Our Porto Apartment

Here are some photos of our Porto apartment, from the original Idealista real estate ad.  We had to officially rent it starting the first of March for our visa application, so it has been idle and gathering dust for three months now.  Good excuse to buy a vacuum cleaner!

The apartment is in Vila Nova de Gaia, just south of Porto across the Duoro river.  We have it leased for a year, during which time we'll scout around for a home of our own.

Click on a photo to enlarge, then you can scroll through them all.  Click in the black outside the photo when you're done.

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Visa Application Trip

Before the big trip to Portugal we had to travel to San Francisco to make our visa applications.  We had to appear in person for this, and San Francisco is the Portuguese embassy serving the entire west coast.  We made a driving "triangle trip" out of it, going from Seattle to San Francisco along the coast, then to Littleton, CO to see Gerrit's son Elliott and his wife Lexi, the grandkids, and then back to Seattle from there.

Click on a photo to enlarge and to scroll through them all, then click in the black outside the photo when you're done.

(This post is a little long.  We'll tighten it up in future posts.)

Friday 1 Mar 2024, Mukilteo WA to Seaside OR

We headed south through gray and rain on I-5 to Olympia then west on Hwy 8, stopping in Olympia for gas and lunch and continuing west until Montesano where we headed south.  We got into Seaside just before 4:00 and checked in.  The drive had been very nice, though rainy, with mostly country and coastal scenery.

At the hotel we got a nice upgrade to a room with a beautiful view of the ocean.  Dinner was seafood at Dooger's Restaurant, really great and the place was a nice (but rather moist) walk from the hotel.

View from our room at Seaside

Saturday 2 Mar 2024, Seaside OR to Bandon OR

After a quick breakfast in the truck, parked in the the Safeway parking lot on the way out of town (good, cheap, and quick), we continued south along the coast through mostly rain and sleet.  We even saw snow on the hills and beaches along the way.

At a seaside park for lunch in Lincoln, we watched seagulls playing in the creek.  They would fly upstream and float down the creek back to the shore, over and over.  They were having seagull fun, and I swear we could see smiles on their beaks.

We checked into a hotel in Face Rock just outside Bandon and had another seafood dinner in downtown Bandon, delicious cioppino this time.

Sunday 3 Mar 2024, Bandon OR to Arcata CA

We woke up to snow on the landscaping and cars, and Pat had heard hail and sleet coming down during the night.

Something you must prove at your visa application is proof of Portuguese residency for a year.  Our immigration consultant in Portugal (Nia) had been working on finding a place for us, but it still wasn't final when we left.  Today we received our Porto apartment contract by WhatsApp from her.  What a relief!  We still needed a couple other documents though: receipts for our deposit and rent payments, and the "Imposto Selo" certification of the payments.  Those should be in our possession in a day or two, and then we'd need to find a print shop to print them all out for our application.

We tried to follow a scenic route through a northern part of the redwoods, but it was closed for road work.  So we continued down Hwy 101 through occasional snow, to our next stop in Arcada / Eureka.  The room was mediocre but we had a nice Mexican dinner in a little dive joint in a shopping center.  When the place is full of Latinos it's a good sign.

Monday 4 Mar 2024, Arcata CA to Fort Bragg CA

We had breakfast in the hotel followed by our daily Portuguese lessons, and hit the road about 10:00.  We took the Avenue of the Giants as much as we could, to see the legendary redwoods, but road damage and construction kept us off some of it.

The drive was spectacular though!  The trees are truly giants, towering serenely in the forest.  Traffic was light, so we were able to stop and gaze in many places.  We also drove very slowly along most of the Avenue, soaking in the grandeur.

At Leggett we left Hwy 101 and started down Hwy 1.  The road was very twisty all the way to the coast, but a beautiful drive.  We got to our hotel a bit early, but our room was ready so we checked in and settled.  The remaining documents from Nia were waiting in Gerrit's WhatsApp in-box, so hallelujah we had all we needed for the visa application.  With two whole days to spare!

Another great Mexican dinner at a little local joint that night, and back to the hotel.

Humboldt Redwoods State Park

Tuesday 5 Mar 2024, Fort Bragg CA to San Francisco CA

We woke to fog and pouring rain.  We picked up another quick and healthy breakfast at a wholesome little grocery store and enjoyed it in the truck at an ocean overlook nearby, then continued south on Hwy 1.

We saw sprays of daffodils and lilies along the road and in people’s yards, and the scent of eucalyptus groves filled the air when we passed through them.  

