Spring Bounty, Rainbows, and Swims

We've found an excellent new handyman / electrician.  Marcelo was here Friday May 22 to retrofit all the concealed tubular fluorescent lights here with LEDs, and to replace the four bathroom fans which were clattering themselves (and us) to death.  He was able to get here within days of our contacting him, he was right on time, quoted the whole job very reasonably, and did a great job.  He speaks only a little English, so Gerrit got to try out his Portuguese with him.  Gerrit was told that his Portuguese was "very, very good", but he is sure that Marcelo was just being nice.  It's good to get to know tradespeople who can help like this, and we're sure we'll call on him many times in the future.

Saturday night May 23 a little after midnight we had a huge thunderstorm pass right over us.  Lightning flashed continuously, every couple seconds, and one very bright bolt was immediately followed by an enormous clap of thunder.  It must have struck just a couple hundred meters (yards) away.  The bedroom clocks stayed lit, though, and there was nothing we could do but drift back to sleep after the storm had passed.  In the morning we were relieved to see that the power was still up.  But on closer inspection of the solar system data, the power grid had failed during the storm and was still down!  We had been running on batteries since midnight, and then on direct solar power as the day dawned clear.  We're off the grid, as long as we get some sun!

On Sunday May 24 we saw an exotic hoopoe bird perching right up on our back garden wall.  It was flexing its magnificent crest a little.  By the time we got a camera up it was just turning away to leave, but it was a nice treat to see.  See this post for a little more about hoopoes.

You'd think good old Johnson's Baby Shampoo would be the same the world over, right?  Babies are, why not their shampoo?  Well, there is quite a difference.  There are ingredient restrictions and even cultural adjustments to fragrance and feel, viscosity, the way it foams, and how easily it rinses off.  It even stings the eyes over here!  Gerrit gets blepharitis (red eyelids) occasionally, and when he used the old remedy of washing the eyelids with Johnson's Baby Shampoo over here it smelled funny, felt funny, stung the eyes something fierce, and took a long time to wash off.  Gemini the AI to the rescue: there are indeed differences in Johnson's Baby Shampoo worldwide, this decades-old baby shampoo treatment is no longer recommended, and there are many excellent over-the-counter compounds for blepharitis treatment in Portugal.  Gerrit will take his now thoroughly bloodshot eyes into the pharmacy and try to convince them he's not a wino.

The cherries (which Pat says life is a bowl of) and strawberries are in full bloom in the markets, and Pat's zucchini and cucumber vines are producing by the basket.  She's been harvesting them while they're still young and tender (no bowling-pin zucchinis allowed), and they are so delicious.  We also have a few strawberry plants of our own, and we get a nice ripe one every couple of days.  

By the way, there are roadside stands appearing about this time of year with signs saying "há cerejas", which literally means "there are cherries".  Not "we have cherries", "get your cherries here", or "cherries for sale", but "there are cherries".  So many things don't translate word-for-word.  To say "we have cherries" in Portuguese would be "temos cerejas", but that would sound funny to a Portuguese ear.  Just like "we have cherries" would sound to them as they learn English.  "You have cherries?  Who cares?  Are there cherries?", they might ask.

On Sunday May 24 we had a rain shower late in the afternoon which resulted in this beautiful rainbow, seen from our balcony.  Not to get all picky about such a lovely scene, but why would the region under the rainbow be lighter than the rest of the picture?  It looks like a glowing snow globe bubble.  Maybe the rainbow marks the boundary of a critical viewing angle to the sun, below which the light is refracted differently.  Or something.  Or maybe we shouldn't have selected "Hallmark card" for the photo effect on the camera.

Gerrit took the season's inaugural swim on Tuesday May 26.  It was about 28 C (82 F) and Gerrit was beginning to roast by about 6 PM.  MO (our cleaning robot) has been keeping the pool nice and clean, so Gerrit retracted the cover and jumped in.  It was heavenly, and within minutes his feeling of being a human roast beef was gone.  The pool cover is doing a nice job of absorbing solar heat into the pool.  The top 30 cm or so (1 foot) was significantly warmer than the depths below.  Running the pump automatically for four hours a day mixes up the warm and cool water to an average of about 23 C (73 F) right now, which is perfect for Gerrit but a little chilly for Pat.  She'll be in there in another few weeks.

