Indoor Cozy and Boxes from Overseas

It's hard to come up with an interesting blog post with the weather as it's been lately and with our activities being so boring.  It's been quite stormy for most of the week prior to Jan 23, with another week of rain and wind ahead.  We've been venturing out a little but mostly holing up at home, enjoying the fire and the dramatic storm views and doing indoor things.  Pat's been doing some beautiful embroidery work (see below), and Gerrit has been upping his game of Portuguese language study.

Gerrit continues to struggle with the solar power people too.  They admitted the couple big problems he's been harping on a couple weeks ago, but nothing is being done about it and further problems are cropping up.  We continue to have long backup load failures, and we now have an extension cord blue-taped to the floor so the internet stays up when they do a firmware upgrade.  It's ugly and a trip hazard, but it's necessary until we get an automatic transfer switch installed.  The vendor's answers to questions are vague or incomprehensible, but that is at least partly due to English being their second language.  Gerrit is nevertheless suspicious that they are trying to wear him down until he gives up.

On Tuesday Jan 27 the city of Soure in central Portugal saw the highest-ever recorded wind gusts in Portugal: 209 km/hr (130 MPH).  Holy cow!  This is part of Storm Kristin which is sweeping over the country, including here.  A typical day for us during the past week has varied from pleasant, calm, and partly sunny to lightning, thunder, wind storms, and torrential rain.  We are due for a lull on Saturday Jan 31, but then another storm will sweep in the following day.  It won't be as bad as Kristin, though, they say.

The big unloading day approaches!  On Thursday Jan 29 we cleaned the garage, laid down some blue tape boundaries, and parked the car outside so the truck can unload our Seattle goods.

The following day the movers arrived with our Seattle stuff.  They shuttled three loads into a smaller truck from the container truck a few kilometers away, wound up our narrow streets, and unloaded them into our garage.  They were cheerful and friendly, despite the occasional downpour as they worked, and they carefully and quickly unloaded and stacked our boxes.  They spoke English well too.  Pat had some boxes she wanted to leave exposed in order to unpack them first, and the movers checked where she wanted each box as they unloaded.  They even enthusiastically carried her huge, heavy, and fragile china cabinet up the stairs to the living room.  One of them then asked, "We take it upstairs?", ready to go up another flight.  We laughed and said, "This IS upstairs!".  They were perfectly willing to take anything and everything up from the garage too.

Getting started	Pat watching for special boxes
It took three truckloads this size	The full garage, and starting to unpack

We had had two special crates built in the US for the couple pieces of furniture we kept.  You can see part of one of them above.  To pass customs the wood must be specially treated and dried to be perfectly pest free, so we had contracted the work to some specialists.  Gerrit had a jolly time specifying the crates and dimensions in CAD (Computer Aided Design), and they looked just wonderful and strong.  In CAD at least.  Unfortunately they were way over-designed, way heavier than they needed to be, and they were complete monsters to move.  We don't know how the movers did it, and now Gerrit is having to haul them around to uncrate them.  Boy, everything inside is perfectly preserved though!

Our goods all seem to have survived almost four years in storage, trucking and unloading to the container, a trip across the Atlantic, customs, and trucking to our door, completely intact and in good shape.  Amazing!  It is such a relief.  International Van Lines took care of the whole door-to-door shipment (except that we packed our double-strength boxes ourselves), and we can recommend them highly.  Now that everything is here, we feel like we have officially moved to Portugal.

(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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Companies, Good and Bad

On Tuesday Jan 6 we thought we'd open our gift bottle of homemade vinho verde tinto wine to have with lunch.  It was bottled using a champagne bottle and cork, because vinho verde can be slightly carbonated.  Gerrit untwisted the wire basket and began easing the cork out, as usual with sparkling wine, when KAPOW, the cork and three-quarters of the wine exploded, spraying all over the kitchen and dining room!  This was a cork explosion like Gerrit had never seen, and he certainly didn't expect it from a mildly effervescent vinho verde.  Somebody must have been fiddling with the recipe.  There was pink wine sprayed on the ceiling, all over the walls, and on the floor.  We mopped the mess up as quickly as we could, but the paint is matte and porous so the wine soaked right in.  Here is a picture of a small part of the carnage.  We tried a couple cleaning methods to no avail, so it looks like we will have to repaint earlier than we'd planned.  Or maybe we should just spatter wine all over both rooms so it looks like new wallpaper.  "Wine Splash" we'll call it.  The latest design trend.

