Storms, Power Boosts, and Shopping

Here is a bucolic scene of a flock of geese which suddenly appeared next to our recycling drop-off point one day on our way into Ponte de Lima.  

In Portugal, homes have a smart connection to the power grid via a sophisticated control box near the power inlet.  The power utility can remotely read power consumption, and can shut off power too.  There is a monthly charge based on your contract consumption ceiling.  Your consumption is how much power your home is using at a given time, and the ceiling acts like a circuit breaker for the whole house.  Last Friday, January 25, we had another power cut in the late afternoon.  This time we couldn't get the power back on even with repeated resets at the control box and turning off the water heater to reduce our consumption.  We dejectedly headed out for dinner in the pouring rain with a dark, cooling house.

We got together after dinner with our expat group at the regular Friday meeting.  Attendance was down a little due to the rain, but we had a good time meeting a few new people and making some more contacts.  There was plenty of commiseration on our blackout blues.  People have been through it, and we all agree that it's a little strange that the power company would cut off your power entirely if you exceed the maximum power specified in your contract.  Why can't they just charge you more if you go over?

We slept well in our unpowered house.  It doesn't get seriously cold in this temperate climate, even in January, and our bedclothes are cozy.  The next morning (Saturday) Gerrit ventured out to the control box, reset it, and the power stayed up this time.  He started adding up the power consumed by various appliances in the house: heating/AC units, stove and oven, pool skimmers, washing machine, water heater, water pump, refrigerator, and so forth, and realized we very likely were occasionally exceeding our contract maximum power of 6.9 kilowatts, which was what the power company rep said was average for a 2-person home.  This is not an average home though, electrically speaking.  Or any other way, frankly.

So we cut back consumption to the minimum and the power held up all day.  We also asked Nia, our fixer, to crank our contract up to 20 kilowatts, which is what we discovered the former owners had.  That should happen on Monday and will give us a little headroom and hopefully put these power cuts in the rear-view mirror.

At a break in the rain we snapped a photo of what we see looking out our front room doors/windows.  Just sitting here at the dining table we look up to see this!

Later in the afternoon Inês, our new housekeeper, came by with her sister and daughter.  We got to know each other, and the sister and daughter spoke English better than we did Portuguese.  Inês speaks very little English.  We got business taken care of and had a nice chat, in half-and-half Portuguese and English.  Inês's Portuguese sounds so nice, it's melodious and clear, and we're glad that the accent we've been learning matches hers quite well.  She will start next week, hopefully after we've cleared up some of the move-in clutter around here.

Here is a little observation we learned from Caroline and Peter, the Brits who sold us the house.  After Brexit, they could no longer stay in Portugal more than 90 days in any 180 day period.  That's the Schengen rule which the EU maintains for citizens of non-EU countries like England now is.  That made it impossible to spend the time here that they wanted and were used to, and was a key factor in their selling the house.  We have therefore directly benefited from Brexit and from their loss.  Strange thought.  They have been awfully gracious and helpful, considering all that.  They paid one last visit Saturday afternoon and we could tell they were kind of heartbroken.

On Sunday a big rain and wind storm moved in.  But when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.  We made our way back to Porto in sporadically very heavy rain and gusty wind, at a cautious speed.  We had to pick up an item we'd ordered at El Corte Inglés back in Gaia, so we decided to combine shopping there with an expedition to Ikea in Matosinhos, just north of Porto.  We got some little bathroom cabinets and a computer table there, in addition to all the other essential items you find as you wander through the Ikea labyrinth.  We loaded up the car in rain and wind so powerful we could hardly stand, and crawled back into the car for the drive home looking like drowned rats.

But the real reason we went to El Corte Inglés was to make up for our not taking pictures of our lunch last time.  Here's a replay:

"Piglet sandwiches" for lunch at El Corte Inglés

Raspberry cream puff and espresso for dessert

We had a few odd power outages that night after we got home, due to the high winds.  The power winked out about five times for a few minutes and then back on, but held up other than that.  We've seen this power behavior in the US occasionally, but not quite as many in a row as on Sunday night.