(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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Late May at Casa da Rocha

 OK, just to justify our existence over the past few weeks, here are some highlights: 

• Caulk showers and replace door gaskets 
• Organize and clear out closets in anticipation of unpacking 
• Fix sticking slider doors 
• Order power supplies for US voltage & frequency conversion where needed 
• Keep track of developments in the garden 
• Repair a broken granite paver in the patio 
• Get a new mattress and start design for a wall bed in a guest room
• Tether the thermometer and chlorine float in the pool by drilling the granite 
• Do weeding and garden maintenance 
• Coat the ipê wood pool cover bench with teak oil 
• Daily physical therapy appointments for Pat 
• Order and get the pool cleaner robot, configure and test 
• Start spring pressure washing the granite 
• Order a new pressure washer when the old one died for the second time 
• Order and install a little railing up a step to the pool 

Not really much to elaborate on, but if we can make it entertaining we will.

We are both practicing Portuguese every day and slowly getting better.  We can both understand about a third of normal speech now, Pat is getting bolder with her exchanges in shops and Gerrit is too, even making small talk sometimes.  When messaging or emailing, Gerrit usually comes up with the Portuguese in his own words, slowly and incompletely, typing it first into the DeepL translator to check that the resulting English is what he intended.  He is sure it isn't fluent native-quality text, but he's getting better and quicker at it.

Here's a bucolic scene of the neighborhood sheep grazing on our middle property level.  The shepherdess is off to the left, out of sight.  Every few days they all come through, and we wave hello.

And here is MO, our new scrubbing pool robot, shuttling across the pool bottom and up a wall.  It does that wall trick by suctioning water in from its underside.  We sat and watched MO's maiden voyage for far too long, hypnotized.

Gerrit now has the main components for producing real US electrical power (120 V sinusoidal, 60 Hz) for use with some of our appliances we brought with us, notably Pat's beloved sewing machine and serger.  He needs to get a few more assembly parts and tools and soon Pat will be stitching again.

On Thursday May 21 we went to the little beach town of Vila Praia de Âncora, about an hour northwest of here, way up in the very northwest corner of Portugal.  We had been invited to an expats lunch with about 20 people there at the Casa dos Caracois restaurant.  We had grilled swordfish and sardines, both excellent, and sat next to some folks from Portland who have been here in Portugal for about three years.  We enjoyed their company, made WhatsApp connections, and will see them at another expats lunch soon.

The town itself is a little fishing village with a large fortress, the Forte da Lagarteira, probably built around 1650.  There are sweeping long sandy beaches, with hardly anyone on them on this lovely May day.  You can see some Camino de Santiago pilgrims or walkers here, on their way to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (northwestern Spain).  We saw many of them passing through town, and we see them in Ponte de Lima too.  They are each on one of the many routes to the cathedral.

Entrance sign at the town center

Detail of the intricate laser-cut iron fisherman

What, you expected a "before" picture?

(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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Our Domestic Adventure

More home improvements are underway here at Pat & Gerrit's Domestic Adventure.  We have our garage door on a battery backup system now so we'll be able to get into the garage even in a total blackout, and we ordered a keypad to mount on the outside so workers can get in there any time too.  We ordered a pool cleaner robot to liberate Gerrit from that big vacuuming job.  It is a little rotary brush tread-driven thing like MO (Microbe Obliterator) in the Pixar movie WALL-E.  MO's favorite expression was "foreign contaminant!" as he scrubbed furiously, and it's what we're naming our robot.  It is battery powered, and crawls around on the pool bottom (and walls!) scrubbing the surfaces and scooping up junk.  And we have our painter and construction guy Rui lined up to replace skylights and re-do a low part in the roof.  That will happen late this summer.

We were so busy nesting that we forgot about the Feiras Novas 200th anniversary celebration in Ponte de Lima on Tuesday May 5!  There were fireworks and a live band, and we slept right through the whole thing.  Here is a post about last year's actual Feiras Novas festival, a huge party and the 199th anniversary, and we plan to attend this year's event this fall too.

