Smoke & Family Fun

Gerrit discovered an annoying trait of our pool cover.  Dirt and leaves which land on the top side of the cover get transferred onto the underside when the cover rolls up as it retracts.  Then when the cover is unrolled to cover the pool again half the dirt and leaves from the top side end up washed into the pool from the bottom side.  That's kind of the opposite of what you want a pool cover to do.  It's not too bad to sweep the cover off every couple weeks or before opening it though, and we're leaving it closed most of the off season anyway.

It has been a very wet November, as of  here on the 14th, and now we are getting fallout from Storm Cláudia which is affecting all of Portugal.  Almost every day has been dark and cloudy, with lots of rain.  Reminds us of a Seattle November, except that often the rain here goes from zero to a deluge in literally two seconds.  The spigot can turn off just as fast too.  The local news agrees that this November has been unusually cloudy and rainy, but they say things should start clear up a little around the last week of the month.

Pat is planning a Thanksgiving feast here for some friends.  We will be the only Americans, it won't actually be held on Thanksgiving Day, and we can't even find a whole turkey, so she'll be playing it by ear.  She was an ace at T-Day back in the US, so we're sure she'll have no problem creating her own version here.  Probably not surprisingly to anyone who knows her, she is putting the ingredients, prep, and timeline in a spreadsheet, studying it, and optimizing it.  Gerrit will try to stay out of her way.

Now it's Tuesday Nov 18 and the weather has completely changed, it's been clear and mostly sunny the last few days.  It's letting all that rain soak in.

Well, there is a problem here in Paradise.  It's the brush fires which people set continuously all around the area except during the burn ban in the summer.  They are smoky, and sometimes the smoke is overwhelming.  The entire Ponte de Lima valley can be filled with it, making it look like the worst Beijing air pollution.  On Thursday Nov 20 the landowners just adjacent to us set some huge brush fires going all morning long just past our back yard.  Thick clouds of smoke poured over us, and even with the doors and windows closed our eyes and throats were stinging.  Here is a rare moment when the wind wasn't blowing the smoke our way.

This is a long-standing tradition in Portugal and happens all over.  There are rules regarding burns, and applications need to be made with the authorities prior to a burn, but the burns are an institution.  We don't want to be the whiny American immigrants here and alienate our community, but boy this is obnoxious.  Indoor cigarette smoking has been banned over much of the developed world, so why not start working on these outdoor smoke bombs in Portugal?  There are some anti-smoke groups banding together, we hear, so maybe we can pitch in.

And alas, the skylight patching job Gerrit did last summer, which was perfectly water-tight with a hose showering it, still leaks like a sieve in the actual rain.  Back to the tarp cover and the ol' drawing board.

The kids and grandkids (Emmett six and Avie nine years old) arrived here in the late afternoon of Thursday Nov 20.  They had flown from Denver to Frankfurt, laid over four hours, then to Porto, and driven to meet us at a rendezvous point near Ponte de Lima.  They were pretty beat when they arrived, but Gramma Pat had prepared a delicious soup and bread dinner for us all before an early bedtime for the travelers.

The next day the weather was nice but a little cold.  We drove to Viana do Castelo to see the sights, explore the rocky Atlantic coastline, play on an impressive playground, and have some lunch at a nearby café.  Gerrit and his son Elliott had genuine Portuguese Francesinha sandwiches (huge and meat-filled, drowned in a tomato-beer-spice sauce) while Lexi and Pat had the more sensible Maple Smash burgers.  We drove up to the grand church at the top of the hill overlooking the mouth of the Duoro river after lunch to see the ornate church and Viana from the heights.

Kids on the rocks

But wait there's more

A fine Francesinha

Saturday the weather was clouding up but still no rain.  We took a little walking tour of the downtown historical area of Ponte de Lima, walked across the medieval bridge and looked into the little church on the far side, found a cool toy shop and playground, had a nice lunch, and did some grocery shopping on the way home.  The toy shop is called Ale Hop.  Sounds like a beer bar, doesn't it?  They have an incredible selection of action toys though, like big scuttling crabs and crazy spinning LED balls which don't go where you throw them.  The grandkids, and many others, were having a screaming good time and the patient, smiling clerks were happy to help them.

