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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Ponte de Lima and Portugal Life

On Saturday Dec. 28 the weather was beautiful and a bit chilly.  We set out for a day trip to Ponte de Lima to look around our future home town again.  Feeling cocky, we got into Porto with no help from the GPS apps, figuring we could make our way up the A3 freeway all the way to Ponte de Lima.  Then we got into a spirited discussion and missed the A3 freeway turnoff entirely, without realizing it.  We zipped pleasantly along, chattering merrily, and soon crossed a river.  Hmm, there isn't another river north of the Douro is there?  We began seeing signs for Gaia, our home town, and realized with a very disorienting jolt that we had turned completely around, crossed a different bridge across the Douro, and were now back in Gaia.  Our first clue should have been that we were driving into the sun, not away from it.  Good grief!  We went all the way through Gaia and Porto again, this time making the turnoff correctly, and were on our way.  We're thinking of it as taxiing around Gaia and Porto before takeoff.

An hour or so later we were in Ponte de Lima.  We explored the old town a little more and got some maps and brochures from the tourist office there.  We crossed the Lima (but not across the medieval bridge, it's pedestrian-only and we would have mowed down too many tourists) and explored the other half of the city and environs around there.   

Ponte de Lima old and new

Old Ponte de Lima building

We had a quick lunch in a small roadside café: tostas mixtas (toasted ham and cheese sandwiches), a small muffin called bolo de arroz (rice cake), and two beers, with table service, for €6 ($6.26).  The cake was soft and only slightly sweet, and tasted more like cornbread than rice.  The beers were Super Bock draft, the overwhelming choice in northern Portugal (in the south it's Sagres -- north and south compete on everything).  We thought it would be kind of characterless and cheesy (like the name) but it's actually quite good and we're developing a taste for it.  And did we take any pictures of our delightful little meal?  Oh no, we did not.  Honest, we're going to get better at this.

Next we drove the route from Ponte de Lima to our soon-to-be new house, Casa da Rocha, about ten minutes away.  Google Maps takes you one way which is quite difficult toward the end, very narrow with weird blind corners and hills, so we experimented with a slighly longer route which is merely sort of difficult at one hairpin curve.  We will record this easier route for guests.  The gate was closed, otherwise we would have loved to snoop around the Casa some more too.

On the way out we found Café Martins, a place that the current owners of Casa da Rocha tell us is very helpful.  We bumped into it totally by accident: Google Maps was directing us to some other place much farther away, and we just saw the real Café Martins as we came around a corner.  Gotta watch out for those mapping apps.  Café Martins is only a couple minutes from the house, and it looked like a nice little place.  I'm sure we'll be dropping in there frequently.

We went shopping at the mega grocery & variety store Continente on Monday and went berserk as usual with a whole load of goodies.  While waiting for Pat to find something Gerrit noticed that a customer was helping a clerk stock shelves.  The clerk had been having to pick up boxes out of a crate on the floor and stock them on an upper shelf.  The customer noticed this and began pulling the boxes out of the crate and handing them to the clerk on her step stool.  It went so much faster, and both the clerk and the customer were having a great time and joking around.  We know, this is just kindness which happens everywhere, but it seems so typically Portuguese.

Gerrit also bought a shirt there.  It was designed in Portugal, but we don't know how Portuguese the label actually is.  We just thought it was really sweet and unexpected: "Wear it as long as possible".  In English too.

This residency lag is leaving us in a kind of limbo, unable to get some Portuguese documents we need.  As we've mentioned, the agency here which is responsible for qualifying new immigrants (AIMA) is overwhelmed and understaffed, so hundreds of thousands of us have expired visas, are unable to get driver's licenses, can't register with the health service, can't register with the tax authority, and so on.  Fortunately we can buy a house without official residency and we will be busy setting up our new home, but some of the rest of this stuff needs to get done too.

There is a big fireworks display in Porto tonight for New Year's Eve, but we think we're going to skip it.  There are supposed to be 100,000 people there, parking will be impossible and the metro is due to be on strike, it will be cold, and the display doesn't start till midnight.  We're too old for all that.  There is a good local Porto TV station, so maybe we can tune that in.  If we can stay up that late.

Also note that Gerrit miscalculated the age of the town of Ponte de Lima in a recent post.  He only missed it by a century though: it should be 899 years, not 999.  That post has been fixed.  He says it's a good thing he's not doing engineering any more.

(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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Christmas and Cultures

We hope all our friends and family had a warm and happy Christmas!  We certainly did, even though we sure missed you all.  

On Christmas Eve we visited a local wine and sprits warehouse just a couple blocks away, OnWine, and shopped for ourselves and for gifts.  We were like kids in a candy store.  That evening about 7:00 we took Uber to our Portuguese friends Bernardo and Carolina.  Bernardo's mom Lígia and siblings Rita and Pedro were there, along with their three happy and well-behaved dogs Lobo, Fred, and Oshi.