Rachel, our furniture sales contact and interior decorator, paid us a visit on Thursday May 7 to take photos and measurements for a couple more pieces of custom furniture.  She did a great job with the main beds, which are now installed, so it will be great to see what she comes up with for the bookshelf and fold-up beds.  We drew up some sketches and dimensions for a couple chests of drawers too.

Pat has had a bad right knee since a serious mountain climbing fall in high school.  She's been putting up with it and reinjuring it ever since, but now she is preparing for a knee replacement procedure this winter.  She went to our favorite hospital in nearby Viana do Castelo on Thursday May 7 for an MRI and X-rays.  High quality modern imaging equipment, both knees, both exams, total €180 ($212) out of pocket, paid for there at the hospital with a credit card just after the procedure.  Health care done right.

As of the 12th it has been rainy and cloudy for most of May.  April was beautiful and clear but May so far has mostly been wet and dark.  We're eager to get to our projects outside, but not in the rain.

On Wednesday May 13 we celebrated our anniversary at an elegant Ponte de Lima restaurant called Pimm's.  (We've never been very good at celebrating our anniversary on our actual anniversary.)  The restaurant is in a renovated farmhouse with thick dark timbers, a huge fireplace, and thick stone walls.  The grounds are beautiful, tasteful and park-like.  They have an extensive Portuguese menu and an even more extensive fine wine list.  We ordered Pernil de Porco no Forno (roast leg of pork) for two, with a bottle of Touriga Nacional wine (a Portuguese grape, a favorite of ours).  The pork was carved at our table by one of the friendly and attentive wait staff, and it was delicious.  By the time our mixed fresh fruit dessert arrived we could hardly eat another bite.  We went home happy.

Earlier that day we had heard a chainsaw nearby, sounding like it was in the grove of eucalyptus trees which our property borders on.  We were hoping the owners weren't cutting the grove down; it's a lovely part of our view.  After a couple dead trees on the end came down, the logging stopped.  They had removed the only obstacle to our view of the medieval Ponte de Lima bridge from our living room!  It was our anniversary gift from the neighbors.  The photo here is the new view from our living room, zoomed 2x, and you can see the bridge and the river Lima serenely off in the distance.

(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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A Gallimaufry of Miscellany

It's pretty easy to take things off the wall so you can paint, but much harder to put them back.  Drywall anchors get damaged during take-down or start to spin on reinstallation, things need to be checked and adjusted for levelness, and mounting hardware gets lost or mixed up.  Gerrit was chipping away at all that for six days after the painters finished, in addition to disassembling beds in two rooms and moving the parts out of the way for the new furniture.  We're all back to normal now, except with new paint.  And it is beautiful!  Our embarrassing wine stain on the ceiling and walls is a thing of the past.

On Thursday Apr 23 the delivery truck from the furniture store arrived, right on time, and a couple energetic young men carried several packages of pieces for two storage beds and two bedside stands upstairs and into the bedless bedrooms.  In about an hour they had them all assembled beautifully, and we now have some lovely new beds with nice storage under them.  Any day now we will start digging into the boxes in the garage containing all our stored Seattle stuff.  We haven't seen the stuff for over three years.  It will be interesting to see the stuff we thought we couldn't live without.

With the help of our intrepid handyman Andrew on Friday Apr 24 we got the disassembled beds and a large heavy bookcase hauled from the house to the garage.  Andrew can use one of the beds himself, the bookcase will work nicely as storage right where it sits in the garage, and we'll find a good home for the other bed.  Andrew also hauled a few of our boxes from the garage up to the front room and we broke into a couple of them.  Gerrit's crowbar!  Pat's Tupperware!  It's like Christmas in April.  Now where are we going to put this stuff...?

Day after day of unbloggable life.  Honest, we're quite busy, but it's just not the kind of stuff that makes exciting copy.  A photo of the newly-mounted vacuum cleaner on the wall?  A blow-by-blow account of Pat's email finally working again after three days and hours of frustration?  We'd lose our dear readers in droves.  Well, there are a few photo-worthy things, like the new beds and Wall Clock 3.0 with its special Summertime Mosquito Fumigator accessory.  You can see a little of the new bedroom paint colors here too.