We were still wary of using the heater/ACs here until we can get our power ceiling raised.  Gerrit tried twice to light a fire, but the winds were so strong they whistled down the chimney and filled the front room with smoke.  He ran to open a couple of our huge window/doors to blow it out, and within seconds rain came pelting into the room, blown horizontally about 3 meters in (10 feet).  What a mess!  We mopped most of that up, gave up on the fire, and curled up in the living room to watch the storm with some glasses of wine.  It was pretty dramatic!

The following day, Monday January 27, the storm was still raging but had died down considerably.  We had left most of our goodies from yesterday in the car and garage, being too whupped to bring them in the previous night, so we watched for a rain break.  We got one in the late morning and quickly lugged everything inside, just before the rain began again.  Now we had lots of things to do inside!  With the winds abating Gerrit could get a fire started, and we enjoyed that all day.

On one of her trips lugging stuff inside, Pat gathered about two dozen ripe oranges from one of our trees.  We've been enjoying oranges for breakfast, lunch, and bedtime snack, and now she can juice away and freeze the delicious nectar too.

In the afternoon we received confirmation that our power ceiling had been raised to 20.7 kilowatts, so we celebrated by turning the main room heater on and letting the fire die out.  We should see no more of those mystery cutouts while the rest of the neighborhood is fine, only cutouts for actual power failures.  The extra monthly cost is only €35 ($37) above the old contract, with the energy cost per kilowatt-hour the same.

(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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Move-in Mania

 On Sunday January 20 we did a lot of shopping, at two hardware stores and then our favorite department store El Corte Inglés.  We have an ever-increasing list of things we'll need at the new home, even though it is fully furnished, but we checked off many of the items.  We had "piglet sandwiches" and wine for lunch at El Corte Inglés, followed by an espresso for Gerrit and a lemon creampuff to share.  (Photo?  What photo?  We are miserable bloggers.  Hungry too.)

Then we made another trip from the apartment to the new house with another carload of stuff.  It was raining pretty hard most of the time, but it was great to see the place again and to move some more of our things into it.  By the time we got back to the apartment we were pretty worn out.  After a dinner of pork "lizards" and green beans we limped off to bed.

Our original plan was to hire movers to do all the moving at once, but our friend Bernardo insisted that he and Carolina bring their car and that along with ours they could do the whole thing.  We then found that we had quite a bit more than two carloads, so this will take at least four carloads altogether.  Two we have already done, and hopefully the two on Tuesday will do it.

We did the final packing of the small stuff on Monday.  It was a big, all-day job, except for a quick visit to the clinic for a blood draw for Pat's regular check-up.  We now have everything boxed and piled in a corner of the room except for the last-minute stuff which we'll do tomorrow morning.

Tuesday the huge news was that we got our AIMA immigration meeting appointments!  Finally, after months of trying to contact them we got on the calendar.  The appointments aren't until May 2, but they are both at the same time in the same office.  (We have heard of couples being scheduled in vastly different parts of Portugal at the same time.)  The AIMA appointment is supposed to be two weeks after you arrive in Portugal, but it will have taken us almost a year.  Even with just an appointment now we can start applying for other certifications, and after the appointment we'll be official residents with most of the privileges of citizens.

We also finished the last minute packing, resulting in an alarmingly large pile to move.  We started planning for two trips.  Our friends arrived at 10:00 just as we finished up, and within a half hour they had both cars loaded with all the stuff and ready to go!  Only one trip required.  We buzzed up to the new home, they unloaded for us, and we were moved in before lunch.  They had to rush back to Porto to apply for a passport renewal so they could make their Morocco trip in a couple weeks, which was too bad.  We wanted to at least take them out for lunch.

We tried a new little restaurant about 5 minutes away for our lunch, called Pika Já.  The plate of the day sounded like "pork bananas".  We looked at each other, shrugged, and thought we'd give it a try.  Well, it had nothing to do with bananas.  The waitress had probably said "bifanas", or thinly sliced meat.  It came with a rich rice in sauce with beans and bacon, and a carafe of vinho verde.

That night we did more unpacking and puttering around the house.  Pat had a great idea for adding a wrought iron feature to our plain solid gray gate which she sketched out, to Gerrit's hearty approval.  Later there was much cursing by Gerrit at the godawful user interfaces of modern computerized appliances.  Who designs this junk?  We had a lovely fire in the evening though.  Casa da Rocha is beautifully energy efficient and warm when the sun shines, but on cold cloudy days it does get cold.  We're working out efficient ways of heating when we need to, with the fireplace and the excellent Mitsubishi heating/AC units.  (Excellent except for the user interface.)

