Ponte de Lima and Portugal Life

On Saturday Dec. 28 the weather was beautiful and a bit chilly.  We set out for a day trip to Ponte de Lima to look around our future home town again.  Feeling cocky, we got into Porto with no help from the GPS apps, figuring we could make our way up the A3 freeway all the way to Ponte de Lima.  Then we got into a spirited discussion and missed the A3 freeway turnoff entirely, without realizing it.  We zipped pleasantly along, chattering merrily, and soon crossed a river.  Hmm, there isn't another river north of the Douro is there?  We began seeing signs for Gaia, our home town, and realized with a very disorienting jolt that we had turned completely around, crossed a different bridge across the Douro, and were now back in Gaia.  Our first clue should have been that we were driving into the sun, not away from it.  Good grief!  We went all the way through Gaia and Porto again, this time making the turnoff correctly, and were on our way.  We're thinking of it as taxiing around Gaia and Porto before takeoff.

An hour or so later we were in Ponte de Lima.  We explored the old town a little more and got some maps and brochures from the tourist office there.  We crossed the Lima (but not across the medieval bridge, it's pedestrian-only and we would have mowed down too many tourists) and explored the other half of the city and environs around there.   

Ponte de Lima old and new

Old Ponte de Lima building

We had a quick lunch in a small roadside café: tostas mixtas (toasted ham and cheese sandwiches), a small muffin called bolo de arroz (rice cake), and two beers, with table service, for €6 ($6.26).  The cake was soft and only slightly sweet, and tasted more like cornbread than rice.  The beers were Super Bock draft, the overwhelming choice in northern Portugal (in the south it's Sagres -- north and south compete on everything).  We thought it would be kind of characterless and cheesy (like the name) but it's actually quite good and we're developing a taste for it.  And did we take any pictures of our delightful little meal?  Oh no, we did not.  Honest, we're going to get better at this.

Next we drove the route from Ponte de Lima to our soon-to-be new house, Casa da Rocha, about ten minutes away.  Google Maps takes you one way which is quite difficult toward the end, very narrow with weird blind corners and hills, so we experimented with a slighly longer route which is merely sort of difficult at one hairpin curve.  We will record this easier route for guests.  The gate was closed, otherwise we would have loved to snoop around the Casa some more too.

On the way out we found Café Martins, a place that the current owners of Casa da Rocha tell us is very helpful.  We bumped into it totally by accident: Google Maps was directing us to some other place much farther away, and we just saw the real Café Martins as we came around a corner.  Gotta watch out for those mapping apps.  Café Martins is only a couple minutes from the house, and it looked like a nice little place.  I'm sure we'll be dropping in there frequently.

We went shopping at the mega grocery & variety store Continente on Monday and went berserk as usual with a whole load of goodies.  While waiting for Pat to find something Gerrit noticed that a customer was helping a clerk stock shelves.  The clerk had been having to pick up boxes out of a crate on the floor and stock them on an upper shelf.  The customer noticed this and began pulling the boxes out of the crate and handing them to the clerk on her step stool.  It went so much faster, and both the clerk and the customer were having a great time and joking around.  We know, this is just kindness which happens everywhere, but it seems so typically Portuguese.

Gerrit also bought a shirt there.  It was designed in Portugal, but we don't know how Portuguese the label actually is.  We just thought it was really sweet and unexpected: "Wear it as long as possible".  In English too.

This residency lag is leaving us in a kind of limbo, unable to get some Portuguese documents we need.  As we've mentioned, the agency here which is responsible for qualifying new immigrants (AIMA) is overwhelmed and understaffed, so hundreds of thousands of us have expired visas, are unable to get driver's licenses, can't register with the health service, can't register with the tax authority, and so on.  Fortunately we can buy a house without official residency and we will be busy setting up our new home, but some of the rest of this stuff needs to get done too.

There is a big fireworks display in Porto tonight for New Year's Eve, but we think we're going to skip it.  There are supposed to be 100,000 people there, parking will be impossible and the metro is due to be on strike, it will be cold, and the display doesn't start till midnight.  We're too old for all that.  There is a good local Porto TV station, so maybe we can tune that in.  If we can stay up that late.

Also note that Gerrit miscalculated the age of the town of Ponte de Lima in a recent post.  He only missed it by a century though: it should be 899 years, not 999.  That post has been fixed.  He says it's a good thing he's not doing engineering any more.

(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 and Cultures

We hope all our friends and family had a warm and happy Christmas!  We certainly did, even though we sure missed you all.  

On Christmas Eve we visited a local wine and sprits warehouse just a couple blocks away, OnWine, and shopped for ourselves and for gifts.  We were like kids in a candy store.  That evening about 7:00 we took Uber to our Portuguese friends Bernardo and Carolina.  Bernardo's mom Lígia and siblings Rita and Pedro were there, along with their three happy and well-behaved dogs Lobo, Fred, and Oshi.

Everyone, even Mom, spoke English wonderfully.  We were expecting that Bernardo would be the only English speaker, but everyone's command of English made us awfully sheepish about our baby Portuguese.  Rita had actually studied a year in Auburn!  Yes, Auburn, the little community south of Seattle and just a few miles away from our old place.  The whole company was so intelligent and well educated, and we had a great conversation with lots of laughs.  We got to ask many questions about Portuguese language and customs too.