Everyone, even Mom, spoke English wonderfully.  We were expecting that Bernardo would be the only English speaker, but everyone's command of English made us awfully sheepish about our baby Portuguese.  Rita had actually studied a year in Auburn!  Yes, Auburn, the little community south of Seattle and just a few miles away from our old place.  The whole company was so intelligent and well educated, and we had a great conversation with lots of laughs.  We got to ask many questions about Portuguese language and customs too.

Gerrit wanted to express our gratitude and respect to his family for all that Bernardo has done for us (as our real estate agent and friend), so a couple weeks earlier he had begun working on a speech in Portuguese using mostly his own words.  He did have to resort to the translator apps a little bit to avoid being completely incomprehensible.  It was about a minute long, and he read it from his phone.  People laughed at the right spots so he thinks he didn't do too badly.

First we had excellent appetizers of cheeses, Portuguese ham, nuts, fruits, and regional breads.  Dinner was delicious, the traditional Christmas Eve baked bacalhau (cod) prepared by Lígia, along with buttery smooth new potatoes and some shredded greens.

Then the family began exchanging gifts, and the language drifted into Portuguese.  We felt really honored to be included in such an intimate family experience.  They even gave us a gift, a lovely candle in a beautifully glazed pot.  We had brought some of Pat's handmade beaded Christmas ornaments, wine, and limoncello for them.  After some more sleepy conversation, a little after 1:00 we said fond goodbyes and took Uber home.

We had seen more of another admirable quality of Portuguese culture: the frankness and candor of the people.  They say what they think, they disagree readily, but it is always simple or humorous and without rudeness or offence.  We've noticed this in many situations.  For example, we had brought a couple bottles of wine which we all shared as we sat together when we first arrived.  Lígia said simply that Alentejo wine (which we brought) was fine but she preferred Dão, and she explained her opinion sensibly.  In the US (or in Britain) you would never disparage wine brought by an unknown guest, you would pretend that it was wonderful or you would simply keep your opinion to yourself.  Here it was so refreshing to simply hear how she actually felt.  It was completely inoffensive, just a statement of fact.  And next time we'll serve her Dão wine and know she actually does like it.

When we brought up how much we liked this Portuguese characteristic (in a very frank and Portuguese manner), Rita said that they thought Americans and Brits sometimes seemed fake.  Another simple statement of fact, completely inoffensive, and right on target too.  And then again at dinner Rita only took a small bit of bacalhau, saying she didn't like it and making a face.  Her mom had prepared it and we are used to being "nice" about something like that, but her mom didn't care.  Rita didn't like bacalhau, no big deal.

Another time, someone asked about our Portuguese language learning, and Bernardo said Gerrit was better, that Pat was too lazy.  What??  That would be a horrible thing to say in the US, but he was plainly just kidding and said it in such a good-humored way that it didn't even cause a ripple.  Everyone was joking and poking fun at each other all night long, gently and inoffensively.  They also stroked each others hair, rubbed each others necks, held hands, and clearly displayed their fondness.  It seems healthy not to let little things fester, just let them out lightly before they build up pressure.  It lets people truly understand each other better too, and the ribbing and disagreement actually brings people closer together in that way.

They also don't say "excuse me" and "sorry" here nearly as much as the Brits and Americans do.  In a crowded bar or restaurant, you just work your way between the people (unless you need to actually get someone's attention).  Everyone shuffles as necessary, you don't need to apologize your way through.  If a store doesn't carry an item you want they aren't "sorry" that they don't have it, they just say no, they don't have it.  It really makes those courtesies in the US and Britain seem kind of excessive and foolish.

They're not insensitive boors though.  We were laughing at one point about a story Carolina was telling about her mom's miserable sewing and cooking when she was young.  She and her siblings were sensitive to their mom's feelings at the time though, and Carolina told the story with context too, so it was all loving and good natured.

The following day, Christmas, we tried to sleep in and failed.  Old people just don't do late nights and sleeping in very well.  We were sleepy all day, but took a nice drive to Porto and along the Douro river to the ocean.  It was a spectacularly beautiful day, 20 C (68 F) and sunny with a gentle breeze.  Check out the selfie -- it looks like we're in Acapulco.  We strolled along the waterfront along with hundreds of other happy holiday-lovers.

Pat found some audio of the clattering storks we saw a couple of weeks ago at the Parque Biológico, which we posted about here.  We couldn't capture the audio then, but here is what it sounded like.

On Thursday (today), Boxing Day, Gerrit started digging into getting our stuff stored in Seattle shipped to our new address.  It was going fine until he learned that Customs requires two documents with our Portuguese address on them, but those documents currently have our US address and we can't change them until we are officially residents.  We have been waiting months for the appointment to confirm our residency, and the process is hopelessly backlogged.  