Makes you wish it was bedtime all day long	Wall Clock 3.0
Bare naked storage bed	Look at all that space!

And yes, it does rain here now and then.  Tuesday Apr 28 we had some thundershowers and drenching rain for a little while.

Pat and our landscape designer Alex continue working on the garden.  The irrigation is almost all installed and is working fine.  Alex has proposed a beautiful plan for what used to be the lawn area next to the swimming pool, and he and Pat have worked out what should be a stunning arrangement of shrubs, vines, and plants there.  Alex roughed it out for us while he was here, with cobblestone markers so we could visualize the paths and flower beds, and it will look gorgeous.

On Friday May 1 our friend Maayan was part of an art exhibit we attended in the big city of Braga, about 45 minutes away.  She showed three drawings she had made, and many works from other artists were shown in the gallery too.  It was well attended by dozens of people, and we had fun seeing her work on display.

Pat and Maayan next to Maayan's art

Her drawings and collages: Woman, Man, and Child

You may recall that our garage cannot easily be entered, in any way, in a total power failure (meaning that the power grid is down, it's dark out, and the solar batteries are empty).  This makes shopping for groceries (or getting to a hospital) difficult.  We decided that a battery backup UPS for the garage door only would be a way around this.  Gerrit bought a UPS a while ago (which was the easy part) and finally got around to actually installing it on the weekend of May 2 and 3.  He used Portuguese (European?) wiring techniques so it looks very professional, and it works great.  No longer will we be trapped here during extended total power failures.

As of Sunday May 3 we have enough home-grown lemons for another batch of Pat's famous limoncello.  She peeled lemons and started the elixir brewing, and in a month we'll be sipping that liquid sunshine.

Our long-staggering bungalow project has finally done a face plant.  In mid-January we engaged a real estate lawyer to see whether we could actually build on our lot, what with fire regulations and zoning, and months later we still don't know.  The lawyers point to the Municipality of Ponte de Lima, who still haven't responded to them, but we're sure the lawyers have not exactly been proactive about this.  We do know that land in Ponte de Lima has recently been re-zoned, and it seems like it's now a snarled mess with nobody willing to take a stand.  If it's this bad to just find out if the construction is possible, think what actually getting a building permit would be like!  We're giving up.  We have two bedrooms in the house we can prepare for guests, and for big crowds we can even put them up nearby.  The 50.000 € ($58,000) cost of a completed, fitted, and plumbed bungalow would buy a lot of Airbnb time for our guests.  We do want a little pool changing room where the bungalow would have been, but that is small scale enough that we can just build it.

(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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More Mini Vacation

On Sunday Apr 12 we took a back-road drive about a half hour to the city of Braga, to the southwest of here.  We followed a route we'd never taken before, and it was a beautiful slice of the Portuguese countryside.  We browsed a pottery outlet and had lunch in a big, boisterous restaurant next door called Pó d'Arroz (entry shown at left), which served tasty basic food to a throng of locals (and us).  The name literally translates to "rice flour", and we can't find any cultural significance for that, so I guess the restaurant is just named after rice flour.  Their favorite ingredient?

Back in Ponte de Lima there was a big line at the grocery store, and we took our place at the end.  A minute later a store security guard came up to us and motioned to follow him.  Oh no, were we suspected shoplifters?  No, he took us to a self-check register and checked us out, item by item.  What a nice thing to do!  We also found that you don't put your self-checked-out items directly in a bag, you put them arranged on a shelf next to the register.  There may be cameras above to keep an eye on the self-check items.  Anyway, it was a very nice gesture from the guard; we jumped the line with his help and were soon on our way.

Pat's shoulder ultrasound a few weeks ago has led to a series of daily appointments at a local, modern physiotherapist.  She has gotten TENS treatments, other electro-stimulation, massage and motion stretching, and they are successfully improving her range of motion without pain.  The first week of hour-long visits have been beneficial, and we hope for more like that along with some home exercises.  The co-pay for her 15 visits is € 12 ($14) each.

On Wednesday Apr 15 we took the afternoon off for a trip to the town of Ponte da Barca and some lunch there, pork loin at the Emigrante restaurant.  Ponte da Barca is a nice little town about a half hour due east of us, also on the Lima river like Ponte de Lima.  It has a lot of the same character as Ponte de Lima.  On the way back we followed some signs to a viewpoint, capped with huge rounded boulders.

