Sedentary Life

Well, this is getting really sedentary.  Feel free to unsubscribe if you were hoping for hang gliding and motocross.  

On Monday Feb. 17 Gerrit assembled the wood chipper, and on Tuesday and Wednesday he gave it a workout.  He chipped up a pile of branches which had resulted from some extensive pruning.  The chipper is electric, nice and quiet, chews up pruned branches just fine, and reduces their volume considerably.  The result is a finely-chopped mash which can be spread in an unused section of the lot or composted.  Everyone burns their yard waste in Portugal, but we're going to buck the trend.  Burning is too smoky.

We went for a drive to explore some of the surrounding area not far from home.  Here are a couple beautiful scenes.

Castle on a hill surrounded by vineyards

Nearby village

Pat has been trying to order a washing machine and a wine cooler.  First there was no confirmation of the order or whether it was going to be delivered.  She contacted Rita, our smart and fully bi-cultural all-purpose Portuguese fixer, who found that the wine cooler was out of stock for a month so they were holding the whole order.  Without telling us.  What?  So Pat tried to cancel the cooler order, specifically saying that, and got the question back whether she wanted to cancel the entire order.  Huh?  Why?  When Pat explained all this to Rita, Rita said well, that's just the Portuguese way.  Pat said she was trying not to go there, to that stereotype, and Rita responded "hope is the last to go".  Hah!  That ironic pessimism is kind of a Portuguese stereotype too.

Pat ordered the cooler from another store.

On Thursday we thought we would visit a swimming pool supply place not far from here.  We need a new pool cover, plus we really don't know what we're doing and we're hoping to get some general maintenance advice.  The website is bilingual and we were hoping to speak to someone in English.  When we got there we found a woman who seemed kind of sad and only spoke Portuguese, and with some difficulty we gathered that the owner was not at work that day.  Or something like that.  So we bade her farewell and made a mental note to call first next time.

Friday was another delivery day: a washing machine and a curling iron.  Gerrit also built a little shelf for the bedroom alarm clock out of materials he'd been accumulating.  Later we went to the regular Friday expat gathering at the Margen bar and met some more interesting people with fascinating stories.  We got a possible connection for a plumber too.

Sunday we made the 1 hour drive back to Porto for some errands and shopping.  When we moved here to Ponte de Lima we got leftover boxes and packing material from some fellow expats who had recently moved, and Sunday we took them to the next users, a nice couple from Texas.  We hope the boxes get passed along like this as long as they hold up.  Also, Pat had found a gorgeous thick walnut counter top for sale by another expat which we picked up.  It will make a beautiful coffee table.  And last but not least we paid another visit to the El Corte Inglés department store for lunch, a chef's knife, and some of their specialty grocery stuff.

Monday was a reminder of Seattle: steady, non-stop rain all day long.  We stayed totally at home, cleaning and putting things away.  Online shopping too, for bungalows and knife blocks.  Did we mention we're thinking of putting a bungalow in the lower part of the property?

Tuesday was a beautiful day, after all that rain the day before, so we spent some time in the morning doing some pruning and branch chipping.  About noon the wine cooler arrived and we set it up.  Most of the year it won't be doing much, but during the hot summer months coming up it will keep the wine from getting "cooked".  Yes, that's the term for it, and it ruins the wine.  Pat also harvested a couple dozen lemons, started a batch of limoncello with the zest, and froze the juice in ice cube trays for lemonade or cooking.  Here is the lemon tree before the harvest, but there are plenty of lemons left.  Next up: lemon curd!

Wednesday was another nice day, but we had both slept poorly the night before.  A large neighbor dog sounded like he was ticked off at some predators which were after his goats between about 3:00 and 4:30 AM, barking incessantly.  Ah, country life.  We went grocery shopping in the morning (also picking up a computer printer and a cheap little single-shot espresso machine), and in the afternoon we measured and photographed the potential bungalow area.

(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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Sightseeing

Put on your tourist hats folks: lots of pictures in this post.  Pat found a fireplace wood basket she liked online, available at a hardware store in Barcelos, about 45 minutes from here.  We headed down there on Saturday Feb. 15, and picked it up along with a load of other stuff.

Barcelos is famous for the origin of the Rooster of Barcelos, the symbol of Portugal.  You see gigantic roosters like this tabletop version all over town, and similar roosters all over Portugal.  The story behind it is highly dubious, involving a roasted rooster jumping up from the dinner table and crowing.  We recommend you not spread this around.