The way around this is to pay full duty on our entire shipment, which could run up to $10,000 or more.  Needless to say, it looks like we will just hope for residency appointments soon and wait probably a few months more to get our stuff.  Good thing the new home is being sold completely furnished (down to the silverware) and we're quite used to living without our storage stuff by now.  Also fortunately, this customs snafu will not affect our home purchase.  We'll still be able to move in mid-January if all goes well.

We've had a request for more photos in the blog, a great idea, but that sure didn't pan out this time did it?  OK, starting next time more photos, we promise.  Sorry.

(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 black underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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Portugal Life and Ponte de Lima

On Wednesday Dec 18 Pat had a doctor appointment at the Porto clinic we've been going to, to get a 24-hour blood pressure monitor strapped on and activated.  It's becoming quite routine now to take Uber over and back and maybe to have lunch there in Porto.  We did that, with Uber there and back costing about the same as taking the metro one way.  Lunch was at a really cool little restaurant, Café Faial, just a short walk from the clinic.  We split an order of pica pau, a traditional Portuguese dish of sausage and small bits of beef in a spicy francesinha sauce with melted cheese and toasted bread medallions.  The restaurant was in an old fashioned style, part Art Deco and part old Porto, with a beautiful wood and glass entry door and wrought iron gate. 

Thursday was another medical day, the follow-up to yesterday so Pat's blood pressure gadget could be removed.  She slept pretty well with it on the previous night, surprisingly, but she was relieved to get it off.  We also both had our flu shots.

The day was beautiful and bright after some clouds and rain the past couple days, and we strolled up to another nearby grill for lunch, Churrasqueira Lameiras.  This time we sat at the counter and had the basic menu, which was great: chicken for Pat and pork for Gerrit, with beers for both.  The place was packed, which is a good sign.  It also had accolades from Tripadvisor on the wall, and some time later we saw it featured in a Food Tour of Porto video, so we really stumbled into something good.  There was a large bubbling cauldron of stew and several rotisseries turning over coals in the front window, filling the street with their BBQ aroma.  There was an old guy working there we noticed, hobbling a little slowly but busy, happy, and patient, and obviously very familiar with how things worked.  Maybe the founder?  It was really nice to see how the young folks worked around him.

As we got up to leave, Gerrit with jacket and cane in hand, people were coming in and leaving through the narrow passageway next to the counter.  It was a traffic jam for a moment, then people waved us through with a smile.  One of the guys entering the café offered to help Gerrit on with his jacket.  What a sweet place Portugal is.

We Ubered home in our usual fashion, and Gerrit took the car in for a wash and himself in for a haircut.  He tried to ask for it a little long on the sides but got another buzz.  Sigh.

Friday was a recovery day from our flu shots, at least for Gerrit.  He usually has a bad reaction, slight fever, achiness, and so forth.  We did hike down to the local grocery store for some supplies though.

Then late in the afternoon we had two big pieces of news: Gerrit's new glasses are ready at the optometrist, and a price had been settled on for our new house!  We are so excited, and will be posting more pictures and information once the sale is a little more formalized.

Now the fun begins.  We need to transfer our down payment to a European escrow.  We have a real estate lawyer lined up, and we need to engage him to make sure all the property is legally correct and documents are in place.  We need to start the ball rolling with the international shippers to get our remaining Seattle stuff shipped here.  They move door to door, so they will pick up at our storage unit in Seattle and deliver to the new house.  We need to sell some securities and get the remainder of the purchase amount transferred to escrow.  There will be fees and taxes to be paid too.

On Saturday we picked up Gerrit's new glasses, and we happened to arrive at the appointment just as the store was finishing up a Christmas photo shoot for its Instagram page.  They insisted that we pose for their shoot, so look for us on an Instagram near you.  Again the staff was warm and friendly, and our contact gave us his personal phone number and insisted we call if we have any questions about Portugal or anything at all.  Hugs and beijinhos (little kisses) were passed all around.  Pretty nice treatment at the optometrist!

Gerrit's glasses look good and they're great for distance, but he is finding them difficult to use for computer work.  Just an area about the size of a ping pong ball is in focus at a time, so he is moving his head around constantly and the rest of the field is out of focus.  Hmm, he'll try to get used to that but his old readers work much better.

On Sunday (today) we decided to return to Ponte de Lima, our soon-to-be-we-hope home town.  It's such a beautiful town, and we want to get familiar with it and with the shops and resources there.  We spent the afternoon walking around the old part of town.  We've been there before, but we saw more of it this time including some famous structures and homes of famous native sons.  

