People and Andorra

 Last Wednesday, Nov 7, the US election results came in.  The American expat group here organized a mourning gathering at sundown that evening in a big park here in Vila Nova de Gaia, above the bank of the Douro river.  We took the metro there but couldn't find the expats because there were hundreds of people there and a band playing.  It was actually an uplifting experience to be among all those happy people and music.

There aren't as many restrictions on behavior in Portugal as in Washington.  Alcoholic beverages are not so heavily taxed and reasonable public consumption is fine.  There were people selling beer and wine out of coolers there at the park, and you could smell the legal cannabis in the air too.  Everyone was relaxed and having a good time, and there was no sign of bad behavior.  It was really kind of refreshing.  We had brought a half bottle of wine and a couple glasses, and we stood next to a stone wall there sipping and having fun, people watching and talking.

We had the feeling that if you let people enjoy themselves without trying to be a finger-wagging nanny they generally act responsibly.  More freedom does lead to more risk, but is it better to clamp down on everyone in order to eliminate every chance of harm?  In Seattle the Kroger stores started demanding ID from EVERYONE purchasing any alcohol at all.  It was quite ridiculous and annoying as sixty-somethings to be carded every single time we bought a bottle of beer.  So much inconvenience, so much extra work for the clerks and customers, so little trust of anyone, and for what?  So that we could be absolutely sure that no minor would ever purchase alcohol?  As I recall, minors will find a way.  Better to show them examples of responsible drinking.

Well, anyway, we had a great time there at the park with our wine.  We met a nice young couple from Toronto there too, chatted about our lives, and left feeling better.  We followed a narrow and dark cobblestone street along the park to get back to the metro, and Gerrit caught a toe and went down.  He wasn't hurt, fortunately, and before he could even get up a young lady had rushed down the hill to help.  She pulled him up, he thanked her kindly, she smiled and we went on our way.  Life is full of kindness.

The following day, Thursday, we left first thing for a driving trip to Andorra to visit Gerrit's son and his family.  We traveled through northern Spain, spending the first night in a lovely hotel in Logroño, and reached Andorra late the following afternoon.  The final 100 km (62 mi) or so were through the Republic of Catalonia, one of the autonomous regions of Spain, and the Pyrenees mountains were jaw-droppingly spectacular.

Pretty in the Pyrenees

Pretty spectacular in the Pyrenees

Andorra is a tiny country (only 18% the size of Rhode Island) nestled in the Pyrenees between Spain and France.  They are technically not part of the European Union, but the border crossing is easy.  It is a duty-free tax haven, so there is a lot of wealth there evidenced by fancy cars, stylish clothing, and upscale shops.  Much of the main city of Andorra la Vella is beautiful and new.  The geography is very rugged with little flat land, so much of la Vella consists of tall buildings clustered along the Valira River valley.

View from our hotel in La Vella

The Andorran family

It was a joyous reunion, we hadn't seen Ian and Oona for six years while they traveled the world, and it was our first meeting with the 3- and 4-year-old grandkids.  We had brought them bags of toys which earned us their instant regard, and we had a wonderful weekend with all of them.  Saturday the adults went out to dinner for Pat's birthday, and Ian cooked for us on Friday and Sunday.  They showed us around Andorra all weekend and we went to playgrounds with the kids.  It was hard to leave Monday morning, but good to know that visits are not too difficult.

We took two days to get back home, spending Monday night in a gorgeous hotel in El Burgo de Osma.  There is a fabulous castle and cathedral there (tower detail at the left) which we spent a little time exploring.  The trip through northern Spain was really beautiful, with lush pine forests and even areas which resembled the colorful mountains of southern Utah.

The following day was yesterday, Wednesday, and we had arranged to drive with our real estate agent Bernardo to a couple places of interest.  One place, in Vila Verde, was intriguing enough to pursue further, so that's what we've been doing today.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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Park Peek and Daily Life

Our friends Jess and Julian returned home to the UK, but not before Jess contracted COVID.  She started having symptoms at the fado performance which we all attended together on Oct 29.  Fortunately none of the rest of us have shown symptoms, but what a lousy way to wind up a vacation for poor Jess!

Our TV has been erratic for a couple months now, sometimes working and sometimes not, but getting worse.  Gerrit tried to use the self-diagnostic thing on the Vodafone app (the Portuguese equivalent of Xfinity) but it didn't work, then their phone menu was in Portuguese with no English option, so we went to the Vodafone main branch in Porto with our TV box in hand.  We were told there that they couldn't just exchange the TV box, they needed to get a technician to diagnose the problem.  We went home, the technician called to set up an appointment to visit, and said it was almost certainly the TV box.  Sigh.  Well, at least they're coming out here to do the exchange and we don't have to go back.