The fireplace is a work of art.  There is a grating in the bottom which draws room air in like a bellows right into the middle of the fire when it gets going.  It burns hot and clean.  There are multiple heat exchanger inputs and outputs, so the maximum heat is extracted.  And there is a thermally-activated fan to really circulate the heated air.  Gerrit is bonding with his fireplace.

On Wednesday we had plans to go on a shopping spree, familiarizing ourselves with the local establishments, but we ended up staying home.  It was kind of a nice nesting rest after all that packing and moving.  As we worked, we watched the weather and the view from our glorious new perch as it slowly evolved over the day through rain, clearing, dramatic clouds, and fog.  Caroline and Peter, who sold the house to us, dropped by for a chat and to pick up something they'd forgotten.  Gerrit did a few little tasks like lubricating doors and inspecting garage items, and Pat did a lot of unpacking, puttering, and organizing.  Gerrit also got the electric and internet utility transfers underway.  He engaged the services of our friend Bernardo's sister Rita on the internet setup, and she negotiated us a 1/3 discount with increased services in addition to scheduling the hookup!  We'll be keeping her on the payroll.

That evening, after a cool rainy day we started a fire about 5 PM, and it warmed the whole house all evening long.  We sat after dinner in the darkened living room, enjoying the warm fire and the spectacular view of the village lights in the valley and the nighttime lights of Ponte de Lima.  Off to bed we went with happy hearts.

Until the power went out a little past midnight.  We lay there talking about how unprepared we were for this, and finally drifted back off since there was nothing we could do.  In Portugal you are billed based on a maximum rate of power delivery at a given time, and we wondered whether we had somehow exceeded that limit.

In the morning, Thursday, Gerrit called Nia, our fixer who had set up the new electricity contract, and she directed him to the main circuit box out on the street.  It was a lovely morning and Gerrit enjoyed a fresh little walk.  He pushed a button in the box and power came back on.  Hooray!  For a few minutes.  Boo!  He went back in and shut off the water heater, which he had been fiddling around with the previous day and may have screwed up, and he reset the control box again.  Now the power stayed up.

He and Nia figured out later that the power company had shut off power at the end of the previous contract, which was the day previous at midnight.  They don't provide continuous service with a new customer, they just shut it off and let the new customer reset.  Huh?  That most likely explains the midnight power failure, and the one shortly after that was probably caused by an improperly-configured water heater exceeding the power threshold.  Gerrit figured out how to set that properly, and power has been humming along ever since.

We also had a visit from a lift installer that day.  She carefully measured and evaluated our stairs, and instead of using the indoor stairway we found that we could install a platform lift like we wanted on a partially covered outdoor stairway.  Everything looked good, so we made a deposit.  The lift should be installed in eight weeks.  This will be a great help, not only to move heavy stuff up and down but for us too.  Next we need to get some handrails installed on all the stairs.

(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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Starting the Move, Meeting the People

There was a little misunderstanding about the real estate lawyer's bill after the deed signing, so after a night of insufficient sleep Gerrit sent him a rather abrupt note.  Not rude, but a little blunt.  He responded very graciously, explaining the whole thing, signing off with "um abraço amigo" (a friendly hug), and Gerrit felt pretty foolish for violating the Portuguese cultural norm of respect and kindness in communication.  Normally people start their emails or messages with a friendly "hello, how are you?" or similar, but Gerrit had bypassed that and sent a blunt, businesslike note, which sent all the wrong signals.  After the lawyer's gracious reply Gerrit got back on track and sent him an equally gracious response.  Moral: treat people well and with respect.  We think that holds wherever you are.

On Wednesday January 15 we had some imaging appointments at our standard clinic in Porto.  The lobby was very crowded and the exams were an hour late, so all is not perfect in the health care system here.  Still excellent care though, and the ultrasounds were only €85 ($88) each after insurance.

On Thursday the sellers of our new home (Peter and Caroline) prematurely canceled the electric utility contract, even though Gerrit had already initiated a transfer.  They forgot that, and didn't realize that the power would be disconnected for our move with a canceled contract.  They scrambled and got the contract reinstated though, so all was well.  The actual billing transfer is likely to take a week or so.  Gerrit tried and failed to penetrate the utility's opaque phone tree, so he has enlisted our immigration consultant Nia Queiroz (the "Portugal Wizard") to set up the new contract.