Gerrit was awakened at 6 AM on Friday Jan 9 by a text from our solar panel vendor asking him to reset the solar system inverter.  Which was in the garage.  Which was inaccessible because the backup power which the garage door requires had failed due to their firmware update turning off its own internet access.  Thus began a four hour ordeal: breaking into the garage, marching back and forth between the house and garage (which are separated by about 10 meters (yards) and a large boulder), stringing up extension cords, rebooting the inverter, until the system was finally operational again.  The firmware update had started about 2 AM and got stuck in a failure loop, so the refrigerator, water pump, lights, etc, had been out for 8 hours altogether.  This is our new more secure solar power system, more robust, providing extra backup, giving us some grid independence.  How do you like it?  We don't.  Problems just keep cropping up with this thing and our overall electrical situation is more fragile now than it was before we installed it.  We must get this thing under control.  Bad company!

There is a thriving custom furniture fabrication industry in northern Portugal, notably in the town of Paços de Ferreira where there is a high concentration of companies building everything from off-the-shelf to full custom in exotic woods and styles.  We want to upgrade our beds to a storage type, where you lift a hinged mattress platform on gas struts to access a storage area underneath.  Pat found a retailer here in Ponte de Lima which sources from local furniture manufacturers, and we spent a little time shopping with them on Friday Jan 9.  They have a great showroom and we found just what we're after, including customization.  A saleswoman there was very helpful, spoke excellent English, and sent a dimensioned computer sketch (CAD) of beds and nightstands based on our specific wood choice, design, and sizes.  Good company!

Wednesday Jan 14 was nice, mostly clear, and our gardeners were here for some more progress on the irrigation system.  It's going to be very comprehensive and will take good care of the plants during the hot dry months.  They had a good idea about re-routing some of the piping for better aesthetics too.

And vindication is almost as sweet as revenge, MWAH-HA-HA-HA!  On Thursday Jan 15 Gerrit got a message from the solar panel vendors that, yes, in fact, the problems he has been screaming about for months are indeed problems and not the "perfectly normal" behavior they have been insisting on.  They have been dragging their feet and denying all this time while Gerrit has spent hours and hours logging, documenting, pleading, explaining, and doing technician work, but finally it seems to have sunk in.  They installed new firmware last Friday (the fiasco which is described above) which supposedly fixed the problems, but it has caused another which cropped up last Tuesday.  At least they are admitting this one, and will release another firmware fix.  So we are not out of the woods yet, but the vendors have at least admitted culpability and are on it.

Incidentally, no one has apologized or explained.  They thought they could just slip a fix in with new firmware while we weren't looking.  It reminds us of the Portuguese work culture we described here ("never apologize, the fix is the apology"), but these guys are Dutch!  What is this, a pan-European trait?  Frankly, it's probably just human nature.

Friday Jan 16 we heard from our shipping liaison that they can truck our Seattle goods to our home as early as the following Thursday, Jan 22!  No word about whether duty or fees are owed, but we've asked about that and probably won't hear until Monday.  Unfortunately we're busy on Jan 22 with something we can't get out of, but hopefully they can deliver shortly thereafter.  Good company!

On Saturday Jan 17 our local furniture store had received bids on our beds, so we returned, went through all the details, and made our down payment on two custom storage beds and two nightstands.  It may be up to two months before they're built, but we're not in a hurry.  It's great to have this taken care of!  The beds are very nice, and the extra storage will be a great place to stash some of the Seattle junk we have coming.

(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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Fireworks and Fires

Wednesday Dec 31 was New Year's Eve, of course, and we were determined to stay up for the fireworks.  We had heard that we would have a good view of them right from our balcony, so that's about as convenient as it gets.  We watched a movie and a half and had snacks and wine, while trying to keep those drooping eyelids open.  But boy was it worth it!  The whole Ponte de Lima valley was a bowl of colorful sparkling skyrockets, with booms and bangs echoing from all sides.  We haven't been this delighted by fireworks for years!  The video here doesn't do the display justice, but you can get an idea of how the whole area was erupting.  Everyone, including our next-door neighbor, seemed to have huge commercial grade fireworks, and they shot them off with gusto.  And best of all, fifteen minutes after the show was over we were snuggled in bed.  Gerrit, as usual, was hopelessly awake right on schedule at 6 AM, but with a bleary smile on his face.

