's kind of the opposite of what you want a pool cover to do.  It's not too bad to sweep the cover off every couple weeks or before opening it though, and we're leaving it closed most of the off season anyway.

It has been a very wet November, as of  here on the 14th, and now we are getting fallout from Storm Cláudia which is affecting all of Portugal.  Almost every day has been dark and cloudy, with lots of rain.  Reminds us of a Seattle November, except that often the rain here goes from zero to a deluge in literally two seconds.  The spigot can turn off just as fast too.  The local news agrees that this November has been unusually cloudy and rainy, but they say things should start clear up a little around the last week of the month.

Pat is planning a Thanksgiving feast here for some friends.  We will be the only Americans, it won't actually be held on Thanksgiving Day, and we can't even find a whole turkey, so she'll be playing it by ear.  She was an ace at T-Day back in the US, so we're sure she'll have no problem creating her own version here.  Probably not surprisingly to anyone who knows her, she is putting the ingredients, prep, and timeline in a spreadsheet, studying it, and optimizing it.  Gerrit will try to stay out of her way.

Now it's Tuesday Nov 18 and the weather has completely changed, it's been clear and mostly sunny the last few days.  It's letting all that rain soak in.

Well, there is a problem here in Paradise.  It's the brush fires which people set continuously all around the area except during the burn ban in the summer.  They are smoky, and sometimes the smoke is overwhelming.  The entire Ponte de Lima valley can be filled with it, making it look like the worst Beijing air pollution.  On Thursday Nov 20 the landowners just adjacent to us set some huge brush fires going all morning long just past our back yard.  Thick clouds of smoke poured over us, and even with the doors and windows closed our eyes and throats were stinging.  Here is a rare moment when the wind wasn't blowing the smoke our way.

This is a long-standing tradition in Portugal and happens all over.  There are rules regarding burns, and applications need to be made with the authorities prior to a burn, but the burns are an institution.  We don't want to be the whiny American immigrants here and alienate our community, but boy this is obnoxious.  Indoor cigarette smoking has been banned over much of the developed world, so why not start working on these outdoor smoke bombs in Portugal?  There are some anti-smoke groups banding together, we hear, so maybe we can pitch in.

And alas, the skylight patching job Gerrit did last summer, which was perfectly water-tight with a hose showering it, still leaks like a sieve in the actual rain.  Back to the tarp cover and the ol' drawing board.

The kids and grandkids (Emmett six and Avie nine years old) arrived here in the late afternoon of Thursday Nov 20.  They had flown from Denver to Frankfurt, laid over four hours, then to Porto, and driven to meet us at a rendezvous point near Ponte de Lima.  They were pretty beat when they arrived, but Gramma Pat had prepared a delicious soup and bread dinner for us all before an early bedtime for the travelers.

The next day the weather was nice but a little cold.  We drove to Viana do Castelo to see the sights, explore the rocky Atlantic coastline, play on an impressive playground, and have some lunch at a nearby café.  Gerrit and his son Elliott had genuine Portuguese Francesinha sandwiches (huge and meat-filled, drowned in a tomato-beer-spice sauce) while Lexi and Pat had the more sensible Maple Smash burgers.  We drove up to the grand church at the top of the hill overlooking the mouth of the Duoro river after lunch to see the ornate church and Viana from the heights.

Kids on the rocks

But wait there's more

A fine Francesinha

Saturday the weather was clouding up but still no rain.  We took a little walking tour of the downtown historical area of Ponte de Lima, walked across the medieval bridge and looked into the little church on the far side, found a cool toy shop and playground, had a nice lunch, and did some grocery shopping on the way home.  The toy shop is called Ale Hop.  Sounds like a beer bar, doesn't it?  They have an incredible selection of action toys though, like big scuttling crabs and crazy spinning LED balls which don't go where you throw them.  The grandkids, and many others, were having a screaming good time and the patient, smiling clerks were happy to help them.

On Sunday it officially started raining.  We had hoped to visit the swimming pool in Arcos de Valdevez, but they were closed.  So we drove to Braga (home of Lady Braga) (<- dad joke) to an indoor play area in a big mall there, then to the historic center of town for some lunch and to see the sights through the rain.  (The picture here is a toy train near the play area, 1 € to ride it around its little circular track a few times.)  Back home we went, for an evening of games and toys and dinner out at our favorite pizza joint.  Monday morning Nov 24 the family packed up in the pouring rain and headed for Andorra to spend Thanksgiving with Gerrit's other son and his ex.  It will be the first time the young cousins will meet in person!