Hwy 1 was just gorgeous!  The flowers and buds were starting to appear in the early spring, and it was clear that the state of California protected this stretch of highway in its rustic and undeveloped form.  Cell service was almost nonexistent, and the little farms and towns along the way had a sweet old-fashioned charm to them.  There are very few roads leading to the coast along here, which helps to keep traffic and growth to a minimum.

We found a print shop in Bodega Bay and made hardcopies of all our Porto apartment documents.  It was a great relief to have that done and ready to go.

There was more beautiful scenery and winding roads as we approached the Golden Gate Bridge.  Just as we crossed the bridge the sun broke through and shone on the city of San Francisco – a beautiful view of a beautiful city.

We got to our luxurious Hotel Riu Plaza near Fisherman’s Wharf and checked in.  Our room is very nice, and we had a very good dinner at the New Thai Elephant restaurant a block from the hotel.

View from Hwy 1 outside Fort Bragg

Wednesday 6 Mar 2024, San Francisco CA

The VFS Global company is the one and only way to apply to the Portuguese Embassy for a visa.  They collect and compile all the required documents and forward them to the embassy.  They do this for dozens of embassies worldwide and they have the business totally locked down; there is no competition and no other way to apply for visas.  Unfortunately they also do a generally miserable job at it.  They get more one-star reviews all over the internet than we have ever seen.  They have a lousy website, conflicting instructions, and a generally rigid, stuffy, and bureaucratic attitude.  I wish we had an alternative.

This morning we carefully got our files in order for them, triple-checking that everything was perfect, and then went off to get the money orders required for the Portuguese embassy.  After several false leads we finally found a place to get them.

We decided to drive by VFS Global to check out the parking and the general route and timing.  Our appointment with them tomorrow was critical – if we screwed it up we’d have to drive back to Seattle with our tail between our legs and set up another appointment (and another visit to San Francisco) about three months down the road.  We certainly didn’t want that.  We found plenty of garage parking right next to the VFS Global office building, so instead of using a ride service to get there we planned to check out of the hotel first thing tomorrow morning, load all our luggage into the truck, attend our appointment, and leave directly from there toward Littleton to see the kids.

After our reconnaissance visit to VFS Global we had about three hours left to see the city of San Francisco.  The weather was nice, so we decided to drive the hilly streets for a while and make our way to Coit Tower which overlooks much of the city.  That was really fun and relaxing after all our recent visa stressing.  We used the amusing self-cleaning robotic toilet, walked around admiring the Depression-era murals inside the lobby of the tower, and opted out of trudging up the 234 steps of the tower itself (the elevator was out of order).  We took some pictures of the beautiful views, drove around the neighboring areas a little more, and headed back to the hotel.

Thursday 7 Mar 2024, San Francisco CA to Sparks NV

And here it was: visa appointment day.  We’d been waiting and planning for this for months.  We had breakfast at the hotel, checked out, and got to the VFS Global office at 9:30, a half hour before our appointment.  We got rock-star parking on the street right in front of the entrance.  At the check-in desk a bored and annoyed clerk told us to wait in a holding pen since we were more than 15 minutes early.  We dutifully went to the holding pen, waited 15 minutes, went back to check in, and returned to the holding pen with our queue numbers.  The place was milling with aspiring visitors to a half dozen countries besides Portugal.  It was interesting to see all the different people and hear the different languages.  Also a little worrisome to think about all the viruses floating around the air in there.

Slowly the appointments for Portugal ahead of us in line crept along, with one agent handling them all.  At 11:00 we decided we’d better give up our rock-star parking and move the truck to the garage; this was going to take a while and the meter was running out.  Gerrit did so and made it back well before our number was called.  Suddenly, just before our turn in line, the Portugal agent came around to his flock and distributed printed checklists of all the documents he would require and the order in which they were to appear.  He was snotty and annoyed about it.  And his new list was significantly different from their online published list!  Now they required three completely new documents, did not require another, and their sequence was to be different.  Thank goodness Gerrit had brought along several documents besides the ones on the online checklist, and, incredibly, we were covered.  Unbelievable.  If he had followed the online directions we would have been rejected.

We frantically removed staples, reordered our documents, inserted the new ones, and made it just in time for our appointment, an hour and a half later than scheduled.  The grumpy agent checked things over, took our pictures, and at last the visa application ordeal was complete.  We made our way down to the truck with happy hearts.

But now we had to make tracks to Littleton, with a late start!  We wanted to get there in time for one full weekend day with the kids anyway, and to do that would require some heroic driving.  There had been dire predictions a week or so earlier of a possible 8 to 12 FEET of snow on the freeway through the Sierra Nevada, but as of now it looked good.  We found Donner Pass still in deep snow drifts, but I-80 through there was perfectly clear and even mostly dry.  The sun was bright and there was no hint of snow.  You would never know that people had been stranded there in deep snow just a week or two ago.  We made it down the other side of the Sierra Nevada, through Reno, to a casino hotel in Sparks.  After a very happy and relieved BBQ dinner we collapsed in the room.