The evening before the fireworks display we visited Luna and Christiano, some new young friends in their twenties, at their apartment in downtown Ponte de Lima.  Luna is teaching Pat and friends Portuguese, and we hadn't met her boyfriend Christiano.  They are both from Columbia and have been in Portugal about as long as we have.  Their English is good and we used some Portuguese too.  They served us homemade croissants with a cream cheese, jam, and blueberry spread, and gave us a bottle of artisanal vinho verde wine made by friends of theirs.  It is the vinho verde tinto variety, which is kind of a rosé.  We played games, mostly in Portuguese, had a great time, and parted good friends.

We forgot to mention that on Christmas day our goods from Seattle arrived at a port next to Porto.  They have made it through the Panama Canal and across the Atlantic Ocean!  Now we wait, for their journey through customs.  We have a Portuguese liaison who will handle all that, and also getting the goods trucked to our home.

We found out from a friend here that fireworks are manufactured right here in northern Portugal.  There is a family-run fireworks factory in the town of Lamego, due east of Porto.  (The factory actually exploded in 2017.)  We thought all that stuff came from China these days!  There are also a number of fireworks retailers in northern Portugal too, so there's no shortage of pyrotechnics available for the fireworks fans out there.

On Sunday Jan 4 the weather was okay and we wanted to take the afternoon off, so we took a little drive to some lagos (lagoons) a few kilometers away which we hadn't gotten around to finding yet.  There was a very nice interpretive center and you could walk around the lagos if you could make it for 7.5 km (4.7 mi), which was out of our league.  We got a few photos instead.

On the way back we wandered around till sunset so we could get some shots of some local churches, which were still lit up for the holidays.  Check out the rolling dot-matrix message of "Feliz Ano Novo" (Happy New Year) followed by the scrolling martini glass!  Maybe this church offers a special communion service.

About sunset on Monday Jan 5 we saw smoke rising from the ridge across the valley from us, just above the granite quarry.  It didn't look like a forest fire, the smoke was dark and we thought it was an industrial or home fire, but it turned out to be a forest fire after all.  Pat found that it was being reported on fogos.pt (a website for real time fire reporting in Portugal).  We kept a wary eye on it for a couple hours as it faded and flared.  The ridge was a hard fire line, fortunately: a steep drop with nothing on our side but granite.  Our remarkable bombeiros (firefighters) here got it under control and the blaze dimmed by about 8 PM.  We are so thankful for our all-volunteer fire department here, which is common in Portugal, and we are enthusiastic supporters.

And Gerrit captured this photo of the rare Portuguese Rainbow Snake slithering along our hallway.  Oh, wait, that's from the sunshine hitting the beveled edge of the bathroom mirror and reflecting down the hallway.  Never mind.

(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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Sight-seeing Photo Gallery

This is our 100th blog post!  Holy cow, that's a lot of adventure in 18 months.  The blog has become pretty unwieldy to take in all at once, but you can scan for dates and search for specific things by clicking on the hamburger (three horizontal lines) in the upper left corner of each post.  It's fun for us to review too; it's like a big diary.

Saturday Dec 27 was clear and bright, so we took the day off and went on a road trip.  Pat plotted a route along the small byways, roads we had mostly not been on, north to Valença on the Spanish border to see the Fortaleza (fortress) there.  It was a beautiful drive through the Portuguese countryside.  The fortress is a huge well-preserved medieval castle, including walls, grounds, and a village within, but was completely overwhelmed with tourists on this sunny Saturday during the Christmas holidays.  Gerrit said it reminded him of Venice: a beautiful tourist attraction except for the tourists.  We crept through traffic into the little village inside the castle walls, found that parking was already overflowing, and crept back out to try again when the crowds are thinner.

Next we drove to Mosteiro de Sanfins, an ancient monastery which is a little southeast of Valença.  This was the complete antithesis of the fortress we had just seen.  It was tranquil, natural, and we were the only people there.  We wandered around the moss-covered ruins of the medieval monastery, peering into the small, unheated, stone, monks' cells and admiring the ancient walls and arches.  We thought about the incredible work that would have been required to raise and set the granite blocks into position in the middle ages, or to build the beautiful, ornate self-supporting archways.  There were narrow vertical slits (archer's windows) in the monastery itself, too, evidence of the need for self-defense even in a monastery.  There were indications of cannon ball strikes on the outer walls too.  Such a soft, easy, and luxurious life we lead now, we reflected as we eased back into our comfortable automobile and drove off.

The original monastery	Outside grounds
Inside the ruins	Arches
Corridor of monks' cells	A monk emerges from his meditations

Torre de Lapela was the next stop: the tower which remains from a medieval fort.  The castle itself was demolished in 1706 to provide stone for a nearby project, but the tower was left intact.  We walked around and gazed up at the imposing granite structure, but the steep stairs were too much for us so we restricted our admiration to gazing.