On Friday we took a carload up to Casa da Rocha.  We unloaded and got everything hauled up the stairs without too much difficulty, unpacked, and then were met by Peter and Caroline who were staying with friends nearby.  They walked us around the place explaining all sorts of useful aspects, Caroline and Pat picked an armload of oranges, and soon we all had delightful big glasses of unsweetened pure homegrown orange juice.

While we were there, a delivery of flowers appeared!  Gerrit's family had sent flowers, a few days early, but by sheer luck we were there at the time of delivery.  This had been done by a single phone call to Ballard Blossoms in Seattle, who then took care of the whole international part of it.  Remarkable!  

The flower delivery was stymied at first by our closed gate and the fact that no house address appears at the entrance.  They came and left.  But what happened after that is pure Portugal: the flower delivery person knew to go to Café Martins (the local meeting point for everything in our neighborhood), and drop the flowers off.  Manuela there knew the address and then delivered the flowers.  It's the kind of neighborhood you want to be a part of.

There seemed to be a big festival going on in Ponte de Lima.  Big flash-bang fireworks were going off in the distance, and folk music carried up the valley.  Apparently the mayor of Ponte de Lima has been drumming up festivals of all kinds (including the Lamprey Festival, the Our Lady of the Good Death Festival, and the Our Lord of Socorro festival (socorro means "help me"), among many others), so we'll be seeing plenty of this.  Life at Casa da Rocha will not always be serene, but we will go with the flow and join in the fun.

Peter and Caroline then led us to a regular Friday get-together of English-speaking expats at a bar near Ponte de Lima, where we were introduced to the gang.  Everyone was very welcoming and friendly, and the neighbors there congratulated us on our beautiful new home.  We got into some nice discussions with some very interesting people.  We are running into a very cosmopolitan group of people in Portugal who have lived and traveled all over the world.  We exchanged names and WhatsApp contacts with a number of them, and will return to the Friday get-togethers once we settle.

On the way home (the new one that is) we stopped at a local pizza joint for some excellent pizza, a big salad, and glasses of wine.  We had learned earlier from Caroline that in the Ponte de Lima area (capitol of the vinho verde region) if you order "red wine" you get vinho verde tinto, a rather sour version of vinho verde which includes grape skins in the mash to give it a reddish tint.  If you want good old red wine around here you must order "vinho tinto maduro", or "mature red wine".  It's a minefield out there.

Arriving home at Casa da Rocha we puttered around a little exploring light switches and their effect, then bedded down.  The distant sound of festivities continued until about midnight we think, but it wasn't disturbing and we slept like babies, on our first sleepover.

In the morning we had more fresh orange juice along with some muesli we had brought, but alas no coffee or tea.  We did our Portuguese lessons, put empty suitcases back in the car, and headed back toward the apartment.  On the way we stopped at the legendary Café Martins which Peter and Caroline had raved about, to grab some coffee and tea.  As we entered, we bumped into Peter and Caroline just leaving!  They did a U-turn, joined us for coffee, and introduced us to Nuno and Manuela, the proprietors of this way-more-than-a-café.

Café Martins on the outside

A tiny part of Café Martins on the inside

Café Martins is a nice little café and bar, to be sure, but it is also the most incredible hardware, grocery, and notions store you'll ever see.  Anyone been to McLendon Hardware in the Seattle area?  It's like a combination of that and Fred Meyer, all jammed into a little place right down the street from us.  There is barely room to move between the racks of stuff.  Deep in the basement of the hardware section are hundreds of bins of screws, nuts, bolts, washers, etc., and you can buy just one screw if you need it.  At 2 AM if you need to.  It's incredible.  We bought a drill, bits, and a tape measure there, just to get started.  Nuno and Manuela are warm and friendly, and speak almost no English.  Excellent!  We stammered and squeezed out little sentences (necessity being the mother of inventing them).  They will be great language learning helpers.

As we left we heard English being spoken though: a British woman came up and introduced herself as our neighbor.  Delightful and friendly, and another stitch between us and the new neighborhood.

Nicely caffeinated and excited, we headed back to our apartment for more packing and moving prep.  It has been beautiful and clear for days, but it is due to start raining tomorrow for about a week.

