Christmas II

This is our second Christmas in Portugal.  A year ago we were in our apartment in Vila Nova de Gaia, and now we're in our home in Ponte de Lima.  Much has changed, but much is similar too.  We hope you all had a good holiday too!  

Pat has been beading more than a dozen Christmas ornaments for gifts.  It's a tricky and exacting job, but she loves it and the results are beautiful.  Since this post will appear after Christmas, we won't be blowing any surprises by posting a photo here.

Here is our wee tabletop Christmas tree and a cozy fire at home.  Pat strung some nice icicle light strings along the balcony too.

On Christmas Eve we drove an hour or so south to Porto and checked into a beautiful hotel which Pat had found, just a kilometer or so from our friend Bernardo.  He had invited us again to his consoada, or Christmas Eve dinner get-together, the peak of the season in Portugal.  We checked in to the hotel and hopped an Uber to Bernardo's place.

Most of Bernardo's family was there: his mom Lígia, brother Pedro and sister Rita.  His dad, the good-hearted doctor, had agreed again to take someone's shift at work, so we missed him.  Some other guests were there too: Carolina, Bernardo's Uruguayan girlfriend who had just earned her Masters in Fine Arts, Natalía, a Uruguayan friend of hers, Martín, a fellow tour guide and colleague of Bernardo's originally from Macedonia, and Ann, an American from, incredibly enough, Seattle!

Bernardo met Ann when he helped her find an apartment about a year ago, in his role as a real estate agent.  Some time after that she was diagnosed with colon cancer.  Bernardo visited her in the hospital.  The cancer spread and she was pronounced terminal.  She is shortly leaving for Seattle to say her final goodbyes to her family there.

Bernardo, our friend with the heart of gold, invited her to his place for this, her last Christmas.  She is weak and barely able to stand.  He and his brother picked her up in their car, and literally carried her up three flights of steep winding stairs to his apartment.  She was a joy, proud of the life she has lived and facing her final goodbye with quiet courage and a sense of humor.  We had a great time talking about Seattle and Ellensburg with her, and her love of dogs and horses.  We had some wine and, courtesy of Rita, Carolina, and Natalía, an excellent meal of Bacalhau à Brás, salad, and a Uruguayan dessert cake.  Then Ann grew very tired.  Bernardo and his brother carried her back downstairs and, along with Carolina, drove her home.

Natalía, Carolina, Ann, and Lígia

Ann and Lígia

Lígia, Pat, and Martín

Our hearts were full, and our admiration for Bernardo and his family was boundless.

Pat had baked her delicious shortbread as gifts for everyone, and we had bought little jars of local Ponte de Lima honey to share some of our new home-town pride.  We distributed gift bags of all this, and other gifts were exchanged all around.  Pat got a luxurious warm scarf, and Gerrit got a cool simulated-sunrise alarm clock.

Then some of us played a board game from the Azores called Marralhinha (photo Board Game Geek) while others drifted into conversations.  The game was fun and fast-moving with quick reversals of fortune, and Bernardo's siblings were aces at it.  Gerrit started to get it after a while and had a great time too.

Finally, about 1 AM (way too late for us), we said fond goodnights and Bernardo's sister gave us a ride to our hotel.  We collapsed into the cozy bed for far too few hours of blessed sleep before we awoke at our normal time.  As usual.  Welcome to old age.  We took a coastal route home, took care of some chores, Gerrit had a little siesta, and we did some Christmas Day family calling.  When it works, video calls are astounding.  It's just like sitting in a couch across from your loved ones, but you're thousands of miles away.

There are three suspicious things about the solar panel system right now, too, things which don't seem right.  Gerrit is spending hours investigating and wrangling with the vendors, who deny everything.  Probably nothing will happen till a while after Christmas.

(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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Travel and Gravel

Saturday Dec 13 was clear and sunny, so we took a roundabout road trip to Soajo, one of our favorite circuits.  We already wrote about Soajo here, if you're interested in some details.  It was another gorgeous drive, much of it through the beautiful Peneda Gerês national park, with wild forests and mountains, remote farms, and horses and cattle wandering on the road. We even saw a small herd of long-horned cattle resting by the side of the road, with two dogs resting nearby and keeping an eye on them!  No shepherds were to be seen (except the dogs).