Granaries in front of the tower

Seems a little steep

We took another winding beautiful drive home following unfamiliar back roads through unfamiliar villages in the Portuguese countryside:

Not far from Retorta (2F4M+FGV map coords)

Village of Castanheira (seen from XG4G+MFH)

As the leaves began to fall, we noticed what looked like a huge hornet nest about 10 m (30 feet) up in a tree in the neighbor's lot across the way.  Here is a seriously zoomed-in photo.  A couple weeks later this red and white ribbon appeared, attached to the bottom.  Pat found that this is a sign that the authorities have destroyed the inhabitants of an Asian Hornet nest and not to touch it.  They also place a marker at the base of the tree.  We thought this was a nice example of the government responding to a reported dangerous condition and taking quick action.

The weather has been very nice the past few days and Christmas lights are still up, so after sundown on Sunday Dec 28 we took a drive to see some more of them.  There are only a few houses which have significant lights up, but Ponte de Lima looks like a birthday cake.  You see "Boas Festas" (Happy Holidays) all over.

There are lights at each entry road into town.  Here are all but one, which we couldn't get a clear shot of:

And here are some of the other light shows in our village and downtown.  2025 is the 900th birthday year of the town of Ponte de Lima (the oldest chartered town in Portugal), and you can see banners and lights commemorating that.

Our village church	Ponte de Lima old town
Happy 900th birthday!	Wishing you 900 more!
Downtown historic district	Nativity scene downtown

We also got some shots looking across the Lima river and back at the town and medieval bridge:

(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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Christmas II

This is our second Christmas in Portugal.  A year ago we were in our apartment in Vila Nova de Gaia, and now we're in our home in Ponte de Lima.  Much has changed, but much is similar too.  We hope you all had a good holiday too!  

Pat has been beading more than a dozen Christmas ornaments for gifts.  It's a tricky and exacting job, but she loves it and the results are beautiful.  Since this post will appear after Christmas, we won't be blowing any surprises by posting a photo here.

Here is our wee tabletop Christmas tree and a cozy fire at home.  Pat strung some nice icicle light strings along the balcony too.

On Christmas Eve we drove an hour or so south to Porto and checked into a beautiful hotel which Pat had found, just a kilometer or so from our friend Bernardo.  He had invited us again to his consoada, or Christmas Eve dinner get-together, the peak of the season in Portugal.  We checked in to the hotel and hopped an Uber to Bernardo's place.

Most of Bernardo's family was there: his mom Lígia, brother Pedro and sister Rita.  His dad, the good-hearted doctor, had agreed again to take someone's shift at work, so we missed him.  Some other guests were there too: Carolina, Bernardo's Uruguayan girlfriend who had just earned her Masters in Fine Arts, Natalía, a Uruguayan friend of hers, Martín, a fellow tour guide and colleague of Bernardo's originally from Macedonia, and Ann, an American from, incredibly enough, Seattle!

Bernardo met Ann when he helped her find an apartment about a year ago, in his role as a real estate agent.  Some time after that she was diagnosed with colon cancer.  Bernardo visited her in the hospital.  The cancer spread and she was pronounced terminal.  She is shortly leaving for Seattle to say her final goodbyes to her family there.

Bernardo, our friend with the heart of gold, invited her to his place for this, her last Christmas.  She is weak and barely able to stand.  He and his brother picked her up in their car, and literally carried her up three flights of steep winding stairs to his apartment.  She was a joy, proud of the life she has lived and facing her final goodbye with quiet courage and a sense of humor.  We had a great time talking about Seattle and Ellensburg with her, and her love of dogs and horses.  We had some wine and, courtesy of Rita, Carolina, and Natalía, an excellent meal of Bacalhau à Brás, salad, and a Uruguayan dessert cake.  Then Ann grew very tired.  Bernardo and his brother carried her back downstairs and, along with Carolina, drove her home.

Natalía, Carolina, Ann, and Lígia

Ann and Lígia

Lígia, Pat, and Martín

Our hearts were full, and our admiration for Bernardo and his family was boundless.

Pat had baked her delicious shortbread as gifts for everyone, and we had bought little jars of local Ponte de Lima honey to share some of our new home-town pride.  We distributed gift bags of all this, and other gifts were exchanged all around.  Pat got a luxurious warm scarf, and Gerrit got a cool simulated-sunrise alarm clock.