Friday 8 Mar 2024, Sparks NV to Salt Lake City UT

A long driving day with an early wake-up time, putting on as many miles as we could.  We checked into our hotel, had dinner at a Mexican fast-food joint nearby, and got to bed shortly thereafter.

Saturday 9 Mar 2024, Salt Lake City UT to Littleton CO

Another early start, stopped in Fruita for a picnic lunch, climbed up and over the Rockies, and got to our hotel in Littleton about 5:15 after another long day.  It was great to meet Elliott, Lexi, Avie and Emmett at the Homegrown Tap and Dough for dinner though, about a block away from our hotel.  We’ll see more of them tomorrow.

Sunday 10 Mar 2024, Littleton CO

Daylight Saving Time along with the time zone change has us a bit bleary today.  Elliott and Gerrit fixed the membrane on our truck bed cover which had been leaking.  The grandkids made a clubhouse in the bed of the truck while they were working in there.  

We went to run errands in the afternoon.  The grandkids wanted to ride with us so we took E & L’s Xterra with car seats and E & L took Elliott’s car.  We went to the farm store Murdock’s for chicken feed and so the kids could see the new chicks.  Then we had lunch in downtown Littleton and we went back to the room for a nap.  Dinner was at E & L’s and then a fire in their patio chiminea.  E & L then headed for Elliott's very impressive self-built backyard sauna, but we went back to our room.  Gerrit felt like he was coming down with something, probably VFS-Global-itis.

Monday 11 Mar 2024, Littleton CO

We slept late, which was good for both of us.  Gerrit is pretty congested and didn’t sleep very well though.  

We picked up Avie at school and Emmett at day care / preschool, then took them over to Baba’s (Lennie’s) and visited with Mark and Lennie (Gerrit's ex) while the kids had snacks and watched TV.

We went to dinner at a Mexican grill, since the molcajetes had been recommended there.  After dinner we went back to their house for a bit then back to our hotel.

Tuesday 12 Mar 2024, Littleton CO

Slept late again.  Gerrit is still congested but slept better and seems a bit better overall today.

Gerrit went to pick up Elliott after E dropped his car off for service.  Pat stayed at the room, did her Portuguese lessons, and looked for a place to stay tomorrow night.  She decided on Green River UT because it will get us beyond the giant snow warning which loomed for the Denver area tomorrow.

We couldn’t pick Avie up from her after-school program because we weren’t on the approved list, but we did pick Emmett up.  Lexi's mom picked up Avie and met us at E & L’s, and her dad came over after he had had a shower and relaxed from skiing.  We visited with them while the kids played, then Elliott's BBQ ribs were ready.  Our last evening with them was nice, and then we went back to the room.

Wednesday 13 Mar 2024, Littleton CO to Green River UT

Our plan for the return trip from Littleton was to take the small highways off the beaten track, but that didn't pan out with the wintry weather we were about to hit during the next couple days.  

We started out of town on I-70, and ran into heavy, thick snow near Glenwood Springs.  It kept snowing and was getting pretty sloppy and slick, with poor visibility.  Fortunately we drove out of it in about 20 minutes, but not before briefly losing traction a couple times.  We barely made it out of the Denver region ahead of the storm.

We made good time despite the snow on our way down from the passes, so we decided to spend a little time in Fruita.  We saw a sign to Colorado National Monument (a curiously uninteresting name), and went to explore.  The road as we entered looked paved and passable, so we used Gerrit’s National Park Pass and continued in.

What a great surprise this turned out to be!  We wound along up steep hills through beautiful and grand rock formations which rivaled Zion National Park.  It was really breathtaking.  There is a 23 mile drive along the rims of the canyons in the Monument, with many viewpoints along the way.  We took lots of pictures and marveled at the stunning views.  At the end of the drive we took the low road outside the Monument back to our destination for the night via Fruita, and saw the Monument being rapidly socked in with rain and fog.  It had been clear when we went through, so we timed it just right.

We had some good Navajo Taco Chicken salads in Green River for dinner.  Gerrit ordered some “Polygamy Porter”, which asked on the can “Why have just one?  Take some home to the wives!”  Hah!  Utah humor.