Spectacular Peneda Gêres scenery	A medieval bridge over the River Vez
Watch the River Vez go by from your porch swing	One of the famous cachena breed, serene in the sun
A lovely little one-car bridge over the River Vez	Beautiful stone fences in Peneda Gêres
A terraced hillside near the village of Sistelo	Our delicious cachena beef lunch in Soajo

We enjoyed the same lunch at the same restaurant: cachena beef steaks, "punched" baked new potatoes, steamed vegetables with zucchini, carrots, cabbage, and red pepper, seasoned rice, and a half liter of vinho verde.  It's literally some of the best beef we've ever had, and this time we took our own photo.  We were even at the same outdoor table we were at last time, and Gerrit actually got a little sunburn on the left (sunny) side of his face.  In mid-December!

As Gerrit prepared breakfast the other day, he held up the empty yogurt container and pensively quoted Hamlet: "Alas, poor yogurt!  I knew him..."

It looks like our long-suffering bungalow project might be on its last legs.  We just learned that wildfire safety laws don't allow structures within 50 meters (55 yards) of a forested area.  That means there is definitely no place on our lot on which it is permissible to build.  Gerrit looked up the actual law, and it is quite clear.  We started thinking about alternatives, like a raised platform with a roof suitable for campouts, or something.

But wait, a little further on in the laws it says that trees and branches must be 5 meters from structures.  So which is it, 50 meters or 5?  And how is it that existing structures, ours and the neighbors', are nowhere near 50 meters from forested areas?  The patient is still on life support as we get to the bottom of this.

Wednesday Dec 17 the gardeners began the next phase of our renovations.  They transplanted a couple fruit trees for better exposure and soil with less competition, and they cut down a dead cypress tree and bucked it up for firewood.  Next visit they will begin on an extensive irrigation system for the front yard.  Last summer the trees suffered a bit from their irregular watering, but not this year.  This will allow us to travel during the summer, too, and know that the plants will be well taken care of.

The guy who operated the little backhoe they used was a true artist.  He carefully guided the piece of heavy equipment on its rubber tracks over our cobblestone walk and between plants, eased it into position, and was as delicate with the operation of his machine as a watercolorist with his brush.  A pleasure to watch!  He spoke very little English, and showed up with a Santa hat on.  "Bom dia, senhor Santa!" we called out from the balcony when he emerged from the truck.  Alex the horticulturist referred to Santa's backhoe as his "reindeer".  Gerrit got a chance to use a few Portuguese phrases with Santa, too.

Here's a puzzler for you: "santa" in Portuguese means a female saint.  So what do they make of a jolly old bearded elf named "Santa Claus"?

Pat's coughing and sniffling turns out not to be due to the HVACs (heaters), and the HVACs are plenty clean inside too.  Yet still it continues, coming and going under all conditions, inside and out.  We visited a doctor on Thursday Dec 18 who found that she seems to be in good general health and prescribed some nasal spray and cough suppressant.  Pat couldn't wait for bedtime to try them out for the first time.

(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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Winter, and Christmas is Coming

With these rainy gray days it's great to spend a day at home, lighting a fire, watching the storms, feeling cozy.  It reminds us of storm watching on winter days at the Olympic coast.  

And when we're not sitting around feeling cozy there are a handful of projects to coordinate: major garden and irrigation upgrades, bugs in the solar power system, getting our driver's licenses transferred, preparing for customs and final trucking of our goods when they arrive in Porto, deep cleaning, preparing for the upcoming flood of boxes, and planning for the bungalow.

Our solar power system has been demonstrating a new feature: at indeterminate intervals of between a day and three weeks, it shuts down the entire backup network (main water pump, internet, house lights, refrigerator, access into the garage) for 20 minutes or so, whether the grid is up or not.  Is that any way to treat the circuits which are the most essential to keep powered?  The solar sales people tell us it is, it's a "perfectly normal regular safety check" but we are not convinced.  So the battle is engaged.

Our shipment from the US has become even more circuitous and we're not sure why.  It was bad enough initially, going clear through the Mediterranean to unload in Italy and then to go overland from there, but now we see the ship and itinerary going back through the Straits of Gibraltar, south hundreds of kilometers to the Canary Islands and then back north all the way to Leixões (next to Porto)!  Wacky!  We've asked our shipping agent about this, but no reply yet.

We have both been sniffly and coughing for several weeks, mostly Pat, almost constantly but especially at night.  We've cleaned the HVAC (heater) filters, vacuumed carefully, and washed mold out of some hidden corners, but the only thing that helps is to shut off the HVACs entirely for a couple days.  Gerrit and his new best friend Gemini have found the procedure to disassemble the HVAC housings for thorough internal cleaning, and that's next on the list.

We want to move the bed out of the middle bedroom and to the garage, so we can stage and store all the stuff which will be showing up here shortly.  There is also a bookshelf needing purging to make room for our coming books and other things, and the garage needs to be cleared out as much as possible so the boxes can be loaded directly from the truck into the garage.  And this is just the start...

