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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