The restaurant (stock photo)

Mmm, lunch

On the way to the viewpoint

Where the road ended

And the view from there

And the following day we took another trip to Ponte da Barca, to take some more photos and have some more lunch.  This time we found the Roman style bridge (built in the 14th century), the "Ponte" part of "Ponte da Barca".  "Barca" in Portuguese means "boat", so the town is named "bridge of the boat".  Why do you need a boat if you have a bridge?  Apparently they named the town after the boat that used to ferry across the river before the bridge was built.  There's a little rowboat monument in town.  Here is a video of the Lima river and the Ponte da Barca bridge:

Mmm, lunch	Statues and a hospital on the town square
Ponte da Barca street scene	The famous bridge

Here is a surprise about Portuguese income tax: you don't know how much you owe or will be refunded when you submit your tax form, unlike the US form 1040 where the total is shown.  Here, the Fiscal Authority computes your tax from your form and lets you know.  Our form was just submitted, but we won't know what we owe or will be refunded until as late as July 31.  There is apparently no way to reliably estimate the amount from the form.  With the 1040 you can juggle things around to affect your tax before you submit it, but not here.  Maybe that's a good thing: they want you to just report your income and expenses without trying to jigger the books, and they just give you a fair figure computed the same way for everyone.  At least we hope it's something like that.

On Friday Apr 17 we checked out of our Airbnb mid-morning and drove around some more while the painters finished up and cleaned up.  We visited a local attraction, Mesa dos Quatro Abades ("Table of the Four Abbots"), located just a few kilometers from home.  The sign says it is "A place where four parishes converged, where the abbots would gather to discuss their problems".  It looks like a nice picnic area now, with a dark little shed holding summer chairs and tables.  We had tried to visit the site some time ago but the road looked impassible.  When we arrived at the head of the road this time, there were three workers just finishing up their lunch.  Gerrit asked about the Mesa, had a little conversation with a worker, and they hopped in their truck to escort us.  Their truck was much larger than our little car, but they made it down the narrow cobbled "impassible" road just fine.  We waved thanks as they drove on, hung out at the Mesa a little while, and then followed the truck's route through narrow and winding roads back to the highway.  We're learning how to navigate the narrowest passages with confidence.

Storage shed and tiles at Mesa dos Quatro Abades	Admiring the view from MdQA
"Bem vindo" means "welcome", and here's the welcoming committee	The countryside as we left MdQA
A charming little chapel on the way home	A soothing rest stop on a small river

Back home, the paint looked just beautiful and the painters had done an excellent job of finishing.  There had been little flaws and patched holes before painting which we can't even find now; they're patched perfectly.  The colors are very nice, similar to the original light pastels but with a "silk" finish rather than matte.  Marks clean off very easily.  (Don't ask how we know this.)  We spent the next few days cleaning and restoring, and we'll send some photos when it's presentable.  We have already unwrapped Pat's china hutch, the biggest and most fragile item we shipped from Seattle, and it's in beautiful shape, not a mar on it and all the glass pristine.  It's really nice to see that symbol of Amish craftsmanship from the US standing proudly here.

And immediately after the painters left the furniture store messaged to say our beds and nightstands are ready!  They will be delivered and assembled on Thursday Apr 23.  Maybe we'll wait on photos till that is complete.

As if this post didn't have enough photos, here are a couple more which fell through the cracks and should have made it into our last post.  There is a beautiful country scene with an old house and grazing sheep from our Apr 7 drive, and a nice view of the tiles and wisteria at the Ponte de Lima garden we visited on Apr 11.

(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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Our Local Mini Vacation

On Thursday April 9 we took advantage of our mini-vacation here in the Airbnb and drove to Viana do Castelo on the back roads.  We had lunch at our favorite restaurant there, Aquário, and had our favorite dishes of grilled robalo and dorado fish.  The Portuguese do that so well: fresh Atlantic fish seasoned with only olive oil and salt, grilled to perfection.