We'd had a great time with the family; we hadn't seen them in person since our Portuguese visa trip in the US back in March of 2024.  It was fun to see how the grandkids had grown, to play with them, and talk with their parents.  They will come back through here for a few more days at the end of the month on their way back from Andorra to Porto to fly back home.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.) 

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Some Business and Some Fun

On Saturday Nov 1 the pool cover installation technicians were here.  Gerrit had asked for them to come as soon as they could after we got home from Seattle, and boy did they!  Three days after we arrived, and on a Saturday yet.  The company and the technicians are Spanish, so we made good use of Google Translate.  They finished in one day, did a good, careful job, and the cover looks great and performs beautifully.  It will be so nice to keep leaves, dirt, and insects out of the pool.  (We even had a 20 cm (8 inch) long newt drown overnight in there recently.)  The pool will also absorb and retain heat better with the cover during the swimming season.  Here is our lovely model Pat sitting on the new ipê wood bench and demonstrating the zippy automatic cover.

We have the itinerary for the shipment of our belongings now that the container ship is underway from Seattle.  The route is through the Panama Canal, across the Atlantic, through the Straits of Gibraltar, across most of the Mediterranean Sea to Malta, then unloading in Italy and by truck or train through Italy, France, Spain, and finally to the Porto area for customs and loading to a smaller truck bound for our place.  Whew!  That seems like a pretty goofy route, but we guess International Van Lines knows what they're doing.

One of those gigantic grasshoppers we see around here occasionally was crawling around, high up outside a window.  He looked like a rock climber carefully placing his footholds and rocking his body to test his balance now and then.

November is a lousy time to have a new solar power installation put in.  We want to see gigawatts of solar power flowing in, but on thick cloudy days it's just not there.  We can see when some solar power is being generated, but it's usually not enough to totally supply the house.  It reduces the grid power usage to be sure, but we're not exactly off the grid during the cloudy times.  When a clear period does occur we can see the house being powered by solar and our batteries charging up full in a couple hours, though, which is fun.

Pat has been chasing down Portuguese driver's licenses for us, and it's turning into a huge job.  Since our residency was delayed for so long we exceeded the time limit to get licenses.  Our fixer Nia started the process anyway to see if she could make it work, and she quickly found out that our apostilled driving records from the US have expired too, so now we're faced with getting new records apostilled.  (Apostilling is like an international notary certification.)  This needs to be done in the US and then sent here to be included with our license applications.  We'll have to prevail on Pat's ever-helpful cousin again to take care of the US part for us.  What a mess!

Sunday Nov. 9 was Pat's birthday, and we met our friends Maayan and Dan at the Ponte de Lima monthly antique market.  It was a cool, clear day, we had a nice browse among dozens of vendors, and Pat found some nice goodies.  Afterwards we followed our friends to their home where Maayan served us a delicious middle-eastern lunch and Pat's favorite birthday cake: German chocolate.  Homemade yet!  Dan also made Gerrit a terrific espresso with his top-notch machine, the best local Braga coffee, and his own barista artistry.  And for dinner we went to our favorite local pizzeria for some excellent pie, salad, and generous glasses of Portuguese wine.

A typical vendor and his wares	The market was in the tree-lined promenade
Birthday girl with a find	Mmm, German chocolate...

If you want to track the exciting path of our goods from Seattle, go to https://www.marinetraffic.com/ and search for the vessel MSC Elisabetta.  It's astounding to see the container ships from all over the world shuttling around the oceans on that site, too.  As of Sunday evening Nov. 9 our container was off the coast of El Salvador, heading toward the Panama Canal.  It's strange to think about most of our worldly goods chugging along on the open seas like this!

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.) 