On Sunday it officially started raining.  We had hoped to visit the swimming pool in Arcos de Valdevez, but they were closed.  So we drove to Braga (home of Lady Braga) (<- dad joke) to an indoor play area in a big mall there, then to the historic center of town for some lunch and to see the sights through the rain.  (The picture here is a toy train near the play area, 1 € to ride it around its little circular track a few times.)  Back home we went, for an evening of games and toys and dinner out at our favorite pizza joint.  Monday morning Nov 24 the family packed up in the pouring rain and headed for Andorra to spend Thanksgiving with Gerrit's other son and his ex.  It will be the first time the young cousins will meet in person!

We'd had a great time with the family; we hadn't seen them in person since our Portuguese visa trip in the US back in March of 2024.  It was fun to see how the grandkids had grown, to play with them, and talk with their parents.  They will come back through here for a few more days at the end of the month on their way back from Andorra to Porto to fly back 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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Some Business and Some Fun

On Saturday Nov 1 the pool cover installation technicians were here.  Gerrit had asked for them to come as soon as they could after we got home from Seattle, and boy did they!  Three days after we arrived, and on a Saturday yet.  The company and the technicians are Spanish, so we made good use of Google Translate.  They finished in one day, did a good, careful job, and the cover looks great and performs beautifully.  It will be so nice to keep leaves, dirt, and insects out of the pool.  (We even had a 20 cm (8 inch) long newt drown overnight in there recently.)  The pool will also absorb and retain heat better with the cover during the swimming season.  Here is our lovely model Pat sitting on the new ipê wood bench and demonstrating the zippy automatic cover.

We have the itinerary for the shipment of our belongings now that the container ship is underway from Seattle.  The route is through the Panama Canal, across the Atlantic, through the Straits of Gibraltar, across most of the Mediterranean Sea to Malta, then unloading in Italy and by truck or train through Italy, France, Spain, and finally to the Porto area for customs and loading to a smaller truck bound for our place.  Whew!  That seems like a pretty goofy route, but we guess International Van Lines knows what they're doing.

One of those gigantic grasshoppers we see around here occasionally was crawling around, high up outside a window.  He looked like a rock climber carefully placing his footholds and rocking his body to test his balance now and then.

November is a lousy time to have a new solar power installation put in.  We want to see gigawatts of solar power flowing in, but on thick cloudy days it's just not there.  We can see when some solar power is being generated, but it's usually not enough to totally supply the house.  It reduces the grid power usage to be sure, but we're not exactly off the grid during the cloudy times.  When a clear period does occur we can see the house being powered by solar and our batteries charging up full in a couple hours, though, which is fun.

Pat has been chasing down Portuguese driver's licenses for us, and it's turning into a huge job.  Since our residency was delayed for so long we exceeded the time limit to get licenses.  Our fixer Nia started the process anyway to see if she could make it work, and she quickly found out that our apostilled driving records from the US have expired too, so now we're faced with getting new records apostilled.  (Apostilling is like an international notary certification.)  This needs to be done in the US and then sent here to be included with our license applications.  We'll have to prevail on Pat's ever-helpful cousin again to take care of the US part for us.  What a mess!

Sunday Nov. 9 was Pat's birthday, and we met our friends Maayan and Dan at the Ponte de Lima monthly antique market.  It was a cool, clear day, we had a nice browse among dozens of vendors, and Pat found some nice goodies.  Afterwards we followed our friends to their home where Maayan served us a delicious middle-eastern lunch and Pat's favorite birthday cake: German chocolate.  Homemade yet!  Dan also made Gerrit a terrific espresso with his top-notch machine, the best local Braga coffee, and his own barista artistry.  And for dinner we went to our favorite local pizzeria for some excellent pie, salad, and generous glasses of Portuguese wine.

A typical vendor and his wares	The market was in the tree-lined promenade
Birthday girl with a find	Mmm, German chocolate...

If you want to track the exciting path of our goods from Seattle, go to https://www.marinetraffic.com/ and search for the vessel MSC Elisabetta.  It's astounding to see the container ships from all over the world shuttling around the oceans on that site, too.  As of Sunday evening Nov. 9 our container was off the coast of El Salvador, heading toward the Panama Canal.  It's strange to think about most of our worldly goods chugging along on the open seas like this!