Afterward, we wandered around the countryside south of Viana and stumbled on a menir, or megalithic monument, in the middle of a neighborhood.  It's called the Menir São Paio de Antes, and it dates from the 3rd or 4th millenium BCE.  Thousands of years ago!  The plaque says it is 1.65 m high (5.4 ft) and with a southern inclination that "accentuates its eminently phallic profile".  Here's Pat looking a little embarrassed next to it.  Researchers believe that menirs functioned similarly to other Neolithic stone monuments, to mark places of collective importance, astral or fertility cults, and to mark territory.  We were in the Esposende region near Viana do Castelo, which reportedly has a "vast set" of them.

On Friday Apr 10 we got haircuts and beauty treatments (well, one of us anyway), and had lunch in a downtown Ponte de Lima restaurant which had been recommended to us.  It was nothing special, but fun and a nice view of the river.  Then we visited our house and spoke with the gardener and painter who were both there.  Pat did some planning with Alex the gardener, then we both went inside and were stunned at how beautifully the painting is coming along.  We are both used to a certain amount of imperfection, visible drywall marks, and texture added to paint and rollering in order to mask flaws, but these guys are creating a near-perfect surface and then painting it flawlessly.  Still they cluck about how it's not perfect because of the underlying surface, but it looks like showroom quality to us.

Our painter had started and worked several days on our job, purely on a handshake, before we were able to get money together for a deposit.  That was remarkable, and we told him how much we appreciated it.  He said he started his business in the southern part of Portugal where he was cheated on several jobs.  People there, he said, seemed to be proud of their ability to cheat and take advantage of others (sound like anyone you know?).  Since moving here to north Portugal (the Minho region) nine years ago though, he said it's much different.  He hasn't been underpaid on a single job.  He said people here tend to be proud of the quality of work they do rather than their cunning, which is what we have found too.

After checking on the homestead we did a little more driving around the area, familiarizing ourselves with the countryside.  It was a beautiful drive, including this shot of the village of Vila Nova de Cerveira from halfway up an adjacent mountain road, and what we dubbed "Husky Hill" for its purple and gold flowers.  We're keeping a lookout for a crimson and gray landscape for you Cougar fans.

On Saturday Apr 11 we visited the house to discuss having our painter (who is also a Velux skylight installer) come replace our skylights.  We hope he can undertake that as soon as a stretch of sunny weather rears up.

Then we visited a garden park right here in Ponte de Lima, just on the west side of the medieval bridge, which we hadn't been to before.  It's a beautiful big garden, with waterfalls, a conservatory, and a playground.  The wisteria hanging over many of the paths was in full bloom and gave off a gorgeous fragrance.  And thanks to PGPA Blog-o-Matic Scratch-n-Sniff, you can scratch your screen and enjoy it yourselves!  Go ahead, give it a try.  Mmm, delightful.  If you have any trouble, call Google tech support.

While in the conservatory we heard a croaking raucous sound, like a crow, but we couldn't see anything.  We went outside and scanned the ponds next to the conservatory for maybe frogs, and found a couple of them making the big noise.  Raucous Frogs.  You can use that for the name of your indie band.

	Scratch-n-Sniff!
	A little hut made from slabs of Portuguese cork bark
Princess Tree blossoms have a little insect landing strip	Inside the conservatory
Lead singer for The Raucous Frogs	You can see the medieval bridge past the trees

(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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Easter Fireworks, Painters Starting

On March 31 we selected the fourth of four painters who quoted on our job, and he will be able to start on April 7.  This is great news!  He shifted his schedule around to get started right away, he's very professional and qualified, and seems punctual and dependable too. 

And speaking of that sort of thing, a fellow expat asked the Gemini AI about Portuguese cultural norms and got a very interesting response.  Here is a summary:

•   Time is fluid in Portugal, and personal relationships often take precedence over rigid schedules.
•   The "yes" that doesn't lead to action is often not a lie, but a cultural desire to avoid conflict or preserve face.  In Portugal, saying "no" directly can feel rude or confrontational.
•   We need to shift from a "command and control" style to a "relationship and reminder" style.
•   In Portugal, people do things for people, not just for the company or the contract.
•   In some cultures a follow-up email is seen as a reminder; in Portugal, if done too harshly, it can be seen as a lack of trust.  A WhatsApp message actually feels more personal and less like a "paper trail" audit.

