Interesting Stuff

Well here we are, days after saying our blog posts would taper off, with another blog post.  We can't help it when something interesting happens!  Maybe we should say the posts may be "sporadic".

Gerrit is getting more comfortable with terror, confusion, and humiliation.  He is approaching salespeople and just plowing right into Portuguese rather than timidly saying in Portuguese "do you speak English?".  Often they stick with Portuguese, Gerrit gets about 1/4 of the conversation, and somehow the transaction is completed.  Meanwhile he has forced his brain to think of how to express things in Portuguese on the fly, and he's desperately picking out meaning from what they say.  Sometimes the clerk switches to English unbidden (is it that obvious?) while Gerrit tries to persist with Portuguese.  

Wednesday 3/26 we were buying a battery-powered weed-whacker and Gerrit screwed up his courage and spoke through the sweat.  After a while, the clerk said in broken English that his Portuguese was very good (!!), to which Gerrit laughed and replied "não verdade!" ("not true!") but he felt pretty proud.  He got questions answered and the deal done with a fair amount of pidgin in both languages, and was beaming as we left.  Pat is catching on too, understanding and speaking more, reading signs and ads.  It is really exciting for both of us.

The key is to let yourself make mistakes.  It's very simple: that's the way we learn, period.  Little kids don't mind making mistakes, but adults are terrified of it.  We get hot, we blush, we sweat, we stammer.  We have to let ourselves lighten up, laugh at the mistakes and learn from them (which is easier said than done).  A fellow student in one of our online classes was laughing about how he was telling someone in Portuguese that "he hurt his rabbit".  He had mixed up "coelho" (rabbit) with "joelho" (knee), and everybody had a good laugh.  What's wrong with that?  Just like when the Portuguese real estate agent speaking broken English to us some time ago mixed up "kitchen" and "chicken".  Generally, anyone loves it when they hear someone try to speak their language, even if it doesn't come out as intended.  So just get in there and blunder your way through!  And be slooow and simple with English beginners too.

In the evening of Wednesday 3/26 we went to one of our expat gatherings, the one in the cool craft beer tavern in historic Ponte de Lima.  That was also the night of a local festival, Serrada da Velha or "the burning of the old woman".  Never fear, no old women were harmed, but a huge bonfire of paper old women was lit.  There was a parade and then kids and adults threw their homemade old woman effigies gleefully on the fire.  The festival has pagan origins (maybe in witch hunts actually), and now symbolizes the destruction of the old to make way for the new.  Fitting for the start of spring!  It is also a fun break in the middle of austere Lent, and the Portuguese just love festivals.  There were several actors dressed as crotchety old women prior to the bonfire, hectoring the crowd and throwing water on them.  It was great fun!

Now that our passive solar water heater is working, it's amazing to watch it.  Wednesday 3/26 was clear and a moderate temperature (15 C, 59 F), and the solar panels were 70 C (158 F) by noon!  The hot water tank was a toasty 65 C (149 F) without any electric heating at all, and still over 60 the following morning for nice hot showers.  Gerrit is having fun trooping up and down the stairs to keep an eye on it.  For now we have the electricity to the hot water tank turned off completely.  We're also toying with the idea of putting photovoltaic solar panels on the roof to provide most of the electricity in the home,  which would feed into the grid when they're producing more than we need.  The power companies pay you over here for doing that, like in the US.  We'll leave a box by the front gate for the power company to drop the cash in.

(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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Days in the Lives

Dear reader, our posts here are going to become fewer and farther between.  This is because we're not doing much which is blogworthy!  Who wants to read about shopping, yard maintenance, and household repairs?  Bleah.  We will continue to take notes when something interesting happens and make a post when we have enough verbiage, but don't worry if they're no so frequent.  Rest assured that we remain happy as clams, asking each other every few days "how did we get so lucky?"

On Wednesday March 12 Pat put together the rowing machine and Gerrit installed the window film in the bathroom.  Both projects went well, and now we can shower off after a workout without any neighbors with telescopes peering in.  In the evening we went to a new (to us) English-speaking expat get-together, in a cool craft-beer bar right in the lovely heart of historic Ponte de Lima.  Our friends Maayan and Dan were there, and we met some new and interesting people too.