(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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Homeowners!

One of our internet Portuguese instructors had a video where he interviewed a famous Canadian polyglot who knows 20 languages including Portuguese.  Wow!  20 languages!  It soon became clear though, that he really didn't speak Portuguese very well.  He was fully conversational, but his pronunciation was not so great and he dropped in Spanish words now and then.  He admitted that he made a lot of mistakes, but you have to admire his willingness to just dive in and flounder.  That really is the hard part, and is probably key to actually getting the language.  But maybe these famous polyglots aren't exactly model language users either.

We came across this old-time photo of downtown Ponte de Lima from what looks like the 1920s based on the cars and dress.  Then we realized that all the buildings, including the castle tower of course, are still exactly the same today!  The 1920's seems like so long ago to us, but not to the slow passage of history.

To the right is a pretty nice sunset from our apartment.  Spoiler alert: see below.

Monday Jan 13 was a day of furious planning and communication.  There was a mix-up regarding payment for the house: the sellers asked for a direct wire transfer (here on the day before the deed signing) but we had been told to get bank checks, which we had done.  The lawyer hadn't noticed that we told him we had checks last Friday.  He smoothed it out though, convincing the sellers that they could cash the checks and wire funds to their own UK account with no trouble.  They verified this and agreed to the checks.  Whew.

The sellers spent the day at Casa da Rocha cleaning and packing, preparing it for its new owners.  They sent us a lovely picture of the sunset, sitting on the deck bidding their place farewell after their day of work.  (This went much better than our purchase of our home in Normandy Park, where the scumbag sellers ran off with window blinds and medicine cabinets.  They even tried to take the stove, but that was thankfully hardwired. Naming names, these people were the Caryls of Normandy Park.  Stay away.)  These sellers have been wonderful, agreeing to sell the home completely furnished, cleaning it up, and connecting us with local resources and the homeowner's insurance company they used.

We got the contact information for their housekeeper Inês from them.  We have already met Inês a couple times when viewing the house; she let us in since the owners were not there.  The seller told us that "she said how lovely (and friendly) you are" so we are really looking forward to having her carry on as housekeeper and as our neighbor and friend.  She also speaks only a little English, so it will be great Portuguese practice for us.

And when we weren't busy with all that, Gerrit was fielding questions from lift installers and contacting new ones, and Pat was finding movers to help us relocate.  Gerrit has four lift installers quoting on the job, and Pat has three potential movers lined up.

At 8 PM the night before the signing, we received the contract for the furniture sale (separate from the house sale for tax purposes).  Sheesh...

But the deed signing was very thorough and meticulous, much more so than we ever saw in the US.  A notary supervised the whole process, reading the entire Portuguese contract through while the lawyer checked every number.  A very thorough Energy Certificate is required for every house sale, which shows efficiency, where heat enters and where it leaves, insulation problems, suggestions for improvement, and more.  Casa da Rocha got an A on the scale of A to F.  Then our real estate agent translated the whole contract to English for us and for the British sellers.  Everything was in order, the mood was light, and we exchanged checks and keys.  Casa da Rocha is now ours!  The lawyer told us all that it was the best house sale transaction he had ever experienced.  Between activities the sellers and we chatted and we heard more of the story of the house (which they custom-designed and built in 2014), and planned to get together on Friday at a neighbor's house near Casa da Rocha.  The sellers want to introduce us, and take us around to some landmarks in the neighborhood too.

After a quick lunch we drove excitedly up to our new home and wandered around with stars in our eyes.  We got familiar with things, checked out the kitchen inventory, and were stunned at how lovely and clean the sellers had left the place.  There were bundles of documents tied with a bow and explanatory notes, dozens of keys and door openers all neatly arrayed and labeled, and careful operating instructions and pool cleaning instructions.  We even found an alphabetized file folder with owner's manuals for every appliance and piece of equipment in the house.  And on top of all this, they left us a bottle of wine, a lovely card, and a jar of lemon curd made with "our" lemons!  Yes, we have lemon and orange trees, and the ripe fruit smells and tastes heavenly.  We made a few measurements, snapped a few quick photos, and reluctantly headed back to the apartment since we had doctor appointments in Porto early the next day.