On the way back home we took the back roads and saw an intriguing-looking church structure on a hill in the town of Balugães.  We took a left, headed up the hill, and found the Santuário Nossa Senhora da Aparecida, said to be the site of the first vision of the Virgin Mary in Portugal.  It was a beautiful and secluded church, quiet, no one around, and stunningly ornate inside.  The views from the hillside were beautiful too.

Approaching the Santuário

The main Santuário church

Inside the main church

Inside the smaller Santuário chapel

Valley view from the Santuário

The other side of the valley

A little further on we came across this miniature stone fairy land built along the driveway to someone's house.  It looks like a tiny reproduction of a medieval town.  And is that the Ponte de Lima medieval bridge in there?

Sunday morning for breakfast we had scrambled eggs, buttered toast with lemon curd made by the former owners of Casa da Rocha from our own lemons, and slices of our own fresh oranges.  It doesn't get much better than that!

That afternoon was clear and bright, and we took a little ramble around the area.  There is a hill you can see from our balcony which looks like it would be a nice viewpoint if you could get up there, so we went exploring and found our way to the top.  There is a little chapel up there called Capela de Santo Ovídio, which is the gloomiest looking chapel ever (looks more like a cell), plus a mess of antennas, but the views are indeed spectacular.

Gloomiest chapel ever, complete with cell window

The town of Ponte de Lima and its medieval bridge from the chapel viewpoint

Pretty nice views though

We continued eastward up the Lima river for a few kilometers, following the river mostly on small roads through tiny villages and farms.  Then we headed north and into the hills, following road signs to places that looked interesting like Paço da Glória.  This is an 18th century mansion, remote in the countryside, which has been restored as a retreat.  We followed winding little roads up into the hills to find it.  You can read more about it at pacodagloria.com.

Paço da Glória

Paço da Glória

Paço da Glória

Up and over the mountain we continued, following gorgeous little roads through the countryside to return home.  A beautiful day of sightseeing, and all within a few kilometers of home!

(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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Home Building

As many (all?) of you know, Sunday Feb 9 was Super Bowl Sunday in the US.  Well, one of Pat's birding sites moved the "b" and created Superb Owl Sunday with a page dedicated to all things owl.  That's what Gerrit is going to celebrate on the second Sunday of February from now on.  

On Monday we had a very successful shopping safari.  Much of it was exploratory, just stopping at places to see what they had.  We picked up a load of gardening tools and groceries though, plus some address numbers for the coming streetside mailbox from one of the coolest hardware stores ever.  The hardware store stop had to be quick, but we vowed to return and give it a close inspection.

On Tuesday the tech for the water heater tank and the HVAC arrived, and we discovered that he had installed the original water heater tank and solar heater here back in 2014!  He works for Tecnilima, a local Ponte de Lima appliance and technical shop, and has been here for years.  We love making local connections like this.  He spoke English quite well, so Gerrit's earlier laborious translation of the problem into Portuguese was not necessary.

The tech took apart some of the tank shell, found and fixed the problem, and all was well.  The tank is quieter now and runs much more efficiently.  He also saw that the solar water heating panels were not running at the proper pressure, so he will return to fix that and to clean and maintain the panels.  As for the HVAC unit, it was simply not wired up!  It was probably never connected when the house was first built (it looked brand new inside), and now it works fine.  Total technician house-call time, with sophisticated tools and expertise: 1 hour.  Total charge: €60 ($62).

We ran across a Portuguese to English phrasebook known as "English as She Is Spoke", written in the 19th century by a Portuguese fellow who clearly didn't speak English.  Here are some of his English "familiar phrases":

• Have you say that?
• At what purpose have say so?
• Put your confidence at my.
• At what o'clock dine him?
• These apricots and these peaches make me and to come water in mouth.

And here are a few English "Idiotisms and Proverbs":

• The necessity don't know the low.
• Few, few the bird make her nest.
• He is not valuable to breat that he eat.
• Nothing some money, nothing of Swiss.
• Burn the politeness.
• To craunch the marmoset.

Timeless nuggets of wisdom there!  It reminds us of the Monte Python "Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook" sketch, and may in fact have been the inspiration for it.  You can read the whole hilarious story here.  Mark Twain, a contemporary, thought the phrasebook was a flawless comic gem.  Unintentional, but a gem nonetheless.

The mailbox arrived, Gerrit mounted the impressive-looking brass numbers on it, and then got to work installing it on the wall facing the street.  Not so fast, pilgrim.  That turned out to be way more difficult than he anticipated, but after some aching muscles, chiseled-out granite, and a scratched-up mailbox it was finally in place, slightly out of plumb.  As our Brit handyman was leaving Gerrit was just finishing up the job and he pointed out all the flaws to him.  The Brit replied, "You know what your problem is?  You're an engineer.  You want everything to be perfect.  No one will notice."  He has a point.