Gerrit wanted to express our gratitude and respect to his family for all that Bernardo has done for us (as our real estate agent and friend), so a couple weeks earlier he had begun working on a speech in Portuguese using mostly his own words.  He did have to resort to the translator apps a little bit to avoid being completely incomprehensible.  It was about a minute long, and he read it from his phone.  People laughed at the right spots so he thinks he didn't do too badly.

First we had excellent appetizers of cheeses, Portuguese ham, nuts, fruits, and regional breads.  Dinner was delicious, the traditional Christmas Eve baked bacalhau (cod) prepared by Lígia, along with buttery smooth new potatoes and some shredded greens.

Then the family began exchanging gifts, and the language drifted into Portuguese.  We felt really honored to be included in such an intimate family experience.  They even gave us a gift, a lovely candle in a beautifully glazed pot.  We had brought some of Pat's handmade beaded Christmas ornaments, wine, and limoncello for them.  After some more sleepy conversation, a little after 1:00 we said fond goodbyes and took Uber home.

We had seen more of another admirable quality of Portuguese culture: the frankness and candor of the people.  They say what they think, they disagree readily, but it is always simple or humorous and without rudeness or offence.  We've noticed this in many situations.  For example, we had brought a couple bottles of wine which we all shared as we sat together when we first arrived.  Lígia said simply that Alentejo wine (which we brought) was fine but she preferred Dão, and she explained her opinion sensibly.  In the US (or in Britain) you would never disparage wine brought by an unknown guest, you would pretend that it was wonderful or you would simply keep your opinion to yourself.  Here it was so refreshing to simply hear how she actually felt.  It was completely inoffensive, just a statement of fact.  And next time we'll serve her Dão wine and know she actually does like it.

When we brought up how much we liked this Portuguese characteristic (in a very frank and Portuguese manner), Rita said that they thought Americans and Brits sometimes seemed fake.  Another simple statement of fact, completely inoffensive, and right on target too.  And then again at dinner Rita only took a small bit of bacalhau, saying she didn't like it and making a face.  Her mom had prepared it and we are used to being "nice" about something like that, but her mom didn't care.  Rita didn't like bacalhau, no big deal.

Another time, someone asked about our Portuguese language learning, and Bernardo said Gerrit was better, that Pat was too lazy.  What??  That would be a horrible thing to say in the US, but he was plainly just kidding and said it in such a good-humored way that it didn't even cause a ripple.  Everyone was joking and poking fun at each other all night long, gently and inoffensively.  They also stroked each others hair, rubbed each others necks, held hands, and clearly displayed their fondness.  It seems healthy not to let little things fester, just let them out lightly before they build up pressure.  It lets people truly understand each other better too, and the ribbing and disagreement actually brings people closer together in that way.

They also don't say "excuse me" and "sorry" here nearly as much as the Brits and Americans do.  In a crowded bar or restaurant, you just work your way between the people (unless you need to actually get someone's attention).  Everyone shuffles as necessary, you don't need to apologize your way through.  If a store doesn't carry an item you want they aren't "sorry" that they don't have it, they just say no, they don't have it.  It really makes those courtesies in the US and Britain seem kind of excessive and foolish.

They're not insensitive boors though.  We were laughing at one point about a story Carolina was telling about her mom's miserable sewing and cooking when she was young.  She and her siblings were sensitive to their mom's feelings at the time though, and Carolina told the story with context too, so it was all loving and good natured.

The following day, Christmas, we tried to sleep in and failed.  Old people just don't do late nights and sleeping in very well.  We were sleepy all day, but took a nice drive to Porto and along the Douro river to the ocean.  It was a spectacularly beautiful day, 20 C (68 F) and sunny with a gentle breeze.  Check out the selfie -- it looks like we're in Acapulco.  We strolled along the waterfront along with hundreds of other happy holiday-lovers.

Pat found some audio of the clattering storks we saw a couple of weeks ago at the Parque Biológico, which we posted about here.  We couldn't capture the audio then, but here is what it sounded like.

On Thursday (today), Boxing Day, Gerrit started digging into getting our stuff stored in Seattle shipped to our new address.  It was going fine until he learned that Customs requires two documents with our Portuguese address on them, but those documents currently have our US address and we can't change them until we are officially residents.  We have been waiting months for the appointment to confirm our residency, and the process is hopelessly backlogged.  

The way around this is to pay full duty on our entire shipment, which could run up to $10,000 or more.  Needless to say, it looks like we will just hope for residency appointments soon and wait probably a few months more to get our stuff.  Good thing the new home is being sold completely furnished (down to the silverware) and we're quite used to living without our storage stuff by now.  Also fortunately, this customs snafu will not affect our home purchase.  We'll still be able to move in mid-January if all goes well.

We've had a request for more photos in the blog, a great idea, but that sure didn't pan out this time did it?  OK, starting next time more photos, we promise.  Sorry.

(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 black underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Portugal Life and Ponte de Lima

On Wednesday Dec 18 Pat had a doctor appointment at the Porto clinic we've been going to, to get a 24-hour blood pressure monitor strapped on and activated.  It's becoming quite routine now to take Uber over and back and maybe to have lunch there in Porto.  We did that, with Uber there and back costing about the same as taking the metro one way.  Lunch was at a really cool little restaurant, Café Faial, just a short walk from the clinic.  We split an order of pica pau, a traditional Portuguese dish of sausage and small bits of beef in a spicy francesinha sauce with melted cheese and toasted bread medallions.  The restaurant was in an old fashioned style, part Art Deco and part old Porto, with a beautiful wood and glass entry door and wrought iron gate. 