Colorado National Monument

Colorado National Monument

Thursday 14 Mar 2024, Green River UT to Tremonton, UT

Today we planned to follow Hwy 191 and US-40 W for a little diversion from the main highways.  We were doing fine until just after turning onto US-40 when we came upon a flashing sign saying “chains required when flashing” and a long line of stopped tanker trucks doing just that.  We decided to turn around and stick to the main highways for the rest of the trip.  There was just too much chance of snow at these altitudes, on the smaller highways, at this time of year.  We backtracked to US-6 and continued north from there.

When we stopped at our reserved hotel in Brigham City, we discovered that we had made our reservation for LAST NIGHT!  Oops...  So Pat found an available room in Tremonton, a few miles up the road, in a nice independent motel with a quirky Wild West décor and theme.  Our room was spacious and clean, with funky old furniture and fixtures in perfect condition.  We picked up BBQ to go at a little take-out place adjoining a nearby bowling alley.  Pat watched a bowler with two triple ball bags and a large bag over his shoulder enter the bowling alley.  They seem to take their bowling seriously around here.  Dinner was good, and thankfully we had beer in our cooler since it was nowhere to be found in Tremonton.

Friday 15 Mar 2024, Tremonton UT to Butte MT

At a rest stop we saw a wind turbine blade lashed onto the back of a semi for transport.  It was a huge elegant thing, unbelievably large yet graceful.  It looked out of place on the back of the truck, like a bird in a cage or strapped down at the vet.

We got into Butte a bit after 4:00 PM, then to the coolest car wash ever.  It was a touchless robotic thing with a laser light show going on while it was working.  OK, so we’re easily entertained.

Saturday 16 Mar 2024, Butte MT to Coeur d’Alene ID

We got up about 6:30 and it was minus 5 C out  We hit the road about 9:45.

A highway road sign advertised a book store with 100,000 books, so we veered off at the next exit to check it out.  Wow, what an amazing place!  In the tiny town of Alberton a woman had indulged her passion for collecting books over many years and had built this shrine.  Floor to 10-foot ceiling, room after room of filled bookshelves!  We could have spent hours there and bought boxes of books if we weren’t trying to get rid of our belongings.  

We got to our room in Coeur d'Alene, and went to dinner at “The Original Mongolian BBQ”.  Not sure what was original or BBQ about it, but it was good and healthy.

Sunday 17 Mar 2024, Coeur d’Alene ID to Mukilteo WA

Heading for “home” today, back to the ESA (Extended Stay America) in Mukilteo.  Our last drive day was great.  It was a beautiful sunny day and even warm.  We stopped in Ritzville for coffee and tea, and found that the old part of town was pretty much shut down.  We saw many shuttered businesses and it looked like a ghost town -- kind of sad.  We only saw two people and maybe three cars.  It was Sunday after all, but still.

Mt. Rainier and the Cascades were out all snowy and bright in the sun as we continued.  The drive over Snoqualmie Pass was just fine with traffic moving well.  We got home around 3:30 PM.  The room had been deep-cleaned while we were gone and smelled much better.  Our next door neighbor is still here and snoring up a storm all hours of the day and night.  Gerrit said he probably slept the whole time we were gone.

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The Back Story

The Research  

In about 2020 we subscribed to International Living magazine, reading it to each other and dreaming about places to retire all around the world.  After a while we settled on Europe, and began zeroing in a little closer.

We researched and learned about our options, filling our hard disks with many pages of notes, reading many blogs and books, and watching many videos.  We looked at lists of "best places to retire" and how well they fit us.  We did careful comparisons of eleven candidate countries which were at about the right latitude.  We considered and ranked:

• Democracy index (ranging from authoritarian regimes to full democracies)
• Cost of living
• Quality of life
• Religiosity
• Innovation index (a measurement of modernity)
• Net migration

We compared cultural characteristics from Hofstede Insights:

• Power Distance Index
• Individualism vs Collectivism
• Masculinity vs Femininity
• Uncertainty Avoidance Index
• Long Term Orientation
• Indulgence vs Restraint

We looked at rainfall, climatic regions, and the possible effects of climate change.  The internet is an incredible tool for all this, and we got way more out of this research than we would have by thumbing through a few books in the library like in the olden days.

We began looking more closely at the leading contenders: Portugal, Spain, and France, in that order.  We explored specific places and read about the experiences of expats there.  We finally decided on Spain, mainly because the language would be easier to learn and more generally useful, and began seriously digging in.

Which is when we ran into the Okupas movement.  A misguided Spanish law to help the homeless has resulted in squatters legally breaking into homes after 48 hours of their being unoccupied and having more legal right to the home than the owners.  It can take years to evict them.  40 houses a day are broken into in Spain like this.  After we got up off the floor, we made a quick course correction back to Portugal.