This comes simply from a distillation of online sources, of course, but AI does that so much better than we puny humans do.  It lines up well with our experience.  The typical American directness and task/schedule focus comes across to the Portuguese as rude and blunt, and Gerrit especially has seen himself make that mistake.  Adapting to the Portuguese style feels smoother, more personal, and more respectful.  Slower and less predictable, to be sure, but it's a warmer and more pleasant experience.

On April 1 we started to pack household things up, stack them away, and prepare for painting.  Not very exciting, but it's what we were mainly occupied with for a week or so.

Our pool heat pump installer Nuno came the afternoon of April 1 to examine the installation site and discuss options.  The new models are black and heat most efficiently in direct sun, so we have a perfect location picked out which gets full sun almost all day.  It's in an inconspicuous location too.  Nuno will be able to start installation shortly.

On Friday Apr 3 Pat reserved a nice Airbnb in Ponte de Lima which we will move to while the painting is going on.  We'll come back home to check progress now and then.  The Airbnb has a little kitchenette and looks very nice in the pictures.  "Secluded and quiet" says the ad.  It is just 10 minutes away from downtown Ponte de Lima and about 20 minutes from our place.

Saturday Apr 4 the Easter fireworks began, through most of the evening and until after midnight.  Then at 6:30 Easter Sunday morning they started up again and went through most of the day and far into the night.  And then on Monday, more fireworks, and shops were still closed.  Easter is one festive holiday in Portugal!  We have some friends who moved into a nice quiet area near a church.  Quiet until one of the dozens of Catholic holidays erupts, that is.  Bells, fireworks, music on loudspeakers, and crowds then rule the day.  They're actually staying with some other friends until Easter dies down.

We watched the spectacular fireworks display in Arcozelo (a neighboring village down the hill from us) from our balcony Easter night.  With the field glasses, and elbows resting on the balcony railing, it was really breathtaking.  The show went on for more than a half hour, with huge commercial-grade fireworks equal to anything we've seen over Lake Union.  A delightful spectacle, right here from our balcony.

On Monday Apr 6 we finished up getting the house ready for painting.  Everything was removed from the walls which we could, some small repairs and cleanups were done, and cobwebs were swept out of corners.  The following day we were booked for our Airbnb.  Late in the afternoon we heard from the painter that he would be here, on schedule, the following day.

On Tuesday Apr 7, right on schedule, our painter and his assistant arrived and got right to work.  We loaded our Airbnb belongings into the car and set off to drive around and explore until check-in time.  But an hour or so after we left we got a message from the painter that the lights had gone out.  Uh oh.  The same old solar backup load failure we thought was fixed?  The painters went to lunch and we returned home, broke into the garage (the only way to get in there when the power is out), and found three subsystem breakers had tripped in the house and in the garage.  It was currently thunderstorming, so was this power failure due to lightning?  The painters returned and we learned that the power had gone out when they were lowering a ceiling light fixture to paint around it.  They also found mouse droppings in the ceiling.  So, mice have apparently been chewing wires which shorted and blew three breakers when the fixture was moved.  Fix one problem and up crops another.  We got the power back up anyway, and showed the painters where the breakers are located in case this happens again.  And now we have to take care of the mouse/wiring mess.

In our wanderings we found this scenic Ponte Romana (Roman Bridge) and old mill over the Rio Estorãos a few minutes from home.  It looks in the Roman style, but we don't think it actually dates that far back.  It's lovely anyway, and there is a nice picnic area, park, and swimming nearby.

The Airbnb is nice, good modern appliances, clean, and just 10 minutes from Ponte de Lima, but "secluded and quiet" it is not.  It is right on a main road and surrounded by houses.  We must be spoiled by our truly secluded and quiet home.  There is a bit of a musty smell here too.  But all in all we're happy with it.

We checked in on the painters today, and they are doing a great job.  They have this professional rotary sanding wand with a built-in vacuum cleaner so there is hardly any dust, even though they are aggressively sanding the walls smooth.  Everything is tarped and masked beautifully, fixtures are removed in order to paint underneath, and we feel like we are in good hands.  The place will be gorgeous when they are done.

(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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