Thursday was another medical day, the follow-up to yesterday so Pat's blood pressure gadget could be removed.  She slept pretty well with it on the previous night, surprisingly, but she was relieved to get it off.  We also both had our flu shots.

The day was beautiful and bright after some clouds and rain the past couple days, and we strolled up to another nearby grill for lunch, Churrasqueira Lameiras.  This time we sat at the counter and had the basic menu, which was great: chicken for Pat and pork for Gerrit, with beers for both.  The place was packed, which is a good sign.  It also had accolades from Tripadvisor on the wall, and some time later we saw it featured in a Food Tour of Porto video, so we really stumbled into something good.  There was a large bubbling cauldron of stew and several rotisseries turning over coals in the front window, filling the street with their BBQ aroma.  There was an old guy working there we noticed, hobbling a little slowly but busy, happy, and patient, and obviously very familiar with how things worked.  Maybe the founder?  It was really nice to see how the young folks worked around him.

As we got up to leave, Gerrit with jacket and cane in hand, people were coming in and leaving through the narrow passageway next to the counter.  It was a traffic jam for a moment, then people waved us through with a smile.  One of the guys entering the café offered to help Gerrit on with his jacket.  What a sweet place Portugal is.

We Ubered home in our usual fashion, and Gerrit took the car in for a wash and himself in for a haircut.  He tried to ask for it a little long on the sides but got another buzz.  Sigh.

Friday was a recovery day from our flu shots, at least for Gerrit.  He usually has a bad reaction, slight fever, achiness, and so forth.  We did hike down to the local grocery store for some supplies though.

Then late in the afternoon we had two big pieces of news: Gerrit's new glasses are ready at the optometrist, and a price had been settled on for our new house!  We are so excited, and will be posting more pictures and information once the sale is a little more formalized.

Now the fun begins.  We need to transfer our down payment to a European escrow.  We have a real estate lawyer lined up, and we need to engage him to make sure all the property is legally correct and documents are in place.  We need to start the ball rolling with the international shippers to get our remaining Seattle stuff shipped here.  They move door to door, so they will pick up at our storage unit in Seattle and deliver to the new house.  We need to sell some securities and get the remainder of the purchase amount transferred to escrow.  There will be fees and taxes to be paid too.

On Saturday we picked up Gerrit's new glasses, and we happened to arrive at the appointment just as the store was finishing up a Christmas photo shoot for its Instagram page.  They insisted that we pose for their shoot, so look for us on an Instagram near you.  Again the staff was warm and friendly, and our contact gave us his personal phone number and insisted we call if we have any questions about Portugal or anything at all.  Hugs and beijinhos (little kisses) were passed all around.  Pretty nice treatment at the optometrist!

Gerrit's glasses look good and they're great for distance, but he is finding them difficult to use for computer work.  Just an area about the size of a ping pong ball is in focus at a time, so he is moving his head around constantly and the rest of the field is out of focus.  Hmm, he'll try to get used to that but his old readers work much better.

On Sunday (today) we decided to return to Ponte de Lima, our soon-to-be-we-hope home town.  It's such a beautiful town, and we want to get familiar with it and with the shops and resources there.  We spent the afternoon walking around the old part of town.  We've been there before, but we saw more of it this time including some famous structures and homes of famous native sons.  

For lunch we stopped at a nice little café for chicken salads and vinho verde.  Ponte de Lima is right in the heart of vinho verde country, and their specialty is the Loureiro grape, one variety which goes into the wine (usually a blend of about five different grapes from the region).  We thought we could tell that our glasses were actually purebred Loureiro, since we've been experimenting with the different varieties and have become quite the vinho verde connoisseurs.

We saw a statue dedicated to Countess Teresa de Leão who chartered the town in 1125, or almost 900 years ago.  Unbelievable!  It is the oldest town in Portugal.  Next year, March 4 to be precise, there should be a big 900th birthday party.  We hope to be able to participate in that.

It's hard to believe that if all goes well we'll soon be living 10 minutes away from this gorgeous historical town.

Christmas is coming right up, and we may not be able to post anything here before then.  If not, we hope all you friends and family have a wonderful holiday!  Feliz Natal e Boas Festas, as they say here!  We have been invited to some Portuguese friends' house for Christmas Eve, so we will be well taken care of.  We hope you will be too.

(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 Portuguese phrases to play the audio.)

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Parties, Christmas Lights, and Homes

On Friday Dec 13 we went to a small dinner party put on by our friends Bernardo (Portuguese) and Carolina (Uruguayan).  They have been remodeling and finishing their flat for several months and had some of their immigrant friends over for an "inauguration": us, a Basque woman from Spain, and a couple of other American expats from Portland now living in the city of Braga about an hour away.  Everyone spoke English wonderfully, fortunately for us, and we had an excellent time and a stimulating cosmopolitan conversation.  We had to come to Portugal to get our first ride in a Tesla, an Uber for the trip home, and the Portuguese driver was very curious and wanted to try out his English.  It was fun telling him that we are from the land of Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Costco, four very well-known brands over here.

The next day was a little sleepy, having gotten home at the normal Portuguese hour of about 1 AM but unable to stay asleep longer than about 6 AM, our bodies' wake-up time.  We did some bleary housecleaning and some grocery shopping at the Lidl store just down the street.