We're still undecided on exactly which bungalow we want.  Our friend and architectural connoisseur Bernardo has convinced us that we should go for a modern look to match the house better.  The cabin manufacturer we had settled on has a significant number of credible bad reviews, too, all of which is making us rethink the whole thing.  Again.

On Wednesday Dec 10 we met our friends Jess and Julian in Porto for lunch.  They have been doing farm work for room and board (and their own education) here in Portugal for a while, and are just wrapping that up to head to the warmer south.  The weather for our lunch was comfortable, sunny, and beautiful, and we had a great time catching up over a delicious meal.

Ponte de Lima is gearing up for Natal (Christmas).  We were there on the nice evening of Dec 10 and took pictures of some of the spectacular lights they're setting up.  All this public expense and time, in a small town, simply for the enjoyment of its citizens!

Watch the lights "drip"

Some Portuguese greeting tips: "bom dia" means "good day" and is used as a general greeting.  Until noon.  At that moment everyone shifts to "boa tarde" (good afternoon).  If you wish someone "bom dia" after noon they will reply "boa tarde".  Then there is a looser transition, around 8 PM, to "boa noite" for "good night" or "good evening".  You can say "olá" (hello) along with these greetings, and even ask "Tudo bem?" (Everything is well?).  The reply is generally "tudo bem" as a statement (Everything is well.).  A group getting together can sound like a chorus of "Tudo bem?,  Tudo bem!" as greetings go around.

By popular demand (from Ron, anyway), here is a little run-down on the ways Christmas is celebrated in Portugal:

• Like everywhere, they have Christmas trees, lights, and nativity scenes (presépio), incessant Christmas songs on background music, and they exchange gifts.
• They are a strongly Catholic country, so church and Christmas mass are important.
• Some houses are decorated with lights, but not so much as in public areas, towns, and the streets leading into them.
• The common greeting is Boas Festas! (Happy Holidays)
• The Christmas season starts off with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on Dec 8.  It is a major holiday, a quiet time at home with families, a little like Thanksgiving.
• Christmas markets are becoming more popular, where gifts, treats, and Christmas trappings are sold from little barraquinhas (market stalls) in a sort of farmer's market setting.
• Kids put out shoes for Santa, not stockings.  Also, Santa was only adopted in Portugal about 30 years ago!
• Many places, including churches and towns, celebrate with big Christmas bonfires.  Sometimes they are huge.
• Of course there are special Christmas pastries and sweets.
• The traditional Christmas Eve dinner gathering in northern Portugal is called consoada.  The meal traditionally consists of prepared bacalhau (dried salt cod), often with with potatoes, cabbage, and hard boiled eggs.
• 
  In parts of northern Portugal young men called caretos dress in wild colorful costumes to celebrate the solstice (photo Rosino from flickr).  They throw water and hay on bystanders, strut around the town accompanied by rattles, pipes, and drums, and "squash" the girls.
• The “Bananeiro” comes from a store in the city of Braga called “Casa das Bananas” (House of Bananas), which used to be a banana warehouse. The owner had a small counter where he served Moscatel, a sweet Portuguese wine, as a way of attracting customers. When they requested something to eat, he would offer them a banana.  His son then started a tradition with his friends to have a glass of Moscatel and a banana before Christmas Eve dinner. It quickly became popular and is now celebrated by thousands.
• Christmas Eve is usually the height of celebrations, when gift-giving and family togetherness rule the day.

(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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Family Fun & Food for Thought

On Monday Nov 24 we met with our friend Bernardo for lunch in Porto before his girlfriend Carolina's final showing for her master's degree in art.  The restaurant was a charming old style nook with much wood and stone, and we all had delicious spiced chicken over rice (which we again forgot to photograph for you). 

 

The exhibition subject was exploring the theme of how trauma can inspire art, which came from a terrifying 8 m (24 foot) fall from a waterfall and a broken back which Carolina experienced in Brazil years ago.  (She recovered fully, fortunately.)  She is primarily a ceramics and mixed media artist.  She had explanatory cards in English next to each of her many works, and the overall experience was truly moving.  She invited people to release their own traumas by writing them on cards and burning them in a ceremonial pot.  She had shattered some illustrated ceramic works of hers and invited people to take any pieces which spoke to them.  A video loop rolled, describing her experience (in English text) in poetic and evocative terms.  Speeches were made, including from her professors, little of which we understood, but the flowing sound of Portuguese was soothing and good for us to be immersed in.  A little jarring too, when everyone suddenly laughed at a joke you entirely missed.