First selfie in the new home

A real Casa da Rocha sunset, from the balcony

Before bed we confirmed that our new TV was exactly the right size, to the centimeter, to fit comfortably in the TV cabinet.  This is just nuts.  We feel like we're in a dream, or like some twinkly fairy is following us around with a magic wand.

The following day (today) Pat lined up some movers for Tuesday January 21.  That's the stake in the ground, Moving Day, we're outta here.

Our ideas about a lift are evolving.  We found that the terrace is too narrow to allow even the smallest lift through it without almost completely blocking it.  We also started thinking that maybe an exterior lift would really mar the beautiful architecture.  So we're looking at other options now, including a nice-looking platform stair lift (like a stair chair but with a discreet fold-up platform instead).  We could move people, groceries, or boxes of stuff that way.  First we need plain old stair railings, then stay tuned for the next development.

(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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Getting Ready to Buy a House

On Wednesday Jan 8 we had a doctor appointment in Porto.  Our usual method for these is to take Uber over and back since there is no traffic or parking to deal with and it is door-to-door service.  This worked just fine again, but this time Gerrit had an actual conversation with the Uber driver on the way over.  It was about five minutes of pure Portuguese.  Gerrit told him how long we had been in Portugal, that we had just bought a house, asked him how to say several words and phrases he was unsure of, and some other small talk too.  He says it was really exciting and fun.

Across the street from our apartment we saw this great example of European parking.

And here's a food shot of a recent salmon and veggie dinner at home, just to pump up the photo content of this otherwise non-visual blog post.  Gerrit did the salmon and Pat did the mushroom / pepper / spinach sautee.  We had a nice red wine with it.  (We don't subscribe to the red-with-meat, white-with-fish philosophy.  That seems sort of like saying "oh, you can't have pasta alfredo with your beef, it must be potatoes".  Wine is just another flavor with the dinner.  Some flavors don't go well together, to be sure, like cotton candy and prime rib, but for the most part we think you can just enjoy the different flavors of your meal blending and contrasting.)

Then we learned that we can't just wire funds to escrow to purchase the house as we were planning.  We need to present a quaint old-fashioned bank check at the deed signing.  Gerrit scrambled Wednesday evening (morning in Seattle) to get the funds wired from our US account to our Portuguese account, worrying that they would get here on time.  The following morning he called our Gaia banker to tell him the funds were coming, and found out that he was out of the office until Monday.  That's cutting it a little close.  We then called our actual account manager in the city of Cascais (two bankers?  it's a long story) and were told that anyone in the bank can issue bank checks.  So that gives us a little flexibility.

And after all this we got the official letter from the real estate lawyer describing the entire upcoming transaction, which said that directly wiring funds is acceptable too!  Good grief.  Well, we will push this whole thing through somehow but it may take longer than next Tuesday.  Or maybe it will be a mad chaotic scramble and actually get done at the last minute, Portuguese style, like our visa application did.

On Thursday Gerrit worked up a computer program to automatically search and insert the audio links into these blog posts.  That's been a pretty tedious process up to now, but from here on out it will be easy.  Just to test it, let's put a bunch of Portuguese words in here from our blog audio database and see if it will find them: Boa tarde!  Bem vindo a Casa da Rocha!  Would you like some vinho verde?  Yep, works like a champ.

Then Friday was a breakthrough day.  The money we'd wired from our US bank arrived here at our Portugal bank, nice and quick.  So we went to the bank, got the necessary bank checks, and verified that taxes can be paid at the deed signing by a debit card.  The debit card limit is lifted for paying taxes, which is a convenient way to pay a large previously-unknown amount in front of a notary.  So we are good to go for the deed signing on Tuesday, and should be moved into Casa da Rocha before the end of the month!  We're pretty excited.

Our contractual lease on this apartment runs through February, but our landlord already has new tenants waiting (that's how hot the housing market is here).  We're on good terms and could probably get a refund for the last month's rent if we are out by the end of January, but we won't push it.  We'll let him get double rent for February, his new tenants will be happy to get out of their AirBnB, and we'll be happy to get to Casa da Rocha as quickly as possible.  It's a win-win-win.

And here's another photo boost, a nice wedge of sunset as seen from our apartment on Sunday night.  Just wait to compare this with the sunsets we'll see in Casa da Rocha.