Sunday morning we took a drive along the Douro river for a couple hours, just to sightsee.  We'd been along much of the winding road before, but the Douro is a beautiful, grand river and we never get tired of it.  We stopped at a roadside fruit stand and got a small bag of oranges, clementines, and a persimmon.  The farmer was kindly and we spoke to him a little in Portuguese.  There was also another customer about our age there who spoke a bit of English and said that clementine is "tangerine" in English, "like Tangerine Dream" he said (the old progressive rock band).  Pat told him she'd seen them a long time ago.  He then said, "I have time, like Time is on My Side" (the old Rolling Stones song).  Just further support for song lyrics being used for language learning.

In the afternoon Pat went to a Porto Ladies Christmas Tea and charity fundraiser at the Hilton hotel here in Vila Nova de Gaia, sponsored by the Porto Together WhatsApp group.  She had a great time, and the group raised over € 800 for a local home for disabled kids, the only one of its kind in all of Portugal and Spain.

Christmas lights have been going up all over, and it looks so festive.  It looks different here though.  There are not many simple strings of lights, but more prefabricated elaborate displays (all in LEDs of course).  Even individual small businesses contract their own personalized light display.  It makes for a really impressive overall effect.  These photos here are just average displays too; the big ones are really spectacular.  (And we hear that juvenile snickering.  Farturas means fritters or funnel cakes, you poopyheads.)  Gerrit is also relieved that we've hardly heard any Christmas music in the stores, although Pat misses it.

In that spirit, Pat has been trying to add a little Christmas cheer to the apartment too.  She found just about the tiniest tree ever, smaller than a bottle of wine, and decorated it with earrings.  Pretty clever!  Now we need to put a tiny chimney in the apartment so Santa can send one of his elves down it.

We had the official inspection of our dream home in Ponte de Lima on Tuesday, today, and the inspector had to really work hard to find anything at all wrong with it.  It's built like a rock (in fact the name at the entry gate is Casa da Rocha, (House of Rock), because of the huge boulders which it has been built around), and the original owners went to great lengths to build to very high energy efficiency and quality.  The inspector said the Danish Velux windows and glass doors were the best you could buy, for example, the Rolls Royce of windows.  The owners will sell the place furnished, too, which will be a big help to us furnitureless vagabonds.  We like everything except maybe the beds, but those will do just fine until we find some better.  (There is an entire town nearby devoted to furniture manufacturing, which we will be visiting.  You can even just bring in a photo of something you like and they'll build it to your specifications.)

In a couple days we will have the inspector's formal report and the new energy certificate for the home, and will be making an offer shortly thereafter.  We think we'll arrive at an agreement quickly too; Bernardo our real estate agent and we agree that the asking price is already quite fair so we'll see if we can just eke it down a bit.  We will be needing to install a little lift after we move in after all.

(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 Portuguese phrases in underlined bold to play the audio.)

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Glasses, Wine, and Birds

 On Monday we went to an ophthalmologist appointment for Gerrit, whose vision has been deteriorating for a while.  He's always had excellent vision and has never seen an ophthalmologist.  We found one in Porto with the help of Serenity, a medical brokerage especially for English speaking expats.  They vet and recommend English speaking doctors, set up appointments for you, and track your medical cases.  It's pretty convenient, because trying to explain medical conditions and history in our lame Portuguese would be difficult and prone to misinterpretation.

We took the metro for the 4:00 appointment so we wouldn't have to deal with parking and rush hour traffic.  The clinic is literally 100 meters (~yards) from the metro station, so that was easy.  We got there a little early but were shown in to the doctor immediately.  Care was excellent, including two exams with high-tech equipment by technicians, and to Gerrit's delight the doctor found corrections for near and far which restore his former eagle eyes (there in the clinic, anyway).  The doctor also found no sign of cataracts or macular degeneration, which his dad suffers from, so that was a relief.  We received a complete printout of the test results including eyeball images, retina profiles, etc., and it all came to € 110 retail, no insurance.

Next we need to take the lens prescription to an optician for Gerrit's first full-time glasses.  They'll be progressive, so they should correct for both near and far focus.  He was shocked at the cost of frames, being used to paying about $3 for Chinese reading glasses from Amazon, but Pat assures him that these prices are normal.  He can't see any difference between the cheap and expensive frames, so he recommends that all young people out there enter glasses frame manufacturing for a career.  There's a lot of money in it.

And here's an interesting factoid: wine consumption in Portugal is the highest in Europe, beating France by a large margin.  It's easy to understand with it being so good and so inexpensive here.  We have bought nothing but native Portuguese wine since being here, it has almost all been excellent, all of it is unbelievably inexpensive, and we've barely scratched the surface.  Trying them all will be a delightful long term project.  Pat has started a spreadsheet to track our impressions.

Here's something Gerrit has realized about language learning: "embrace the mistakes".  You can try to hammer something into your head, and that can get things started, but actual recall is what strengthens the memory.  So with that in mind, whenever you make a mistake on a flash card and have to put it back in the deck, celebrate!  You're getting a chance to recall it again which will only strengthen that memory.  This has increased his language exercise time a little now since he's merrily failing cards that he would call a "pass" before, but it's made flash card time a little more relaxing (Mistakes?  We love them!) and of course it is improving memorization too.