A couple weeks ago Pat found a walnut counter top plank for sale in Porto, and a few days ago we bought some suitable legs for it at a hardware store.  Thursday 3/13 Gerrit screwed the legs to the plank (which turned out to be a bigger job than it sounds like) and now we have a new coffee table.

On Friday 3/14 our Portuguese housekeeper Inês was here doing her normal fabulous job.  We also had the nicest, longest conversation yet; we're all becoming more comfortable with our first-grader speech in the other's language.  We asked her some specific things, and she asked us if we would like some of the oranges from her big tree.  The next morning she showed up with a huge bag of oranges!  What a sweetheart.  Gerrit played her some of the text-to-speech Portuguese audio he is using to learn vocabulary (and to create the audio in the blog here), and she agreed that it sounded fine.  We love the way she occasionally rolls her r's like the Spanish.  It's apparently a north Portugal accent.

This second day Inês was here to do some weeding and we invited her for lunch.  It was more stressful this time, we hardly understood a word.  She is pretty high-energy, talks quickly, and doesn't slow down much for us.  There were a few moments of clarity, but we were both pretty exhausted afterward.  Just when you think you're getting it...

Sunday 3/16 our handyman came by and weed-whacked the lower acreage, the possible future home of the bungalow.  Brambles and gorse take over down there, and it needs a regular haircut.  About 45 minutes before he arrived, Gerrit discovered we had no gas or two-stroke oil for the weed-whacker.  He ran off to a nearby gas station and got some, after asking haltingly about the two-stroke oil.  He and the gas station attendant, an older guy, had an animated discussion, and with some gestures and simple words they managed to communicate.  They both smiled broadly and Gerrit zipped back home in time for the handyman.  After the weeds were whacked we took a drive northeast of here again, through the beautiful countryside in the clear afternoon sunshine.

We discovered an excellent wine called Periquita, from the Setúbal peninsula just south of Lisbon.  It has dignified tasting notes in English: "...renowned for being the first red wine bottled in Portugal... celebrates the Portuguese way of life... relaxed, warm, fruity and with a spicy nose... what Portugal is all about" bla bla bla, but we wondered what "periquita" meant so we asked the Reverso translator.  It's a vulgar slang term for female genitalia!  WHAT??  You can't put that on a wine label!!  But there it was.  A little more research revealed that it also means "parakeet", but sources seem to all acknowledge its slang meaning too.  Holy cow.  Gerrit will have to be careful not to ask a female wine shop clerk for "some of her Periquita".  He might get a wine bottle cracked over his head.  Unless periquita truly is "what Portugal is all about", like the label says.

On Wednesday 3/19 some representatives from a prefab log cabin supplier visited to look at our possible bungalow site.  They made some measurements and we discussed some options, but we're not sure we want to go with them.  In fact, we're thinking now we might enhance the living quarters already off the garage to make a nice guest room instead of adding a bungalow.  The garage needs a normal human door besides the existing car door anyway, so we could take care of that at the same time.

This online shopping stuff really takes it out of you.  We've been looking for linens and blankets, electric brush cutters and crampons (for standing on the steep hill while working), and, oh my gosh, where did the day go?

Sunday 3/23 the weather had been quite stormy for several days, including a brief power failure, but it began to clear.  We took a drive to nearby Serra da Arga, the highest region in the area at 730 m (2400 ft) and home to a windfarm along with some villages on the way.  Along the road we saw a fence, stair railing, and house all built from rocks of random sizes fit cleverly together.  On the way home we had a beautiful view of Ponte de Lima and its surrounding villages.

On Tuesday 3/25 a technician came out to look at our solar water pre-heater system and found it wasn't working at all!  It required a bit of TLC, draining and re-pressurizing the glycol heat-exchange fluid, and now it's great to see the 285 l (75 gal) tank heating up by 10 C (18 F) after most of a mostly sunny day on solar only.  This should certainly help keep the electric bills down.

And here is a serene image of morning fog over Ponte de Lima, seen from our front room.