Then some of us played a board game from the Azores called Marralhinha (photo Board Game Geek) while others drifted into conversations.  The game was fun and fast-moving with quick reversals of fortune, and Bernardo's siblings were aces at it.  Gerrit started to get it after a while and had a great time too.

Finally, about 1 AM (way too late for us), we said fond goodnights and Bernardo's sister gave us a ride to our hotel.  We collapsed into the cozy bed for far too few hours of blessed sleep before we awoke at our normal time.  As usual.  Welcome to old age.  We took a coastal route home, took care of some chores, Gerrit had a little siesta, and we did some Christmas Day family calling.  When it works, video calls are astounding.  It's just like sitting in a couch across from your loved ones, but you're thousands of miles away.

There are three suspicious things about the solar panel system right now, too, things which don't seem right.  Gerrit is spending hours investigating and wrangling with the vendors, who deny everything.  Probably nothing will happen till a while after Christmas.

(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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Travel and Gravel

Saturday Dec 13 was clear and sunny, so we took a roundabout road trip to Soajo, one of our favorite circuits.  We already wrote about Soajo here, if you're interested in some details.  It was another gorgeous drive, much of it through the beautiful Peneda Gerês national park, with wild forests and mountains, remote farms, and horses and cattle wandering on the road. We even saw a small herd of long-horned cattle resting by the side of the road, with two dogs resting nearby and keeping an eye on them!  No shepherds were to be seen (except the dogs).

Spectacular Peneda Gêres scenery	A medieval bridge over the River Vez
Watch the River Vez go by from your porch swing	One of the famous cachena breed, serene in the sun
A lovely little one-car bridge over the River Vez	Beautiful stone fences in Peneda Gêres
A terraced hillside near the village of Sistelo	Our delicious cachena beef lunch in Soajo

We enjoyed the same lunch at the same restaurant: cachena beef steaks, "punched" baked new potatoes, steamed vegetables with zucchini, carrots, cabbage, and red pepper, seasoned rice, and a half liter of vinho verde.  It's literally some of the best beef we've ever had, and this time we took our own photo.  We were even at the same outdoor table we were at last time, and Gerrit actually got a little sunburn on the left (sunny) side of his face.  In mid-December!

As Gerrit prepared breakfast the other day, he held up the empty yogurt container and pensively quoted Hamlet: "Alas, poor yogurt!  I knew him..."

It looks like our long-suffering bungalow project might be on its last legs.  We just learned that wildfire safety laws don't allow structures within 50 meters (55 yards) of a forested area.  That means there is definitely no place on our lot on which it is permissible to build.  Gerrit looked up the actual law, and it is quite clear.  We started thinking about alternatives, like a raised platform with a roof suitable for campouts, or something.

But wait, a little further on in the laws it says that trees and branches must be 5 meters from structures.  So which is it, 50 meters or 5?  And how is it that existing structures, ours and the neighbors', are nowhere near 50 meters from forested areas?  The patient is still on life support as we get to the bottom of this.

Wednesday Dec 17 the gardeners began the next phase of our renovations.  They transplanted a couple fruit trees for better exposure and soil with less competition, and they cut down a dead cypress tree and bucked it up for firewood.  Next visit they will begin on an extensive irrigation system for the front yard.  Last summer the trees suffered a bit from their irregular watering, but not this year.  This will allow us to travel during the summer, too, and know that the plants will be well taken care of.

The guy who operated the little backhoe they used was a true artist.  He carefully guided the piece of heavy equipment on its rubber tracks over our cobblestone walk and between plants, eased it into position, and was as delicate with the operation of his machine as a watercolorist with his brush.  A pleasure to watch!  He spoke very little English, and showed up with a Santa hat on.  "Bom dia, senhor Santa!" we called out from the balcony when he emerged from the truck.  Alex the horticulturist referred to Santa's backhoe as his "reindeer".  Gerrit got a chance to use a few Portuguese phrases with Santa, too.

Here's a puzzler for you: "santa" in Portuguese means a female saint.  So what do they make of a jolly old bearded elf named "Santa Claus"?

Pat's coughing and sniffling turns out not to be due to the HVACs (heaters), and the HVACs are plenty clean inside too.  Yet still it continues, coming and going under all conditions, inside and out.  We visited a doctor on Thursday Dec 18 who found that she seems to be in good general health and prescribed some nasal spray and cough suppressant.  Pat couldn't wait for bedtime to try them out for the first time.

(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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