We're picking up bits of Portuguese culture and history, and learned that in the Carnation Revolution of 1974 there was a secret code for the revolutionaries: two specific songs would be played on the radio when the revolution was to begin.  The second of them is really stirring.  It's called Grândola, Vila Morena and you can hear it here .  Be patient: there is silence for the first half a minute or so and then it slowly builds.

On Wednesday we thought we would visit a park we have driven by a few times, Parque Biológico right here in Vila Nova de Gaia.  It turns out to be a large piece of land: part park, part zoo, and part animal refuge.  It was a sunny cool day and we had the place almost to ourselves.  We saw some spectacular bird species, including a flock of a dozen storks sunning themselves in a wetland area just inside the park.  As we walked past a tall pole with a stork's nest on top, the stork couple up there began the most incredible chattering clacks of their bills accompanied by what looked like courtship behavior.  It sounded like a swarm of woodpeckers attacking a tree.  We frantically tried to catch some audio, but it was all over in about 8 seconds.  What a rare treat!  [Edit: Pat later found audio of some storks doing this clattering, which you can hear here.]

Storks sunning

The happy stork couple

Peacock showoff

Further on were many other birds, in enclosures with benches and viewing apertures for the curious humans.  Peacocks and peahens wandered freely about.  Bird song in dozens of varieties filled the air.  Further along we came to a large enclosure with many sub-enclosures containing exotics like cockatoos, macaws, and brightly colored parrots.  The din of whistles and shrieks we heard was because it was feeding time.  An attendant was passing out dinner and talking to her bird friends.

What a great find, right here in our backyard!  It's a huge park, we only scratched the surface, and we will return to explore some more (with the big camera, not just our phones).

To make our next appointment we drove back, parked near the metro, and rode it into Porto.  There was a gathering of the Porto Together (aka Porto People) expat group at a winehouse called Agarrafeira, a few blocks from the metro stop.  Walking to the wineshop we got some great views of some iconic Porto buildings.  The city hall was built directly in front of the church and is much larger, which we're told is intentional symbolism of the ascendancy of the state over the church.

Porto church

. . . dwarfed by City Hall

We had a great time and met many of the people we'd only known online.  The winehouse was jammed floor to ceiling with bottles, many hundreds of them.  It was totally dazzling.  Rather than peering at hundreds of labels, we asked for a recommendation to our taste.  The fellow there stroked his chin for a moment, zipped to a particular bottle, and we bought two of them and left for home.

Today, Thursday, we had our appointment at the optician for Gerrit's glasses.  That is a much more elaborate and expensive operation than he thought, but Pat is still sanguine.  The people there were just wonderful and accepted us like family.  In fact, when we told them we had no family in Portugal they offered to be our new family, to help in any way they could with our relocation and any questions we might have.  Most of them are immigrants in one form or another and they very kindly offered their full support.  We are constantly amazed at the warmth of the people we meet here.

Their service was thorough and attentive.  They administered another eye exam to confirm Gerrit's ophthalmologist's numbers, and gave one to Pat too in case she wants to update her prescription.  Then we went through a careful process of frame selection for Gerrit, shook hands warmly, and were on our way.  The glasses should be ready by the end of next week, just in time to see Christmas lights clearly.

We have an official home inspection of our intended Ponte de Lima place, featured in this post, coming up next Tuesday.  We made a deposit to hold the place, and by mid next week we should know which way we will go.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.)

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Great Food and a Road Trip

When we were shopping in our favorite mega grocery store Continente last Friday we did a double-take at a completely autonomous floor cleaning Zamboni-like machine, busily cleaning the floor in the midst of a crowd of Friday shoppers.  There were straps across the seat entries to make sure nobody would be at the controls.  This big contraption, bigger than a riding lawnmower, was carefully and accurately avoiding people and other obstacles, cleaning the floor automatically.  It was like a king-size Roomba in the middle of a crowded grocery store, an amazing sight.  

There in the bread department Pat found a bin of wrapped-up chunks of a dense brown bread called broa de Avintes.  We picked up a piece to try with dinner that night and it was delicious!  It's a dense and chewy bread made with rye and corn flour plus malt for a touch of sweetness.  Here is a photo, with a bit of butter on it.  It turns out that Avintes is a district of Vila Nova de Gaia where we live, and this bread has been made right here since the 13th century.  To quote Wikipedia: "King Dinis of Portugal awarded the village [of Avintes] with the exclusive right of production and supply [of broa] to the population in Porto."  Just imagine: for eight hundred years they've been making this unique and delicious bread just a few kilometers away from where we are now.

Pat saw this chart roll by on the Porto People chat she monitors which shows that the Portuguese consume the least amount of "ultra-processed" food in Europe.  They should tweak the number down a speck now that we're here and consuming as little ultra-processed food as possible.

On Saturday Gerrit put together a dinner concoction he's calling "Gerrit's Portuguese Hash".  It's made with grated sweet potato browned in olive oil, cubes of salpicão de Lamego (wine-marinated and smoked pork loin from the Beira region in central Portugal, with an intense flavor), salt, pepper, and cinnamon.  It looks like plain old hash but it has a great flavor and it at least seems like it might be Portuguese.