(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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Money, Drugs, and Seafood

We have seen and sampled many wines from Esporão, and they've been great.  We weren't sure exactly whether Esporão was a winery or a broker or what, though.  They make wines all over Portugal and also olive oil, beers, and they are involved in tourism.  We went to their website and found this English-subtitled "mission statement".  It's the most refreshing and non-BS mission statement we've ever seen.  It seems to have a Portuguese spirit.  And you can enjoy the bassoon duet too.

Gerrit has been worrying about what happens to our euro income from our US-based investments (in dollars) if the incoming administration's plans to weaken the dollar transpire.  On the face of it, a weakened dollar would reduce the euro purchasing power of our investments.  For example, if the investments had a great +10% year but the dollar slid relative to the euro by -10%, the gain in euro purchasing power from all those shrewd dollar investments would be wiped out.

But never fear, there is a good explanation of how to mitigate currency fluctuations as an American expat here.  This general idea was also suggested to us a little while ago by our financial advisor.  It involves investing at least partly in euro-based funds like ETFs.  There is even a significant tax advantage for American taxpayers to do this through a US-based brokerage rather than investing directly in European companies or funds.  Weakening the dollar can have benefits for American exporting firms too, so you can optimize your overall investments by keeping some of them in dollar-based securities too.

Gerrit thought maybe we would have to liquidate our US investments and reinvest in European securities, but fortunately we won't have to do that.

He also called our Seattle bank to verify the procedure for wiring our house purchase funds to a Portugal escrow, in about a week if all goes well.  Wiring large amounts of money internationally turns out to be simple, cheap, and straightforward, and we're all ready to go.

Pat got her Social Security benefit started, since we won't have as much interest-producing capital after we buy the house.  By "started" we mean we'll start seeing it by maybe March.

And on the new-home front, Gerrit made contact with several lift installation companies and sent them some sketches of what we have in mind.  There is a long daunting staircase leading from the house entry level to the upper floor living area, so soon we will want a lift to haul groceries (and ourselves) up and down.  The stairs also don't have railings, so we need to line that up shortly too, like as soon as possible.  Our new neighbor and housekeeper Inês is a local and has worked for the former owners for years, and she should have some good handyman references.  By the way, "handyman" in Portuguese is "faz tudo", or "does everything".  Some websites have a category for "marido de aluguel" (husband for hire), too.  Only for the difficult, no-fun part, we assume.

You may already know about Portugal's liberalized drug policies.  In 2001, the country decriminalized the personal use and possession of all drugs.  Drug-related deaths, HIV infections, and incarceration have all significantly declined as a result.  We haven't seen any evidence of drug use other than the occasional cannabis shop, but of course we haven't been to the darkest alleys of Lisbon either.  A news item we saw today describes a free street-drug testing service here.  The article says "This service enables individuals to verify the contents of their substances, identifying unexpected compounds or adulterants, thereby facilitating informed decision-making and enhancing safety."  Wow.  Think of all the deaths in the news due to fentanyl in heroin or bad batches of meth.  Portugal's attitude is pretty much the opposite of a "war on drugs", and it has been working for 24 years.

The US has far and away the highest death rate for drug use in the world: 21.3 per 100k.  Portugal ranks 0.64, not the lowest in the world but close.  And speaking of death, what about all the fatty meat and fries they scarf down over here?  Death by coronary heart disease clocks in at US = 73.5, Portugal = 39.3.  Both are pretty low on the worldwide scale, but we think Portugal is only about half the US because wine must cut fat.  (joking...)  Death by violence?  US = 6.0, Portugal = 0.76.  You can have your own morbid fun here.

Last night, Tuesday Jan 7, we had our first big splurge dinner here in Portugal.  It was a fabulous seafood feast in Matosinhos, just north of Porto, about a half hour from our apartment.  Matosinhos is renowned for the best seafood in Portugal and has been raved about by Anthony Bourdain, Mark Wiens, and other food writers as some of the best in the world.

Pat made reservations at Os Lusíadas where we had the Misto Epopeia ("Mixed Epic"), an enormous platter of the best seafood we have ever tasted.  But did we take a picture?  We did not, because we are the world's worst bloggers.  However, we did find these normal-blogger and stock photos of the place, showing the restaurant and something similar to the feast we were served.  (The exact meal depends on what is fresh for the day.)  Also, here is a segment in a Mark Weins video where he is served the same thing we ordered.  (This video was our inspiration to visit Os Lusíadas, by the way.)