We are going to drive to Andorra, the tiny country between Spain and France to visit Gerrit's son Ian and family.  We will be seeing these grandkids for the first time!  Liberty is four and Orson is three.  Their family has been hopping around the globe for years, and recently moved from Mérida, Mexico, to Andorra where they will probably settle for a while.  We're really excited to see them, and Pat has been busy plotting routes and reserving hotels.

Meanwhile, Gerrit has been shopping for home inspectors.  He got quotes and qualifications from three and selected one.  

The weather was beautiful again on Saturday Nov 2, sunny and warm, so we decided to take a trip and picnic lunch to Portugal's only national park: Parque Nacional Peneda-Gerês.  The park is about 70,000 hectares (270 sq mi) and there are several main entrances which open into different regions of the park.  It straddles the Portuguese/Spanish border, much like North Cascades National Park in Washington does with Canada.  

Near Rio Caldo at the south entrance	Rio Caldo scene
Mountains in the park	Little stone hut in a meadow

The park is just over an hour from us.  We entered near the town of Rio Caldo at the south end and followed a beautiful scenic road about 32 km (20 mi) north, to within a stone's throw of the Spanish border before we turned back.  The road looks straight when zoomed out on the map, but it is narrow and very winding.  On the drive we saw streams and waterfalls, mountain ranges, forests, meadows, and gorgeous fall colors in the leaves.  We got brochures and maps so we can explore more on subsequent visits.

Autumn leaves in Peneda-Gerês

And more

OK, we must admit that there do seem to be more fast and aggressive drivers here in Portugal, contrary to our earlier rosy claim.  They seem to be most evident on the toll highways, were they can be seen flying along 40 or 50 kph over the limit, zooming up behind law-abiding speed limit adherents flashing their lights or turning on their turn signals, and weaving in and out of lanes with no signals.  These same drivers nearly nick your fender after they barely get around you.  Their cars seem to be mostly German and mostly black.  Autobahn wannabes?  Maybe it's a European thing, not necessarily Portuguese.  They've become a running joke with us.

The Vodafone tech came and Gerrit got to try some baby Portuguese with him since the tech knew very little English.  Gerrit learned that the Portuguese word for "cable" is "cable", so that was good to know.  With hand gestures and three-word sentences he managed to explain the situation and explore solutions.  The tech replaced the WiFi TV link with hardwired Ethernet, which Gerrit is skeptical will fix the problem, but it's working now and we'll see.  It was nice to have them come here to work the problem.

We've been doing some soul-searching on the home we sent a picture of in the last post, and have decided it's really not for us.  Our hearts fell in love, but our heads have been saying no.  It is a lovely, peaceful, secluded and natural property with a beautiful house and views, but it is just too far out from civilization and community and would require too much work to bring up to snuff (and in the long term to maintain).  So we're back to the property search with some different parameters, and some interesting places are cropping up.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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Porto and Fado

Last Tuesday we got together with Jess and Julian, our vising friends from England, for a three-hour Porto tour from our real estate agent, tour guide, and all-around great guy Bernardo.  We started at the awesome tiled São Bento train station, then he drove us across the Douro river to the Mosteiro da Serra do Pilar hilltop monastery in Gaia for a breathtaking view of Porto and the Duoro river at evening.  Then we drove back to Porto and all around the city's most scenic spots and viewpoints.  Bernardo was full of enthusiasm, information, history, and facts, and we came away with an even greater appreciation of this beautiful city.  He even treated us all to a bottle of one of our favorite vinho verde wines, which we enjoyed at a lively viewpoint packed with happy locals in the Foz do Douro neighborhood overlooking the mouth of the Douro and the ocean.

Tiles at São Bento train station	This is a train station?
Detail of some São Bento tiles	The Douro river, Porto, and Gaia at night
One of the six bridges across the Douro	Vila Nova de Gaia and houses in Porto

Bernardo had also arranged for us to visit a neighborhood restaurant nearby named Luca for some local food and a fado performance.  Fado is a traditional Portuguese song style.  It represents the feeling of saudade, which doesn't have an exact English translation but means a longing for things of the past, a kind of nostalgia.  It first appeared with the sailors of the 16th and 17th century as they longed for home on their long voyages, but a couple of star singers brought it to international prominence in the 20th century.  The melodies are sweet and poignant.  The singer is accompanied by a classical guitar and a Portuguese guitar, which is a little like a large six-string mandolin.  Here is an example which seems to be pretty good judging by the Portuguese comments.  They use a string bass in the video instead of the classical guitar.