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Seattle Visit Part 2

Thursday Oct 16 was load-out day from our Seattle storage unit.  At 9 AM the movers met us at the storage place, and after some entry gate confusion we finally got them inside.  It took about three hours for them to unload our storage unit on the fourth floor, catalog it all, and move it all down and into their truck.  We were relieved to see that all the stuff in the storage unit was still in excellent shape after almost four years: no collapsing boxes, tape all still sound and stuck in place, nothing looked damaged at all.  We're glad we used double-walled boxes and sought out climate controlled storage.  The movers did an excellent job, nothing was dropped (we watched), and they added extra cardboard and wrapping on some of the oddball unboxed items.  If the remaining transfers all go as well (this truck to shipping container, container to Portuguese truck, truck to our garage) everything should be in good shape by the time it arrives at our place.

Our half-empty storage unit

Some of the 127 boxes & items

This move-out has been a long time coming, and it's a great relief to have it behind us.  We will not miss the exorbitant storage unit fees (which increased every few months until they were double the original rate) or having our storage unit broken into (yes, that happened too, it's a long story but fortunately nothing of consequence was stolen).

We met some more friends and had some more meals together the next few days.  The next day we headed to Bellingham to spend the night with an old friend and colleague of Gerrit's, and stopped in the Skagit valley to see a field of Snow Geese on their migration (see video below).  The following day we headed south to Gerrit's brother and sister-in-law's place in Sammamish, stopping to visit on the way with some old friends in Everett.

At the Sammamish home, as Pat got a glass of water one evening her breath was taken away by the sight of a Barred Owl just 2 m (6 feet) outside the kitchen window.  We got dozens of photos and the video below.  When Gerrit's brother came home he laughed and said "Oh yeah, he's kind of our buddy around here".  A Barred Owl for a pet! 

Snow Geese in Skagit

Barred Owl in the back yard

On Monday Oct 20 we got together with Pat's old boss for a spectacular seafood extravaganza in downtown Bellevue, and a nice visit with him and his wife afterward.  At left is our waiter posing with our lunch.

On Thursday Oct 23 we got the surprising and welcome news that our storage goods had already been loaded into a shipping container and onto a ship!  The sailing is set for Nov 1 and the estimated arrival in Portugal is Dec 26.  We got a nice link to keep track of the whole process, which we'll be checking frequently.

After more visiting, conversation, scenic drives, and down time we said our goodbyes in Sammamish and moved in with friends in Fall City on Saturday Oct 25.  We had a very nice three days with them, doing a leaf drive up and over Snoqualmie Pass to lunch in Roslyn, and even meeting with the Sammamish crew at a special-needs birthday party about a block from us in Fall City!  Gerrit's nephew came to the costume party as a pencil.  Here he is with his mom:

The party

The pencil

After fond adieus on Tuesday Oct 28 we returned our rental car and got to the gate at SeaTac Airport for our 9 hour flight to Amsterdam.  After a three-hour layover there we took a 2-1/2 hour flight to Porto, picked up our car from long-term parking, and drove for an hour to get home.  We had gotten a few catnaps on the planes but had been pretty much awake for 22 hours.  Exhausted but glad to be home, we had a bit of dinner and staggered to bed.

We are sorry we couldn't see all our friends on this visit!  Just too little time, plus we lost a few days to colds when we first arrived.  Next time, we hope.

And here are a couple random observations from the trip.  First, we have been so impressed with the kindness of the people in Portugal, but we also met with much kindness back in the US.  Good people are kind, and you can find that everywhere.  (It IS more common in Portugal though.)

We also really like roundabouts (rotundas in Portuguese) for managing traffic flow.  It's the optimum way to handle small to medium intersections, even with multiple streets feeding in.  You do need to learn the proper rotunda etiquette, but after that it's smooth and fast, much better than stop signs and lights.  Around our AirBnB in Queen Anne there were stop signs at almost every intersection and it sure was a nuisance.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Seattle Visit Part 1

We have now returned from a three-week visit to the US where we observed the loading of our storage unit into a shipping container bound for Portugal and visited friends and family.

After checking in to a hotel near the Porto airport on Tuesday Oct 7, we got up very reluctantly at 2 AM the following day in order to get to the airport the recommended three hours before our 6:15 AM flight to Amsterdam.  Gerrit had actually been awake and worrying for two and a half hours already, so he had had only three hours of sleep that night.

We misunderstood the procedure for long-term parking the car, and so got to the airport later than we'd hoped.  But even at that we were still an hour early!  The baggage check-in counter didn't even open until 4:15.  Before discovering this, we had wandered blearily around the poorly marked airport looking for some kind of baggage check-in.  Eventually we were checked in and on our way to Amsterdam, for a three hour flight.