(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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Shopping Till We're Dropping

Now that the festivities of the past week or so have died down, we can get back to normal.  As normal as the weather allows anyway.  It has gotten very moody: stormy and gloomy one minute and fair the next.  Pat says it reminds her of Gerrit.

One confusing aspect of learning a language is "false cognates" (or "false friends" as they're called in Portuguese), words that look or sound similar between languages but their meanings aren't.  For example, if you went into a Portuguese pharmacy and saw remedies for "constipação", what would you think they were for?  Well, you'd be wrong.  "Constipação" means the common cold.  Or you come to doors in a building.  You would push on the one marked "puxe" and pull on the one marked "empurre", right?  Wrong.  "Puxe" means "pull" and "empurre" means "push".  You can always tell the English speakers by the way they yank in frustration at the doors.  Or if you wanted to compliment someone on their exquisite taste you might be tempted to say "esquisito", but you'd get a puzzled look.  "Esquisito" means "strange", not "exquisite".  "Recipiente"?  Not a recipient, but a container.  "Pasta"?  Not spaghetti, but a folder or briefcase.  "Gripe"?  Not a complaint, but the flu.

Saturday March 8 we heard from the handrail metal fabricator and got engineering drawings.  All the details of the project look great, and he expects to be able to install at least the main stairway railing the week of the 24th.  We're looking forward to that.

We've been shopping for a few replacement items too.  The wooden handle to Gerrit's hatchet broke off so he replaced it with a nice plastic one which required a little customization  Then the blinds in the master bath pulled completely out of the ceiling, so Pat found a nice stained-glass-looking translucent window applique to function as a privacy screen instead.  This is the kind of thing homeowners do.

On Sunday we did some cleaning and housework, then garbage dumping and grocery shopping.  That sure sounds boring.  We're going to have to self-censor and only post once a month if this keeps up.  Or scrape photos from the internet and claim we went there.  Oh wait, there was one exciting development that day: we ordered a rowing machine.  We liked the one in the gym at the trailer park we were moored at back in 2022, for a good full-body workout.  We hope it will help ward off the decrepitude for a few more years at least.

Tuesday the weather had shaped up and we went on a shopping spree in Guimarães, one of our favorite little nearby cites.  We picked up our rowing machine, got the legs for our coffee-table-to-be plus a bunch more hardware, visited a 105-year old hat shop in the old part of town, had a delightful little lunch nearby, tracked down a ceramic Barcelos Rooster which Pat had fallen in love with on an earlier visit, and finally got some algae cleaner to try on the exterior of the house.  After unloading all that late in the afternoon we were ready for a beer on the balcony in the beautiful setting sun and breeze.

New hats

Nice lunch

Our lunch deserves a bit of elaboration.  The little cheese shop advertised what looked like a nice lunch of baguette sandwiches.  We asked for that and a couple beers, and the friendly proprietress said "just five minutes, I need to buy the bread".  Off she ran after serving us our excellent Spanish beer at an outside table.  She was soon back, and fixed us some delicious sandwiches of very fresh bread, ham, and some of the creamy soft shop cheese.  After enjoying our lunch we picked up a quarter kilo of the delicious cheese plus two of those Spanish beers to go, and left happy.

At right is a picture of Bart the new Barcelos Rooster.  He is a handsome devil and his hand-painted craftsmanship is superb.

Wednesday we did some grocery shopping, and on the way home the country road was blocked by a tractor from a local farm which was stuck across it.  After a minute a woman jumped out of her car and went up to help.  She was joined by another, and they all got the tractor free.  It was another example of the helpfulness we see here all the time, but there seemed to be a darker side too.  The old farmer and his wife who needed the help seemed frail and a little ashamed.  Growing old even in comfort and security is hard, but having to stay working the farm your whole life is really punishing.  And that's the way a lot of the world has to do it.

Gerrit finally finished mounting his homemade clock shelf, and boy is it ugly.  Perhaps a coat of wall-colored paint will help.  Help it blend into obscurity that is.

(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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Viva o Carnaval!