It was unbelievable.  Crab, crayfish, lobster, shrimp, scallops, barnacles, whelks, clams, and more, all of it as fresh, briny, and delicious as you can possibly imagine.  There was a crab shell filled with the most incredible "crab butter", a mysterious creamy blend of seafood flavors which was rich, complex, and indescribably delicious.  We savored each bite as the flavor changed and evolved in our mouths.  Stunning!

Similar to our feast

Seafood galore at Os Lusíadas

This photo shows another specialty of Os Lusíadas: sea bass flame roasted in a mound of salt at your table.  It makes fajitas look pretty lame!  The salt forms a crust which seasons and seals juices in the fish, while the flames give it a grilled look and flavor.  Next time we'll try it.

Service was outstanding.  We ordered vinho verde, which should be enjoyed cold, so ours was kept aside in a chilled bucket while waiters whisked by to refill our glasses to only an inch every few minutes so it didn't warm up in the glasses.  And a shellfish extravaganza like this results in piles of shells, which were attentively removed as we ate.  Everyone spoke English, but we both tried to practice a little Portuguese too.

We were literally the first patrons in the restaurant, which is pathetically American.  We had reservations for 7:00, which is about the earliest the Portuguese begin to think about dinner, but we got there even earlier due to good traffic and parking and sheepishly took a table in the empty place.  A little while later a family with two of the sweetest and best behaved young boys joined us nearby, and as we enjoyed our feast the place did start to fill and warm up with happy patrons.

(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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Guimarães and Lizards

Gerrit's friend Charlie had tickets to the same New Year's Eve show that we did.  We all had a great time.  

On New Year's Day we took a day trip to Guimarães, one of our favorite towns, about 40 minutes from here.  We did a little research and decided we wanted to walk around the historical part of the old town.  We figured many places would be closed that day, like museums, other attractions, and even restaurants.  Pat packed us a picnic lunch and off we went to explore on our own.  This time we didn't miss the A3 freeway turnoff in Porto and we made it directly to Guimarães without a hitch.

It was a clear, sunny, cool day, and we sat on a sunny park bench just across from where we parked the car to enjoy our lunch and a bottle of vinho verde.  There in the park, without even a paper bag around it.  No big deal.

Then we began our leisurely tour of this incredible historic city.  Many people were out enjoying the fine weather.  We did a little window shopping as we strolled along centuries-old winding streets.  We were both overcome with the beauty and history, and we felt a deep sense of respect for this place and the people who have lived here, cared for it, and preserved it all these centuries.  Around every corner was a new breathtaking scene.  Guimarães was after all declared the most beautiful small city in Europe by Condé Nast a few years ago.

Guimarães street scene

"Look adorable" she said.  Not working.

Old town garden

Textures in a bell tower

Café life

Wrought iron gate

We followed a walkway along part of the ancient city wall, marveling at the masonry and what it must have taken to assemble these huge stones into a perfect, seamless, straight wall centuries ago.  We saw the narrow slots in the wall where archers shot to defend the town.  The wall provided a nice view of some of the town, and we could see the Palace of the Dukes of Braganza on one end, a medieval estate.  We sat and soaked up the ambience in medieval squares, watching the people and pigeons and admiring the architecture.  

Ancient wall with the Palace of the Dukes of Braganza in the background

A peek through the wall at some manicured gardens in Guimarães

Building with orange tree (sounds like the title of a Monét painting)

Municipal Chamber of Guimarães, built 50 years before the US even existed

Just before we left for home, we stopped at a sweet shop which was open on New Year's Day and had some crepes and coffee.  Pat tried Nutella on her crepe for the first time and found it delicious.

Lizards have become a regular part of our diet now, too.  Pork lizards, that is.  That's what they call these tasty little pork strips.  See the label below: black pig from Alentejo (a special pork delicacy in Portugal), and the cut, "lagartos", means "lizards".  They look sort of like lizards we guess, but they sure are delicious.  Here's one of our favorite dinners: lizards, curried cauliflower, and slices of pear, with an outstanding new wine we've discovered made from castelão grapes.  We'd never heard of them either.  This wine comes from the Tejo region in central Portugal.  Check Vivino for Quinta da Alorna Castelão, it's available in the US.

(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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