One piece

And its description

The walkway from our pool had been a little hurriedly finished up a few weeks ago, so the contractor offered to replace it at no charge.  The masons did a very nice job this time, and their craftsmanship and honorable conduct was appreciated.  (See below for the way to properly handle this, which Gerrit accidentally navigated.)

Tuesday Nov 25 through Friday Nov 28 Pat worked on her Portuguese Thanksgiving feast.  She roasted some turkey breasts and legs, made stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, a sweet potato and spinach bake, appetizers, a Portuguese orange square dessert (Quadradinhos de Laranja, or "little squares of orange"), and pumpkin pie.  She is making vegetarian variations of some dishes too.

The Quadrinhos dessert she actually made years ago in Seattle, not realizing that it was a Portuguese recipe.  She got a little choked up here when she realized that, at how we are completing some kind of circle or continuity here.

Friday Nov 28 Gerrit had to get another blood test to make up for one on Tuesday which was incomplete.  He went to the clinic and did the whole transaction in Portuguese, saying things like "I want a blood test, no prescription, no insurance, I pay directly", providing information, and even making small talk with the nurse.  He says this is really getting fun, and he often makes up imaginary dialogs in Portuguese.  With his imaginary friends, Pat assumes.

We have some new rotating composting bins outside the back door so we can compost kitchen waste.  Pat adds ground up cardboard to the waste, which reduces smell and provides a better compost.  Gerrit has been cranking out the cardboard for this, tearing it and using the wood chipper.

Saturday morning Nov 29 we both got ready for our pseudo-Thanksgiving.  There was plenty of work to do to make desserts, make the potato dishes, and reheat food already prepared.  Everyone arrived at 1 PM, we chatted and had appetizers until 2:00, then sat for the feast.  And once again, we forgot photos.  You should find a blog on Instagram with young people photo-documenting their lives; we just can't seem to get the hang of it.  The feast was all delicious and well appreciated.  Then we had a stimulating, wide ranging conversation until 5:30 or so.  It was great fun, and we good friends became even closer.

On Monday Dec 1 Gerrit's son Elliott and his family passed through Ponte de Lima on their way back from Andorra to Porto and their flight home.  They had spent Thanksgiving there with Gerrit's other son Ian and his family.  We had two days and a night with them, playing at our favorite Ponte de Lima playground and at home here.  Gerrit made the traditional Portuguese Bacalhau à Brás for dinner and Pat made a squash, broccoli, and grape casserole.  On Tuesday the kids were on their own for a few hours while we went to a doctor appointment, and they did some shopping and walking around historic Ponte de Lima.  It was a fun, brief goodbye till next time.

The cousins meet for the first time in Andorra	Andorra dad & daughter on the left, Colorado on the right
Colorado kids in Braga with us	Meeting some goats across the street from our home

Rasslin' with Dad

Granddaughter Avie in the statue's basket

Wednesday Dec 3 we met our new family doctor in Viana do Castelo.  Our old doctor was in Porto, convenient when we lived in the apartment in Vila Nova de Gaia but not so much now.  We gave our new doctor our current medical information and learned a little about the system here.  They don't have video doctor appointments in Viana and there isn't a way to transmit documents electronically, so the standard method is the old-fashioned visit to your doctor with printed documents.  We will be doing that regularly to report medical procedures and to provide her with blood tests, etc.  It sounds like a nuisance, but it's kind of sweet and personal too.

Pat found an interesting essay about the differences between Anglo and Portuguese work cultures.  It was written by an American who has been here for five years.  He sums up the Portuguese culture this way:

• Honor-based shame avoidance
• High-context indirectness
• Hierarchical authority preservation
• Liability-averse bureaucratic instinct
• A cultural tradition where fixing the problem IS the apology

Anglos feel that admitting fault and making a public apology shows good faith and honesty, but that runs counter to the Portuguese way.  Apology and directness are considered undignified and a source of shame here.  Instead, indirectness, formality, context sensitivity, and a lack of apology are the rule.  When a problem arises a vague and dissembling reason is given, and instead of an apology the problem is simply fixed (you hope).

There isn't a right or wrong about this, it's just the way the different cultures are.  There is more to it than the bit we've related here, too, so see the whole essay here if you're interested.  It's pretty long, but thoughtful and insightful.  We think understanding all this will be helpful in our dealings with Portuguese services and our understanding of the 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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Smoke & Family Fun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kids on the rocks

But wait there's more

A fine Francesinha

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

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

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

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.) 

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Some Business and Some Fun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.) 

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Seattle Visit Part 2

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

Our half-empty storage unit

Some of the 127 boxes & items

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

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

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

Snow Geese in Skagit

Barred Owl in the back yard

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

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

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

The party

The pencil

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

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

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

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

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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