Then on Sunday, today, we took a car trip south to Lagoa de Coadiçais, a park and wetland lake about an hour south of us.  The weather was excellent, clear and cool.  On our way out of Vila Nova de Gaia we saw this beautiful aqueduct just sitting there next to the road.  It is the Aqueduto do Sardão, built in 1720 to bring water from a spring to a mansion called Quinta do Sardã.  We have driven by it several times, and never noticed it.  The history just staring out at you all around here is unbelievable.

We got to the lake, which was beautiful, but there were very few birds to be seen.  We walked out to an island via a boardwalk, but we guess the birds had mostly flown south for the winter.  Pat did see a few though, and snapped a couple photos.

On the way to the lake we had stopped for a quick lunch of ham & cheese sandwiches and a beer at a padaria (bakery).  We discovered a little while ago that padarias (found all over) with their fresh rolls can usually make sandwiches and serve drinks too, so it's not necessary to find a café or restaurant for just a quick bite.  We hustled back on the road after lunch as Gerrit thought vaguely about a cup of espresso, drove to the lake as the longing increased, and then there on the little island in the middle of the lake was a café playing Brazilian music with a big beautiful espresso machine.  Nobody was there but the waitress, and Gerrit got his espresso, for € 0.80.  The gods were smiling on him.

Today was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception here in Portugal, which is a major religious holiday.  The village of Pedreira is right adjacent to the park, and we watched as some village women spread small boughs and bouquets along the margins of the main street.  It looked like they were preparing for a parade, or maybe just dressing up the town.  If we would have been able to understand the reply we would have asked what they were doing, but instead we just took their 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.)

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Looking at Houses and Finding a Beauty

On Sunday Dec 1 we took a car trip to the city of Fafe to take a look at a house under construction.  Builders do that pretty frequently here, they'll publish CAD simulations of what the house will hopefully look like, while it's under construction, in hope of an early sale.  Generally the real estate sites don't publish the actual address of the properties they list for privacy reasons (and to allow the agent to get hold of you before you see the property), but Pat has gotten really good at finding them on Google Maps based on the approximate location from the listing and the basic features of the roof and property.  She found this one and we took a Sunday drive to see it.

It was actually in a nice neighborhood and pretty well along in construction, but we decided that there were just too many unknowns (including when the thing would actually be ready to occupy) so we set it aside.

A flyer was posted on a little community bulletin board nearby for a "ceia de natal dos idosos" (Christmas dinner for the elderly).  The text says "Each mark on their faces represents the life experience they have to offer us.  ...  Our gratitude and affection to all the elderly!  May their life examples make us happy elderly people one day!  Thank you to these wonderful people!"  Such a respectful and tightly-knit society.

On the way home we stopped at a nice little café and Pat had her first Francesinha, that traditional Portuguese thick sandwich with three types of meat, melted cheese, a fried egg, and a spicy tomato and beer sauce poured over it.  Yes, it is as filling as it sounds, but hers was quite good, better than the one Gerrit had a couple months ago.

We took our favorite short afternoon drive to the bird sanctuary, but nobody was home.  Hardly any birds.  Pat got a beautiful shot of about the only visitor though, a lone egret fishing for lunch.

Then on Tuesday Dec 3 we had a marathon house tour with our trusty agent Bernardo.  He took us around to five places! They were all on our must-see list.  Fortunately they were mostly in the Ponte de Lima area so there wasn't too much driving involved other than to get to that area.  It was a lucky day.  Four of the five places were quite beautiful, and one of them was a real standout.  After getting home, and again the following morning, we mused over our notes and photos and realized that we loved the standout.  It's very unique, architecturally outstanding, has a stunning view, is in a large, quiet, wooded hillside area of lovely homes, but is not far from shops and civilization.  Bernardo took some video as we toured around, and here is a one-minute excerpt along with a couple photos.  Click "full screen" when you start the video, and "exit full screen" when it is done.  We're waiting to inspect the technical documents from the seller now.

Photo on our cloudy visit day

Photo in the summer

(As usual, you can click on any picture, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.)

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Houses and Health Care

The Christmas consumer buying frenzy is not just a US phenomenon.  They're totally gearing up for it here, all the stores are installing huge Christmas displays and having big sales.  They even have a Black Friday here, called "Black Friday" (in English), even though they don't celebrate Thanksgiving Thursday!  Black Friday in Portugal pretty much extends over most of November and all of December.  The Thanksgiving holiday is not a line of demarcation like it is in the US, over here it's one big Christmas present buying frenzy starting in early November.

We have been continuing to look at house listings online and visited four of them last Wednesday with our agent Bernardo.  We were all geared up to fall in love with one of them this time, the listings looked great, but that was not to be.  You can't smell mustiness in an online ad, for example, or see that what looks like fine hardwood floor is cheap and shoddy.

The seller's agent was delayed getting to one house, so Bernardo drove us around the nearby little village and we stopped for a coffee at a café there in the morning sunshine.  Walking from the car, Bernardo chatted up an old guy who was warming his back in the sun.  His face lit up and he told us, through Bernardo, what a nice place it was we were in.  His wife came up and agreed, and she and Bernardo were like instant friends.  They casually and easily touched each other's arms as they spoke and laughed.  We've noticed this kind of warmth all over Portugal, and it's different from the US in our experience.

There was an orange tree across the street, and Bernardo ran over and picked us an armload of fresh, fragrant oranges.  As we sat sipping our coffee a very friendly street cat came up for some petting, which she really appreciated.  So much so that she jumped up on Gerrit's lap and would have sat there all day.  Everyone who walked by gave us a little nod and a "bom dia".  Everything felt like a happy dream.