(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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Seattle Visit Part 2

Thursday Oct 16 was load-out day from our Seattle storage unit.  At 9 AM the movers met us at the storage place, and after some entry gate confusion we finally got them inside.  It took about three hours for them to unload our storage unit on the fourth floor, catalog it all, and move it all down and into their truck.  We were relieved to see that all the stuff in the storage unit was still in excellent shape after almost four years: no collapsing boxes, tape all still sound and stuck in place, nothing looked damaged at all.  We're glad we used double-walled boxes and sought out climate controlled storage.  The movers did an excellent job, nothing was dropped (we watched), and they added extra cardboard and wrapping on some of the oddball unboxed items.  If the remaining transfers all go as well (this truck to shipping container, container to Portuguese truck, truck to our garage) everything should be in good shape by the time it arrives at our place.

Our half-empty storage unit

Some of the 127 boxes & items

This move-out has been a long time coming, and it's a great relief to have it behind us.  We will not miss the exorbitant storage unit fees (which increased every few months until they were double the original rate) or having our storage unit broken into (yes, that happened too, it's a long story but fortunately nothing of consequence was stolen).

We met some more friends and had some more meals together the next few days.  The next day we headed to Bellingham to spend the night with an old friend and colleague of Gerrit's, and stopped in the Skagit valley to see a field of Snow Geese on their migration (see video below).  The following day we headed south to Gerrit's brother and sister-in-law's place in Sammamish, stopping to visit on the way with some old friends in Everett.

At the Sammamish home, as Pat got a glass of water one evening her breath was taken away by the sight of a Barred Owl just 2 m (6 feet) outside the kitchen window.  We got dozens of photos and the video below.  Look how he can swivel his head more than 180 degrees!  When Gerrit's brother came home he laughed and said "Oh yeah, he's kind of our buddy around here".  A Barred Owl for a pet! 

Snow Geese in Skagit

Barred Owl in the back yard

On Monday Oct 20 we got together with Pat's old boss for a spectacular seafood extravaganza in downtown Bellevue, and a nice visit with him and his wife afterward.  At left is our waiter posing with our lunch.

On Thursday Oct 23 we got the surprising and welcome news that our storage goods had already been loaded into a shipping container and onto a ship!  The sailing is set for Nov 1 and the estimated arrival in Portugal is Dec 26.  We got a nice link to keep track of the whole process, which we'll be checking frequently.

After more visiting, conversation, scenic drives, and down time we said our goodbyes in Sammamish and moved in with friends in Fall City on Saturday Oct 25.  We had a very nice three days with them, doing a leaf drive up and over Snoqualmie Pass to lunch in Roslyn, and even meeting with the Sammamish crew at a special-needs birthday party about a block from us in Fall City!  Gerrit's nephew came to the costume party as a pencil.  Here he is with his mom:

The party

The pencil

After fond adieus on Tuesday Oct 28 we returned our rental car and got to the gate at SeaTac Airport for our 9 hour flight to Amsterdam.  After a three-hour layover there we took a 2-1/2 hour flight to Porto, picked up our car from long-term parking, and drove for an hour to get home.  We had gotten a few catnaps on the planes but had been pretty much awake for 22 hours.  Exhausted but glad to be home, we had a bit of dinner and staggered to bed.

We are sorry we couldn't see all our friends on this visit!  Just too little time, plus we lost a few days to colds when we first arrived.  Next time, we hope.

And here are a couple random observations from the trip.  First, we have been so impressed with the kindness of the people in Portugal, but we also met with much kindness back in the US.  Good people are kind, and you can find that everywhere.  (It IS more common in Portugal though.)

We also really like roundabouts (rotundas in Portuguese) for managing traffic flow.  It's the optimum way to handle small to medium intersections, even with multiple streets feeding in.  You do need to learn the proper rotunda etiquette, but after that it's smooth and fast, much better than stop signs and lights.  Around our AirBnB in Queen Anne there were stop signs at almost every intersection and it sure was a nuisance.

(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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