We had a five-hour layover in Amsterdam, an hour longer than expected due to a maintenance delay on the connecting flight.  During the layover we had lunch, did our Portuguese lessons, bought some electrical adaptors, and caught up on correspondence and some reading.  Then followed the punishing 9-hour flight to Seattle.  It is quite impossible (for us) to get comfortable enough on a jet to get any sleep.  We watched interminable movies and TV shows with increasingly drooping and puffy eyelids, cramped and aching.  Gerrit was at least pleased that his new noise-cancelling headphones worked remarkably well.  He even listened to some classical music with the roar of the engines greatly reduced.  But sleep?  Not a chance.

We landed at SeaTac airport about 4 PM local time, and breezed through customs as easily as we ever have.  We were braced for some kind of hassle, but the whole thing took about two pleasant minutes with the TSA agent, who explained the whole process to us too.  He didn't even look in our carry-on bags, and there wasn't even a line.  We drove the rental car to our hotel for the night, a nearby dump which was undergoing renovation, after picking up some Mexican fast food.  In the room we ate and collapsed after a few minutes of staggering around like brain-dead zombies, forgetting what we were doing about 20 seconds into it.  We had been awake for over 24 hours after a much-too-short night in Porto.

We awoke at a normal-ish local time on Thursday Oct 9 after a better-than-expected night.  We visited some friends near SeaTac and then headed to our storage unit in Interbay to take care of the ominous-sounding voice mails they'd been sending, instructing us to contact them immediately "about our unit".  We had not been able to raise them on the phone.  Had we been broken into again?  Fortunately not; it was only a rental bill owing.  Next we finally contacted our shipping agent who had been ignoring us for almost a week as we were trying to confirm the ship date with him.  Had we just wasted a trans-Atlantic trip because the ship date had changed and the agent was avoiding us?  Fortunately not; the agent was just overworked and had somehow missed our increasingly frantic voicemails and messages.

After clearing up those potential catastrophes we enjoyed terrific burgers at Red Mill and drove around Seattle for a while.  The weather was nice and the October foliage was stunning (unfortunately not captured very well in these photos).  We enjoyed the north end neighborhoods nearby and took a drive through the Arboretum.  Finally we checked into our AirBnB on Queen Anne hill, close to our storage unit so we could easily observe that operation.  We lazed a little in the late afternoon of our new time zone, and then met with Gerrit's siblings and dad at a Redmond restaurant for dinner.  Happy hugs all around, some catching up and storytelling, and then we headed back to the AirBnB for another mostly normal night.

Near Gerrit's old high school on Queen Anne	Sunset over the Olympics from our AirBnB
Some foliage on Queen Anne	More Queen Anne foliage

The next day, Friday Oct 10, we bought three bags of simple groceries for a jaw-dropping $210, put them away, and headed to the house of Pat's old friend Cindy and her tenant, Pat's cousin Jeff.  Cindy had been accumulating shipments that Pat had been directing her way, so we packed up a suitcase full of the stuff and then chatted for a while.  Cindy then went to work and the rest of us went to a BBQ place in Edmonds we like.  It was great to catch up with Jeff, and the ribs were terrific.

Later in the day we began feeling poorly, more so than you'd expect from jet lag.  We'd probably picked something up from the giant Petri dishes they call airports and airplanes.  Pat developed a cough and some cold symptoms too.  For the next day or two we watched movies on the big screen TV in the AirBnB, and did a little local sightseeing on Sunday.

We are finding that one thing we really miss about the US is being able to joke and banter with store clerks or passers-by and understand what everyone is saying.  We've said it before, but a language barrier can be really daunting and isolating.  We didn't think we'd be spending much time with English-speaking expats in Portugal, but the camaraderie of a shared language is really important and we rarely miss our weekly meetings when we're there.