As we both worked on the mailbox, our neighbor Alexandrine just down the hill saw us and came over to introduce herself.  The former owners of Casa da Rocha had told each of us about the other, and we had a nice conversation.  Her English is quite good, certainly better than our Portuguese.  It was really nice to meet her, and to integrate another bit into the neighborhood.

Our quiet electric wood chipper arrived, delivered to the local neighborhood hub Café Martins.  After a confusing phone call from the proprietor Nuno in Portuguese, Gerrit drove down to pick it up.  It was quite heavy and large, and as he maneuvered it toward the door a stranger tapped him, nodded at the chipper, picked it up, and strode with it to the car.  The kindness we have experienced here is really heartwarming.  It doesn't hurt to be old and feeble, though.  It's kind of like having a "Help Me" sign on your back.

When we left our apartment in Gaia our next-door neighbors wished us farewell with a gift of an excellent bottle of Portuguese sparkling wine.  We just enjoyed that a couple nights ago, toasting them and our new home.

Today Pat noticed an itinerant shepherd grazing his small flock on our lower undeveloped land.  There is plenty of wild grass down there, and it was such a pleasant sight to see.

And we close this post with some homey photos of a steak and brussels sprouts dinner and mist in the valley.

(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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Nesting & So Forth

OK, this blog is sounding less like an adventure and more like nesting.  We should rename it to "Pat and Gerrit's Portugal Nesting Adventure".  Here's a bulleted list of the major stuff we've been involved in the past week or so:  

• Chores (chopping wood, cleaning)
• Shopping (groceries, household goods)
• Connect to Ponte de Lima English-speaking immigrant Facebook page
• Finding beds to replace the plain ones which came with the house
• Finding tradespeople & lining up jobs
• Putting down non-skid appliques in the shower
• Getting mailbox & address numbers
• Getting to know the stores and streets
• Setting up home insurance
• Refining blog processing software
• Getting Vodafone phone, TV, and internet connected (with help from a Portuguese speaker)
• Shim the master bath cabinet level (a bigger job than it sounds like)
• Feb 4 & 5 lovely warm days, doors open
• At-home hairdresser
• Sprucing up the master shower caulk
• Getting materials to build a small shelf for the bedroom clock
• Shopping for a branch shredder and a washing machine

Some of these are worth expanding on a little.

There is a town, Paços de Ferreira, about an hour south of here, which specializes in furniture manufacture.  Yes, the whole town.  There are about twenty furniture manufacturers there.  Some of them are fully custom, and some are more standard product oriented.  Pat has been looking for some furniture, especially lifting beds with storage underneath and a tall thin closet, and we found some very nice possibilities there.  We will do a field trip there.  It would be rewarding to support the local Portuguese craftsmen and economies.

It is fun getting to know the area in and around our village of Calheiros, and the shops nearby in Ponte de Lima.  Many of the roads leading to our place are very narrow, winding, and hair-raising in parts, with rock walls and drop-offs on both sides in places, but there are safer routes too.  The wild ones are kind of challenging though, and after a few dozen trips no paint has been scraped.  We are finding plenty of really nice shops within a few minutes too: grocery, hardware, appliances, high tech, and so forth, from small family-owned shops to sparkling big concerns.  We've only been looking in one part of town, too.

Pat found a British hairdresser on our new Ponte de Lima expats Facebook page who will come to our home, for only €15!  Amazing.

Getting the carpenter in here last week went very smoothly and he did great work.  The water heater tech has responded with an appointment next week, too.  The plumber has responded but we haven't set up an appointment.  We stopped by the metal fabricators again on Friday and got to talk to the proprietor.  We set up a visit here for the following day.

We screwed up our courage and tried the eel fillets from the freezer a couple nights ago, and they were great!  Gerrit just fried them in a bit of olive oil with some spices.  The flesh was firm and flavorful, very nice.  Just a bit bony, but we'll see if we can slice differently and avoid that next time.  We agreed that it would make excellent fish soup too.

Saturday we were busy with supervising the pruning of the yard and with a visit from the metal fabricator to assess the building and installing our handrails.  Both people speak English very well, so it was low-stress in that regard.  The metal fabricator, it turns out, helped to build some of our house during its initial construction ten years ago!  He is a fifth-generation metal worker, his father and grandfather built much of the old ironwork in town, and his family is firmly anchored in Ponte de Lima.  It was a pleasure to watch him work as he measured for the railings.  We are in good hands.

We were quite apprehensive about the stairs when we first moved in, but we have gotten a little more confident going slowly up and down them a few times a day.  We agree that handrails will make a big difference.  We think we will use the upcoming lift primarily for packages and big items, and use the stairs and handrails for ourselves.