For lunch we stopped at a nice little café for chicken salads and vinho verde.  Ponte de Lima is right in the heart of vinho verde country, and their specialty is the Loureiro grape, one variety which goes into the wine (usually a blend of about five different grapes from the region).  We thought we could tell that our glasses were actually purebred Loureiro, since we've been experimenting with the different varieties and have become quite the vinho verde connoisseurs.

We saw a statue dedicated to Countess Teresa de Leão who chartered the town in 1125, or almost 900 years ago.  Unbelievable!  It is the oldest town in Portugal.  Next year, March 4 to be precise, there should be a big 900th birthday party.  We hope to be able to participate in that.

It's hard to believe that if all goes well we'll soon be living 10 minutes away from this gorgeous historical town.

Christmas is coming right up, and we may not be able to post anything here before then.  If not, we hope all you friends and family have a wonderful holiday!  Feliz Natal e Boas Festas, as they say here!  We have been invited to some Portuguese friends' house for Christmas Eve, so we will be well taken care of.  We hope you will be too.

(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 Portuguese phrases to play the audio.)

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Parties, Christmas Lights, and Homes

On Friday Dec 13 we went to a small dinner party put on by our friends Bernardo (Portuguese) and Carolina (Uruguayan).  They have been remodeling and finishing their flat for several months and had some of their immigrant friends over for an "inauguration": us, a Basque woman from Spain, and a couple of other American expats from Portland now living in the city of Braga about an hour away.  Everyone spoke English wonderfully, fortunately for us, and we had an excellent time and a stimulating cosmopolitan conversation.  We had to come to Portugal to get our first ride in a Tesla, an Uber for the trip home, and the Portuguese driver was very curious and wanted to try out his English.  It was fun telling him that we are from the land of Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Costco, four very well-known brands over here.

The next day was a little sleepy, having gotten home at the normal Portuguese hour of about 1 AM but unable to stay asleep longer than about 6 AM, our bodies' wake-up time.  We did some bleary housecleaning and some grocery shopping at the Lidl store just down the street.

Sunday morning we took a drive along the Douro river for a couple hours, just to sightsee.  We'd been along much of the winding road before, but the Douro is a beautiful, grand river and we never get tired of it.  We stopped at a roadside fruit stand and got a small bag of oranges, clementines, and a persimmon.  The farmer was kindly and we spoke to him a little in Portuguese.  There was also another customer about our age there who spoke a bit of English and said that clementine is "tangerine" in English, "like Tangerine Dream" he said (the old progressive rock band).  Pat told him she'd seen them a long time ago.  He then said, "I have time, like Time is on My Side" (the old Rolling Stones song).  Just further support for song lyrics being used for language learning.

In the afternoon Pat went to a Porto Ladies Christmas Tea and charity fundraiser at the Hilton hotel here in Vila Nova de Gaia, sponsored by the Porto Together WhatsApp group.  She had a great time, and the group raised over € 800 for a local home for disabled kids, the only one of its kind in all of Portugal and Spain.

Christmas lights have been going up all over, and it looks so festive.  It looks different here though.  There are not many simple strings of lights, but more prefabricated elaborate displays (all in LEDs of course).  Even individual small businesses contract their own personalized light display.  It makes for a really impressive overall effect.  These photos here are just average displays too; the big ones are really spectacular.  (And we hear that juvenile snickering.  Farturas means fritters or funnel cakes, you poopyheads.)  Gerrit is also relieved that we've hardly heard any Christmas music in the stores, although Pat misses it.

In that spirit, Pat has been trying to add a little Christmas cheer to the apartment too.  She found just about the tiniest tree ever, smaller than a bottle of wine, and decorated it with earrings.  Pretty clever!  Now we need to put a tiny chimney in the apartment so Santa can send one of his elves down it.

We had the official inspection of our dream home in Ponte de Lima on Tuesday, today, and the inspector had to really work hard to find anything at all wrong with it.  It's built like a rock (in fact the name at the entry gate is Casa da Rocha, (House of Rock), because of the huge boulders which it has been built around), and the original owners went to great lengths to build to very high energy efficiency and quality.  The inspector said the Danish Velux windows and glass doors were the best you could buy, for example, the Rolls Royce of windows.  The owners will sell the place furnished, too, which will be a big help to us furnitureless vagabonds.  We like everything except maybe the beds, but those will do just fine until we find some better.  (There is an entire town nearby devoted to furniture manufacturing, which we will be visiting.  You can even just bring in a photo of something you like and they'll build it to your specifications.)

In a couple days we will have the inspector's formal report and the new energy certificate for the home, and will be making an offer shortly thereafter.  We think we'll arrive at an agreement quickly too; Bernardo our real estate agent and we agree that the asking price is already quite fair so we'll see if we can just eke it down a bit.  We will be needing to install a little lift after we move in after all.

(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 Portuguese phrases in underlined bold to play the audio.)

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