Our friends Jess and Julian returned home to the UK, but not before Jess contracted COVID. She started having symptoms at the fado performance which we all attended together on Oct 29. Fortunately none of the rest of us have shown symptoms, but what a lousy way to wind up a vacation for poor Jess!
Our TV has been erratic for a couple months now, sometimes working and sometimes not, but getting worse. Gerrit tried to use the self-diagnostic thing on the Vodafone app (the Portuguese equivalent of Xfinity) but it didn't work, then their phone menu was in Portuguese with no English option, so we went to the Vodafone main branch in Porto with our TV box in hand. We were told there that they couldn't just exchange the TV box, they needed to get a technician to diagnose the problem. We went home, the technician called to set up an appointment to visit, and said it was almost certainly the TV box. Sigh. Well, at least they're coming out here to do the exchange and we don't have to go back.
We are going to drive to Andorra, the tiny country between Spain and France to visit Gerrit's son Ian and family. We will be seeing these grandkids for the first time! Liberty is four and Orson is three. Their family has been hopping around the globe for years, and recently moved from Mérida, Mexico, to Andorra where they will probably settle for a while. We're really excited to see them, and Pat has been busy plotting routes and reserving hotels.
Meanwhile, Gerrit has been shopping for home inspectors. He got quotes and qualifications from three and selected one.
The weather was beautiful again on Saturday Nov 2, sunny and warm, so we decided to take a trip and picnic lunch to Portugal's only national park:
|
|
 Rio Caldo scene
|
|
|
 Little stone hut in a meadow
|
The park is just over an hour from us. We entered near the town of
|
Autumn leaves in Peneda-Gerês
|
 And more
|
OK, we must admit that there do seem to be more fast and aggressive drivers here in Portugal, contrary to our earlier rosy claim. They seem to be most evident on the toll highways, were they can be seen flying along 40 or 50 kph over the limit, zooming up behind law-abiding speed limit adherents flashing their lights or turning on their turn signals, and weaving in and out of lanes with no signals. These same drivers nearly nick your fender after they barely get around you. Their cars seem to be mostly German and mostly black. Autobahn wannabes? Maybe it's a European thing, not necessarily Portuguese. They've become a running joke with us.
The Vodafone tech came and Gerrit got to try some baby Portuguese with him since the tech knew very little English. Gerrit learned that the Portuguese word for "cable" is "cable", so that was good to know. With hand gestures and three-word sentences he managed to explain the situation and explore solutions. The tech replaced the WiFi TV link with hardwired Ethernet, which Gerrit is skeptical will fix the problem, but it's working now and we'll see. It was nice to have them come here to work the problem.
We've been doing some soul-searching on the home we sent a picture of in the last post, and have decided it's really not for us. Our hearts fell in love, but our heads have been saying no. It is a lovely, peaceful, secluded and natural property with a beautiful house and views, but it is just too far out from civilization and community and would require too much work to bring up to snuff (and in the long term to maintain). So we're back to the property search with some different parameters, and some interesting places are cropping up.
(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.)