And can you stand another sunset view from our balcony?  How about a sunrise?  OK, enough of that.

(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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Moving In, Settling Down

On Tuesday January 28 we met with a local handyman, Andrew, a Brit who has been living in Portugal for 10 years.  He used to do odd jobs for the former owners here, and will come out on Saturday to move a washing machine and discuss some tree and bush pruning.

Then more shopping.  Andrew will need a hand truck, so we stopped at a couple small general hardware stores.  The people were so friendly, and the clerks we meet usually speak a few words of English.  At the second spot the clerk pulled out his phone and showed us pictures of his friend from New York, who lives just up the road now.  We had a sweet conversation, all three of us (Pat is getting bolder and more confident).  Unfortunately neither of the shops had our hand truck, so we left for a bigger bricolage (DIY) store and got a nice one.

Then off to Pingo Doce, a Portuguese grocery chain, for some lunch and grocery shopping.  We had chicken legs (pernas de frango) and broccoli (brócolos) with a half bottle of vinho verde for lunch.  Delicious!  Gerrit bought some safio (conger eel) fillets at the grocery, so we'll see how that goes.  Eel is quite the Portuguese delicacy.  The fillets are lurking in the freezer till Gerrit figures out what to do with them.

Back home we unloaded our haul and did some more moving in.

On Wednesday we built some of our new Ikea furniture and cleaned house a little.  We now have a nice computer table and one of the new cabinets is installed in the master bath.  We also rearranged the furniture in the front room (see below).  The computer (office) table is now off to the side of the couch, next to the back window with a gorgeous view to the other side from the valley as we sit at our keyboards.  It's very easy to get distracted.

Here are some homey photos of a pork roast dinner at the dining room table with the fire crackling in the background and one of the beautiful sunsets we enjoy here.

We had a visit from our lift estimator too.  She made the final measurements, which she was unable to do due to weather on her first visit, so she has everything she needs to start the manufacturing process.  The target for installation is eight weeks from today.

Pat found in the Portugal News that the electric utility REN is reporting that 73% of its energy in the first part of 2025 came from renewable sources, and EDP (the utility we are currently on) is reporting 95% from renewable sources.  That is pretty impressive!

On Thursday we did more cleanup and organization in the house.  We also made a visit to Café Martins for a reference from Nuno for a carpenter and a plumber, to take care of a couple things needed here, and a trip to the local metal fabricator to see about handrails for the stairways.  Gerrit also laboriously cut out felt pads for our eight kitchen chairs and glued them all on.  No more squawking when they drag across the floor!

On Friday we did some grocery shopping, and our housekeeper Inês came for the first time.  She spent four cheerful hours at it and did a beautiful job on the house, leaving everything sparkling clean including the fireplace.  We got to exchange a little Portuguese with her too.  In the evening we joined up with our expat group at the bar in Ponte de Lima once again, meeting some more new people from all over the world.

Saturday was a big day for home fixups.  We had set up visits with the carpenter and a plumber, and handyman Andrew was slated to do some work for us too.  

Dinis the carpenter showed up shortly after lunch with his daughter Marta, and he removed a huge oak bathroom door, took it outside, planed off a few millimeters, and reinstalled it perfectly all in about 20 minutes.  Professional tools and workmanship, a house call, and a total fee of only €15 ($15.50).  We commissioned him to build us some custom notched shelves for the hall closets after seeing his work.  Gerrit managed to have a little Portuguese conversation with him while he worked and afterwards, too.

Andrew and his daughter Jasmine appeared around 4:00 to discuss the pruning we need done and to move the washing machine from the garage to the utility room.

But the plumber didn't show up.  There was probably a misunderstanding, we never talked to him (only Nuno did), but we'll straighten it out on Monday.

Dinis, our housekeeper Inês, Nuno at Café Martins, and the other locals we meet are all neighbors, friends, and relations with one another.  They live just a short walk away from us, and we are pleased to get to know them.  We hope to prove to be good neighbors too.

Saturday night there was a big festival.  We heard marching drums very near, like in the neighboring village of Calheiros, folk songs playing, and there were fireworks going off regularly until about midnight.  We couldn't find anything to celebrate when we Googled the following day, so who knows?  The Portuguese just plain like to celebrate.

On Sunday we got some chores done around the house and then took a little day trip the the nearby city of Viana do Castelo, where the Lima river meets the Atlantic ocean, to visit the Leroy Merlin DIY store (kind of like a Home Depot).  We found many of the items on our list and did some research on some others, so it was quite successful.  We took the back roads home through lovely countryside as the sun set.

(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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