And here is a totally impartial and unbiased comparison tally of the things we like better in Washington or Portugal, now that our visit has refreshed our memories a bit:

• Fresh, cold Washington Honeycrisp apples: wow, we miss these!
• Salmon: sockeye in the northwest US can't be beat
• Crab: Dungeness tops any Atlantic variety we've tried
• Mountains: being surrounded by the Cascades and Olympics here in Seattle is spectacular
• Roast chicken: way better in Portugal
• Wine: same quality costs five times as much in Washington
• Tomatoes: way better in Portugal
• Most vegetables: better in Portugal
• Groceries & restaurants: cost more than twice as much in Seattle

The next few days we began to feel better so we did some sightseeing around the old home town and some visiting with friends.  Wednesday Oct 15 was the last day to hear from the shippers about when they would be at our storage place, and since Gerrit's phone was WiFi-only in the US he had to stay home and miss a nice lunch date.  Then, literally as Pat and friend were walking out the door of our place for lunch, Gerrit got the call.  We got the information, and Gerrit got the lunch.

Seattle scene, Shilshole Bay

More leaf color

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Adventures in Project World

Here are the new solar panel farms on the roof.  On clear days here in late September they generate a peak of almost 8 kilowatts of power, enough for the whole house while charging the batteries in about 4 hours.  Interestingly, the panels are almost as efficient at the tipped-back angle of 15 degrees you see here as they would be at their optimum angle of 41 degrees -- like 95% as efficient.  They're unobtrusive and much less vulnerable to the wind at the low angle though.

On Monday Sep 29 Pat had a long visit with our landscapers Alex and Nuno, working out a major plan for the garden and landscaping.  Nuno will start coming bi-weekly for consultations and maintenance.  (We have three Nuno acquaintances now: Nuno the Gardener, Nuno the Installer, and Nuno the Shopkeeper.  We'll try to keep them straight, for us and for you.)

Our big orange tree in front has been producing apparently ripe oranges for a few weeks now, which seems like the wrong season.  They're supposed to be a late winter fruit.  Many of them have split and fallen to the ground, also.  Alex took a look at them, identified the tree as an early-season orange, and found that the split and fallen oranges were perfectly fine if you pare away the bad parts.  He said the splitting might be due to insufficient watering during the summer, which was certainly true.  So Pat gathered up the fruit, cleaned it up, and squeezed some fresh orange juice for us.  (The oranges work just fine in sangria, too.)  Next year we'll water properly since we'll have irrigation installed, and we'll start looking for oranges in September.

On Tuesday Sep. 30 we went to Viana do Castelo, about 20 minutes away, for lunch at a restaurant which had been recommended by a friend.  We visited the Santuário do Sagrado Coração de Jesus (Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) beforehand, a beautiful big church on a hill overlooking the port of Viana do Castelo.  

At the Aquário restaurant Pat ordered grilled sea bass (robalo grelhado) and Gerrit had grilled sea bream (dourada grelhado), and we actually had the restraint to take pictures before digging in.  Lunch was excellent, the fish was light and flavorful, and the staff was friendly and tolerant of our lame Portuguese.  We did a little strolling along the beach boardwalk afterwards.

The robalo (or is it dourada?)

The dourada (or is it robalo?)

On Wednesday Oct 1 a crew arrived to do the wall demolition and conduit installation required to put in our pool cover.  We didn't have much time, since we were leaving on a trip in a week, and we told them that.  They took down most of the low stone wall with a jackhammer, with the idea of leaving a trench for the conduit from pool to garage.

Aaand, the next day no one showed up.  We got a message the night before saying that they could only come in the afternoon, but then that didn't even happen.  Our expat friends agree: it is hard to get projects done here.  Schedules are only suggestions.  Patience and persistence are required.  The latest "suggestion" is that a crew of four will absolutely be here without fail on Monday Oct 6 to completely finish the job.  At about the last minute, this is.  We'll see whether it happens.

On that day the solar panel installer Nuno was also here retrofitting a new garage electrical panel to separate main and backup circuits (and to provide for future growth), which is working fine now.  Our solar panels are back on line, powering the home and charging the batteries, after several hours with no power at all.  The crew installing the conduit (two at first and three after a long lunch, not four) for the pool cover has been doing a good job also, despite being nerve-rackingly late.  This turned out to be a larger job than anyone thought, requiring some concrete work to shore up some eroded spots and deeper drilling than we expected, but they did finish at the end of the day.

We've heard this before, that Portuguese workers seem disorganized and late but after a frantic scramble at the end everything turns out okay.  It kind of goes along with the more laid-back philosophy of "not to worry, everything will be fine".  It will take some time for us type-A Americans to get used to that, but we are.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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