At one of our house visits, the seller's agent spoke English but not masterfully.  We were talking about the peaceful rural setting and she said "yes, all you can hear are the kitchens".

Huh?

Then she laughed and corrected herself: "chickens"!  She said she mixed up those words all the time.  Ever think about how those two words just have their ch and k sounds switched?  We hadn't!  It makes us feel better about doing the same thing with our Portuguese.

On Friday we had our first encounter with the Portuguese health care system.  We're not eligible yet for the social health care, but we met our new PCP in the private health care system.  It was in a hospital in Porto, just a few Uber minutes away.

The experience at the hospital / health care center was really clever and efficient.  When you enter the building you take a number.  A receptionist then calls you, asks for your NIF (which is like your Portuguese social security number), verifies your appointment and the location, and directs you to a waiting room elsewhere in the building.  You take your building entry ticket with you, and the same number appears on a reader board in the waiting room directing you to a consultation room.  After your appointment you pass by an ATM-like thing where you pay your bill with your debit card.  All very efficient and smooth.

The health care center was sparkling and modern, people were friendly, and our doctor spoke English excellently. She was helpful, friendly, and knowledgeable.  Our brand new health insurance has a 90-day waiting period so we paid cash for the visit, which totaled €85 ($90) for each of us.

Afterward we went to a nearby café for lunch.  The owner was friendly and smiled encouragingly at Gerrit's primitive Portuguese, and the place was filled with locals.  Food and beer were great, and we wandered around a little afterward, including up a lovely old typical Porto street shown here.  We stopped at a pharmacy to get our prescriptions filled, then called an Uber and were shortly back home.

We've used Uber twice here now and are pretty impressed.  The drivers have arrived within minutes, the rides were door-to-door and quick, the cars were in good shape, and the cost is actually less than the metro (which is already dirt cheap).  Yesterday our ride from home to the Porto hospital was €4.95, and the metro would have been €6 for both of us and required a few blocks of walking.  No hassles with parking, and Gerrit appreciated being able to sightsee instead of being on high alert for traffic, turns, and pedestrians.  Portuguese city driving requires all your attention.

(As usual, you can click on any photo here to enlarge, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.)

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Language and Looking

This week has seen us doing a lot of boring house hunting.  Pat set up a cloud notebook to keep track of likely properties, their good and bad points, and whether we want to pursue them.  It's amazing what a blur it all turns into after you've looked at a few dozen of them with a sixty-something brain.  We have identified three of the best-looking places and our real estate agent is setting up visits for next week.

We've been trying to get a little more language practice too.  Gerrit is starting on the beginner mystery book we mentioned a few posts ago and is finding it fun, educational, and interesting.  We have several online teaching resources which we are trying to exploit too, including a new one by a young polyglot named Leonardo Coelho: "Portuguese with Leo".  He speaks clearly and a little slowly, at an intermediate level, in order for beginners to stretch their comprehension skills.  He has an amazing facility with accents.  He is born and bred in Lisbon, a native Portuguese speaker, but when he switches to English he sounds like he's from Seattle.  We hate him.  No, he's actually great.  He has a number of interesting videos where he goes into Portuguese history, geography, food, and culture, which he delivers with patience and care, so we get to learn about Portugal along with learning the language.

Polyglots have great ears and mimicry (natural gifts), but they're also obsessed with language.  They probably spend way too much time learning new languages, because they love them and they're obsessed.  Well, we can emulate the part about spending as much time as we can spare on a new language anyway.

There are many words in English which have completely different meanings for the same word, like "pretty":  "We were pretty close to the pretty picture."  Or "might": "The might of the king might be his downfall."  You don't think much about them in your native language but they're a source of confusion and mirth in a new language.  Aspirar in Portuguese, for example, means both "to aspire to" and "to vacuum" (as with your vacuum cleaner).  If you translate "I aspire to vacuum the floor", you get Aspiro a aspirar o chão.  Who says learning a new language isn't hilarious?

Pat has been investigating health insurance here.  Our traveler's insurance is probably not good any more since we are demonstrably living here, complete with retirement visas, even though we're not officially residents.  Portugal provides good free coverage for residents, but we need private insurance as non-residents.  This is something residents often buy too, for more options and faster service.  Pat is finding things like the copay for an MRI at a private hospital is only €80 ($84) and for an ultrasound it's only €30 ($32).  This is for the middle plan option with the only insurer which covers aged clients like us, regardless of pre-existing conditions or anything else.  It costs €436 ($459) a month, total, for both of us.  She's signing us up right now.

And speaking of boring, here's an update on our dehumidifier: it's working great!  We've nicknamed it "R2D2" for obvious reasons.  We run it all day and leave it off at night.  It runs quietly in the bedroom with the door open, and brings the humidity in the whole apartment down from 80% to 50% so it's much more comfortable.  We can dry a load of towels and jeans closed in the bedroom in about 8 hours.  It's brilliant!  The electric bill has gone up a tad, but not much.  A clothes dryer would bump the bill up too.  (By the way, "dehumidifier" is desumidificador in Portuguese.  Seven syllables!  Gerrit loves saying it.  It's even more fun to say "the dehumidifier is available": O desumidificador é disponibilizar.)

