Progress and Playing Catchup

Dear reader, it has been too long since a blog post!  We need to keep up better.  Here is a long one to catch up.  

We haven't met anyone socially yet here in Portugal, handicapped as we are by our weak language skills.  Last Wednesday, however, Pat was out on the terrace when our neighbor came out on his adjoining terrace and they said hello around the divider.  After a bit his wife joined him and Gerrit came out too, and we all had a nice visit.  They're lovely people, very friendly and helpful.  They speak English very well, but we got to try out a few phrases in Portuguese too.  It's so nice to make an actual local connection!

Then on Thursday Aug 15 we decided to go car shopping to the Porto Honda dealer.  Gerrit hadn't been successful with their website request form or understanding their Portuguese phone answering system, so we figured we'd head out there in person.

When we got there the place was deserted, contrary to the hours posted in the window.  Hmm, we thought, maybe they're appointment-only during the holiday month of August?  We got back in the car and headed to the next-nearest dealer, in Gaia a few kilometers away.  They too were closed!  Good grief, Portugal seemed to take this August holiday month seriously.

Well, the barbecue grill next door sure smelled good, so we got an order of barriga de porco (pork belly) to take out and headed home for lunch.  Where, d'oh!, we realized after looking at the calendar that today was the Assunção de Maria (Assumption of Mary) public holiday!  We have got to start paying more attention to the Google Portugal Holidays calendar.  The barriga de porco was excellent though.  Good thing the grill wasn't taking the day off.

To salvage the day, that afternoon we headed to the Reserva Natural Local do Estuário do Douro (Nature Reserve Douro Estuary Site), a prime local birdwatching spot recommended by our new neighbor friend, with big camera and lens in hand.  It is on the Douro river estuary, just before the river meets the Atlantic Ocean, and is a stopping point for about three dozen species throughout the year.  

The weather was beautiful and Pat took over a hundred photos, but only a few came out.  The wind was pretty strong and it was hard to keep the long lens still, so most of the photos are blurry when zoomed in.  We were in a bird blind and leaning through the open windows, so next time we'll bring along a tripod and place it inside the blind where it will shield the camera from the wind.

Meanwhile, here are a couple slightly blurry shots including a flamingo stretching its wings and showing off its bright colors.  We had to go to Portugal to see flamingos!  On our whole US Gulf States trip in the winter of 2022, even in Florida, we didn't see a single one.

The following day, Friday, we tried again at the Honda dealer with more success.  We met a very nice English-speaking sales guy named Amadeu and looked thoroughly at the Jazz, a super-mini hybrid.  They didn't have a demo model available, so we made an appointment for a test drive the following Thursday.  The conversation then turned to cultural differences, how much we like Portugal, what we've done, and Amadeu gave us some excellent seafood restaurant and wine recommendations.  He used to sell high-end wine to Angolan clients, so he knows whereof he speaks.  This was an unexpected bonus from our visit to the car dealer.

Gerrit finally found out how to contact the immigration agency AIMA for our obligatory meeting, but it is only by phone and those in the know say it is almost impossible to get through.  It's looking more reasonable now to hire a law firm to take care of the whole thing.  They will set up the appointment and even accompany you there, which will be a great help if the AIMA agent doesn't speak English.  On Wednesday Gerrit pulled the trigger on that, getting a recommended law firm started.

Sunday, after doing some chores and paperwork, we decided to head back to the bird-watching area to see if we could get some clearer photos, but there was a lot of smoke in the air so visibility was poor.  We think it might be coming down the Douro river valley from wildfires.  We drove around sightseeing for a while though, including Gerrit trying his driving skill through a 2 m wide tunnel.  He squeaked through okay with about an inch to spare on each side, but a block further the road completely petered out so he had to back down the street and through the tunnel backward.  Very carefully!

On Monday we went to our first Expats Portugal get-together, at a restaurant/brewery in Porto.  There were probably 40 people there, mostly Americans, gathered in the outdoor seating area enjoying beers, snacks, dinner, and conversation.  We made some good connections, shared stories, and got some good ideas.

We've been watching Portuguese TV in the evening before dinner, mostly cheesy game shows and local news.  The cheesier the better actually, since they use simpler words on those shows.  We've even tuned in on a couple children's shows (including a modern version of "Lassie Comes Home", produced in Germany with people using cell phones, German signage, and dubbed into Portuguese).  We only understand a small bit, but just watching and listening helps to train the ear.  Pat found the local Porto channel, so we're able to keep up on local news and highlights around northern Portugal, or at least look at the pictures.  We've seen features on some beautiful areas and villages we want to check out.

On Wednesday we took another tour southeast of Porto along the south side of the Douro river.  We took the back roads, and it was another beautiful outing.  

We stopped at the sweetest little public bathroom in the village of Sante.  It was sparkling clean, tiled, old-fashioned, and simply a public convenience for everyone to use as they needed.  How nice!  Pat reports the women's side had a few problems though.

A beautiful, well-kept cemetery was right across the road.  We noticed several of the tombstones had a man's name plus "wife and children" on them.  Did this mean he had a wife and children, or were they buried there too, anonymously?  Portugal has been a patriarchal society in times past, so it may be the latter.

We stopped for lunch a little bit up the road, and the employees came out when we arrived.  A welcoming committee?  They didn't look very cheerful though, and seemed to be looking up the road.  One of them took us inside, where we asked about lunch for two and what was available.  She said there was no food, and then something else we didn't understand.  We smiled and said okay, thank you, and goodbye, and as we left a fire engine with emergency techs pulled up with flashing lights.  Somebody inside had had some sort of emergency, and here we were asking "what's for lunch?".  We felt bad as we drove away for being such unwitting idiots.

We stopped a bit further on the way home at a small village restaurant and had another wonderful rustic Portuguese lunch.  We had olives and bread to start, breaded hake, fries-and-rice (a common combination in Portugal, we've found), a full bottle of good vinho verde, and a demitasse of espresso all for a little over €18.  No one spoke English and we had to muddle our way through a bit, but there were smiles and good will all around.  Another lovely Portuguese experience.

Today, Thursday Aug 22, we went back to the car dealer and took a test drive.  Suffice it to say for now that we put a deposit on a new car.  More next post.  We came back home and walked to Pat's blood test appointment, then had a delicious lunch at a local restaurant a couple doors down.  From now on you can just assume that all our meals out are delicious, simple, authentic, and cheap.  We'll tell you otherwise.

(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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