Last Sunday were the big parades for the Ponte de Lima birthday which we featured in our last post, then on Monday we took care of some domestic duties like Gerrit chipping pruned branches and splitting firewood, and Pat making fresh lemon curd.  The place looks nice and tidy now with the pruning almost done, and holy cow that lemon curd is good!

Then Tuesday was the big Carnival parade in the nearby town of Arcos de Valdevez, the biggest parade in northern Portugal, with participants from Portugal and Spain too.  It is just a coincidence that the Ponte de Lima 900th anniversary landed right on top of of the pre-Lent Carnival this year, so we've had plenty of entertainment the past few days!  Carnival is celebrated all over the world as Mardi Gras, Carnival, and so forth, and is a huge indulgent party before the austerity of forty days of Lent.  There is a big Brazilian influence in Portugal (or is the the other way around?) and Brazilian Carnival is world famous, so we expected big things.

Parking for the parade was pretty crowded, but we found a tiny spot in which to wedge Pérola (our Honda Jazz sub-mini) and walked a couple blocks to the parade route.  On the way to the parade route we saw this cool mural.  It is built from junkyard parts and spray paint!  We've seen three examples of this kind of art here in Portugal -- it's a thing.  Our intrepid navigator Pat led us straight to the perfect observation point, on an arch right next to the route ("dumb luck" she says).  We were midway along the route and the parade moves very slowly, so it didn't reach us until almost an hour after the official starting time.  We had fun people-watching and enjoying the costumes in the meantime.

The parade was spectacular!  The costumes and floats were astounding, elaborate and colorful, and they had themes from carnivorous plants to perfume bottles to the Age of Discovery to underseas.  And some that were just plain weird.  The music was pop and Latin, lots of fun, and the dance moves were impressive and skilled (even the kids).  After almost two hours the parade wound down and we limped back to the car, tired of standing but happy.  And ready for a nice austere Lent.  Us and the weather: it went from sunny and fair through all the celebrations to foggy and rainy.

The big news on Wednesday was that we finally got a plumber to come take a look at our clattering water pump.  He recharged the pressure tank and all is well (er, borehole actually).  Whew!  We had been experiencing worse and worse water hammering and were unable to get a plumber in here for one reason or another for over a month, so it is a great relief to have it all quiet and operating normally.  Makes us want to take nice long showers.

(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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Happy Birthday, Ponte de Lima!

March 5 2025 was the 900th birthday of the town of Ponte de Lima.  Nine hundred years!  Something not to be missed.  Today was the first day of celebration, consisting of several drum bands in the morning and then a parade and dancing with several villages around Ponte de Lima represented.

A couple nights prior to the birthday party we took this shot of the Ponte de Lima medieval bridge, all dressed up for the occasion.

The drum bands solved the riddle of the drumming we heard a week or so ago from our house: it was Ponte de Lima birthday party practice!  The rhythms and sounds we heard at the celebration party were exactly the same as we heard from home some time ago.

The video here of the drum bands below is pretty good, but the audio is overloaded.  In person the effect was awesome, thunderous, incredible.  Our chests were vibrating, the sound was like the orc war drums in Lord of the Rings, it was very emotional and thrilling.  Car alarms all up and down the street were going off, but it was hardly audible over the thunder.  Along with the drums were accordions and Celtic pipes too.

The drum bands marched through the old town of Ponte de Lima, then across the medieval bridge, and came back a few minutes later.

After the drums in the late morning we bumped into some friends from our Friday expat get-together.  It was great to see some familiar faces and share experiences of the day.  We chatted with Christoph from Switzerland and then had lunch and a great conversation with Maayan and Dan from Israel.

About 3 PM the parade of folk groups from several villages around Ponte de Lima began.  The authentic costumes were wonderful, and the music and rhythm of the castanet-like hand clappers was amazing and unique.  Listen for their chatter in the video below.  Many little children participated, absorbing their culture and history from an early age.  They were darling in their little folk outfits!  We watched some folk dancing too.  Everyone sang along and knew the music and dances by heart, even the little ones.  We felt very much like outsiders, but accepted, and we felt honored to be intimate spectators.

Drum bands

Folk culture

(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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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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