On Friday Pat had a hair trim and blood test, so Gerrit ferried her around for that.  It's amazing how comfortable we are with stuff like this now.  It isn't a big intimidating unknown now, it's becoming part of our routine.  Even dodging through the narrow and convoluted streets, we're getting to know our way around.

Then we took a long drive out to a potential home site on the Douro river to check out the noise level and the neighborhood.  The weather was clear and not cold.  We went out along the non-highway route, following the river valley, and it was a really beautiful drive.  On the way back we took the highway route because is was getting a little late.

Douro valley drive

Douro valley drive

 (As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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Lawyers, a Car Wash, and Ponte de Lima

Last Thursday and Friday we went over the two properties we'd looked at on Wednesday after returning from Andorra.  We have been maintaining a list of pros and cons for each place we visit (six of them now).  We reluctantly decided against both of these new ones, although one of them was close.  We are getting good at this, and learning to recognize the good and bad points pretty clearly and how important they are.  We have gone back to the real estate listings for another dive.

Gerrit also contacted the law firm which is supposed to be arranging the government meeting to confirm our residency.  It has been almost three months now, and the only time we hear anything from them is when we ask.  No progress reports, no information, nothing.  We have also inquired with Nia, our immigration counselor and all-around immigration expert, and she agrees that residency meetings are almost impossible to obtain.  On November 17 our visas officially expire, but the Portuguese government has extended the actual expiration by a year.  It may take that long before we can get our residency cards.  Until then we're in kind of a limbo.  Travel outside Portugal may be tricky using visas with expired dates on them since customs agents in other countries probably won't be aware of the temporary extension which Portugal has implemented.  Fortunately we can buy a house even as non-residents, and there is plenty of exploring inside Portugal to keep us busy.

Saturday it was bath time for Pérola (our new car).  This was her first bath, and she needed it after our long road trip to Andorra.  Conveniently, we have a car wash just up the street.  We've noticed that the locals take pride in the cleanliness of their cars.  Many cars going into the car wash look perfectly fine to us.

The car wash was more like what we'd call detailing in the US.  There was a hand pre-wash of the whole car, including wheel wells and tires, then a basic machine wash, then two guys went through the whole car and trunk with vacuums and rags.  They removed the floor mats and ran them through a dedicated floor mat cleaning machine.  They thoroughly cleaned the inside of the windshield (a contortionist's job) along with the rest of the windows.  They cleaned the dash and the door interiors.  They wiped down all the mating surfaces of the open doors and trunk to clean the dust and water from those hidden areas.  They used a tire cleaning compound on the tires, leaving them shiny black.  Pérola looks like new, and all for only €11.  That's right, $11.60 in US dollars.

On Sunday the weather was beautiful, sunny and warm.  The locals don't seem to think this is unusual, but we're used to a whole lot more rain, cold, and gray skies halfway through November.  We decided to take a drive to Ponte de Lima for lunch and then to Braga nearby to see the neighborhood of a house which looks interesting in the listings.

Ponte de Lima is said to be the oldest village in Portugal.  The old part of town is beautiful and charming, and we had an excellent lunch.  The name of the town means "bridge of Lima", referring to the Lima river next to it, and as you might expect there is an ancient bridge crossing the river.  Legend has it that the Romans were afraid to cross the Lima, thinking that they would lose their memory if they did.  (How does this stuff get started?)  A courageous soldier crossed the river as his platoon waited nervously on the other side, and he called out their names one by one from the other side to show that his memory was fine.  There is a little set of life-sized figures of Roman soldiers there on the river bank to commemorate the event.

We strolled around Ponte de Lima a little bit and then halfway across the bridge before leaving for Braga.  There were hundreds of people out on the beautiful day, enjoying the riverfront of Ponte de Lima: families, couples, groups, and singles.  The temperature was a balmy 23 C (73 F).  There was a parking lot next to the river for visitors, with hundreds of cars in it.  We looked around for where to pay, but it was simply free parking.  Unheard of!  Everything felt happy and safe.  We saw a girl about 10 with her family, wearing a t-shirt "AC/DC Back In Black", and Pat whispered that the girl's DAD probably wasn't even born when that album was released!

Ponte de Lima scenes	On the bridge at Ponte de Lima
A Ponte de Lima street	Happy at the tiled fountain

The house in Braga is very nice, but the lot is small and the neighbors in tiny tract homes are jammed right up against it.  Plus there was a rooster crowing the whole time we were there.  We want a little more seclusion than that.  We headed back home.

Today, Monday, Gerrit heard from the law firm.  They are actually contacting the immigration agency each day, and getting appointments as soon as they become available.  We are number 77 in the queue now.  So at least progress is being made, but it still may be months before we actually get the appointment.

Pat found another house which looks good online, and we contacted our real estate agent about a viewing sometime this week.  We also took our sparkly clean car to the wonderful Continente supermarket this morning and loaded up on food and wine.  Gerrit has been looking for Madeira wine ever since reading that Benjamin Franklin used to enjoy it, and it turns out that they make port wine on the island of Madeira (an autonomous region of Portugal, just off the Moroccan coast).  That's fine with us, and we picked up a bottle from the vast Portuguese wine selection at Continente.  Gerrit is cooking rojões (marinated and fried pork cubes) for dinner tonight, trying to imitate the tasty rojões which are a specialty in Ponte de Lima, so we'll see how that goes.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside the photo when you're done.)

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