We researched the year-around climate of various places in Portugal and mapped out a zone in the northern region which we liked.  Porto is the second-largest city in Portugal, and is sort of the capital of this region.  We will use Porto as a home base to explore there.

We have relied on research up to now instead of visiting and exploring, mainly because of visa and time restrictions.  With a US passport you are allowed 90 days in the Schengen zone (that is, most of Europe) within any given 180 day period.  So we could have flown back and forth, 90 days at a time, but we thought this would take too much time and be too unfocused.  We wanted to be in Europe earlier than this would take.  We are confident enough that we will be able to find a place to love in Portugal, so we opted to go directly for a D7 visa which gives us a total of 5 years in the country if we choose.

Downsizing and Selling the Home

In the autumn of 2021 we began preparing to downsize and sell.  We auctioned off, donated, and gave away most of our belongings.  We packed up the remaining things we wanted to keep, suitable for overseas shipment, and stored it all in a 10' x 10' climate-controlled storage unit.  We hired an interior decorator, a handyman, and landscapers and got the place all spruced up.  We sold the house in the spring of 2022 and moved into our 19' travel trailer in a trailer park in SeaTac.  We'd made a killing in the Seattle real estate market and invested the proceeds from the sale.  Interest from that is supplementing our monthly income, and some of the principal will go toward our new home in Portugal.

Medical Struggles

Around the time we were packing up the home, Pat was having more and more pain and difficulty with mobility.  We saw two hip surgeons who took X-rays and said there was arthritis but nothing to worry about.  A back surgeon then found some damaged disks and further arthritis, which could have explained the problems, so in July 2022 she went in for vertebra fusion surgery.  We were living in our trailer at that time.

We moved into an ADA motel in Des Moines for a couple weeks after this, for her initial recuperation, since the trailer with its stairs would have been impossible.  She continued rehab in the trailer when she was able to move back in.  She continued to make some progress, things were a little better, but it was not the cure we were hoping for.

As time went on and winter approached, we dreaded the idea of spending all winter in the trailer park.  At the end of September 2022, we started on our grand US trailer trip, even though Pat was not fully functional.  We figured we would research and continue with rehab exercises while we traveled.

Despite all her rehab efforts and all the options we explored, there was really no significant progress.  Pat was in a lot of pain, and our mobility was restricted the whole trip.  Things slowly got worse, and finally in March 2023 we decided we had to return to Washington state where we had medical insurance coverage to get to the bottom of this.

In short order on our return, we found that both of Pat's hips were completely shot.  Why wasn't this seen in her first X-rays?  We don't have a good answer for that.  It's possible that her hips degenerated very quickly after the first X-rays.  It's possible that both doctors missed it earlier.  Or something else.  Regardless, we were able to schedule her first hip replacement quickly, for May 2023.

Her second hip replacement was three months later, in August 2023, and she continues to rehabilitate from both.  It has been slow, again not the dramatic improvement we were hoping for, but she is steadily improving and will be able to walk okay when we leave for Portugal next month.

The Gulf Trip

We departed in September 2022, when Pat was still recovering from back surgery and not able to walk very well, but we wanted to finish our travels before early 2024 so we could concentrate on moving.  We couldn't sacrifice the whole upcoming winter.  We also couldn't face the prospect of a winter in the trailer park.

We headed toward the Gulf of Mexico, planning to spend the winter in the warmer climes and then migrate through the Northeast in the spring.  We traveled at a leisurely pace through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.  We saw firsthand how big this country is, some of the culture and beauty we had never experienced before, and how warm and friendly everyone we met was.  The big thing we learned was that people are not that different, but political and journalistic forces seem to drive them apart.  The internet is also a force for polarization.  When you meet someone face to face, there is much greater empathy and desire to understand.

And along with the generally warmer climate, we found that they have winter tornadoes and hurricanes down there.  We had two encounters with tornadoes which were a little closer than comfortable, and we saw the unbelievable damage they can do.

We really had a great trip under the circumstances, but in Florida, in March 2023, we threw in the towel and headed home.  We had hoped to make a tour of the entire US, but that was just not to be.

And Now

In mid-April 2023 we returned to the Seattle area, and we moved into an Extended Stay place in May.  Since then we have been taking care of the death of Gerrit's stepmom and relocating his dad, Pat's hip replacements and recovery, selling the trailer, traveling to San Francisco for our visa application and waiting for the results, and working through our Portugal move checklist.  We have a beautiful new furnished apartment in Porto waiting for us (see this post).  We have also been studying the Portuguese language about an hour a day and continuing to learn about the country.  We are now about a month away from the actual move, on track, and pretty excited.

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