Our singer was a man, but a woman stepped in for him later in the show.  He and the crowd had a great rapport, and we wish we could have understood the jokes he was making.  The restaurant was mostly locals but they had set aside a few tables for visitors like us.  At the start of the performance a waitress introduced the band in Portuguese, speaking to the locals in the house, but then she turned to the visitors and said in English that she hoped we enjoyed the performance and that it would become part of our own saudade someday.

The audience was very attentive and respectful to the musicians.  Dinner was only served between sets so there would be no eating during the performance.  The audience sang along quietly at times, gently swaying to the music.  The musicians were completely relaxed and casual, they looked like they just came in from the street.  They were all fabulous, especially the singer with his rich soulful voice.

Dinner was good, with a very attentive waiter keeping our wine glasses filled.  Gerrit had Bacalhau à Brás, one of his favorites, but the others had roast beef.  The beef was odd: very thin, barely cooked, and covered in a cream sauce.  Not exactly the way Mom made it, but maybe the way Portuguese moms do.

We left about 11:30, unable to keep our eyes open much longer, but we heard the band starting another set as we left.  We caught an Uber for a quick and flawless ride home.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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House Hunting, Port Tasting

Bernardo, our new real estate agent, is the kind of guy you want on your team.  We visited three listings with him last Wednesday, and he was a powerhouse.  Not only did he interpret for us, but he asked pointed questions and observed minutely.  He caught many things we would have overlooked.  He took video of each place, walking around and adding his commentary.  He strode up to neighbors and chatted them up, asking about the neighborhood.  We discussed each place thoroughly as we drove to the next, and he has excellent ideas and observations.  He's frank and disagrees when necessary.  Being a student of architecture, he has a great eye for proportion, quality, lighting, floorplan flow, color, and landscaping.  When a seller's agent contacted him the following morning for feedback he was clear and serious with her about improvements we would make and why the price needed to come down, getting her ready for negotiation.

His girlfriend Carolina came along and lent an expert eye too.  She is very good at assessing houses, loves doing it, and added greatly to our discussions.

One of the three places we saw was seriously interesting.  We are double-checking our top contenders and might view a few more from this group, but we can't stop talking about how drawn we are to this one.  Bernardo is arranging an independent inspector to take it to the next step.

On Saturday we got together with our friends from England, Jess and Julian, whom we visited in England in early August.  They are vacationing and home-scouting in the Porto area.  We lined up a port wine tasting with them at the Cálem port house here on the Douro river in Vila Nova de Gaia for the afternoon, and it was great fun.  At least it was after we got there late and sipped some so-called vinho verde at a very overpriced tourist joint waiting for the next tour, anyway.

Our tour guide was Columbian who spoke English well with a Columbian Spanish accent.  We saw vast ancient barrels and learned about the port making process.  Did you know that the vines need to be somewhat stressed to produce the best grapes, and that the "poor soil" of the schist-rich Douro valley is ideal for that?

At the end we all gathered in the tasting room, where we each enjoyed three glasses of port: white, late-bottled-vintage, and 10-year tawny.  As we finished, Julian realized that we had not gotten the full-boat chocolate and cheese sampling tour we had signed up for so she asked our guide about that.  He was very helpful and apologetic, setting us up in another room with our chocolate, cheese, and three MORE sample glasses of port.  Halfway through that we were getting pretty jolly, laughing uproariously, and we noticed that nobody was sitting anywhere near us.  The other tasters were either reading or engaged in polite conversation at the other end of the room.  We hushed up with some giggles and embarrassment, but an English-speaking woman a few tables away who had been smiling along with us said it was no problem, she loved to hear the laughter.  In our well-lubricated state we bought a bottle of 20-year tawny port and made our way out.

Two serious and scholarly port wine testers	And two more
St. Gerrit prays for redemption

Jess and Julian headed back to their AirBnB, but before we left we bought a bag of delicious roast chestnuts from a street vendor and sat on a stone wall overlooking the Douro river and the colorful houses of Porto on the other side to enjoy them.  It was like being in a storybook!  We have to pinch ourselves that we're really here.

The lot we parked in was 8 storeys tall, built up the steep side of the river bank, and to exit you had to spiral around all the way to the top.  We did so, and then discovered (when we couldn't get out) that we should have paid down on the ground floor.  Sigh.  Gerrit got a little exercise elevatoring down and back, and não faz mal (or "no harm done").

Today, Monday, it was a warm and beautiful day at the end of October, so we took a scenic drive south along the coast.  There is a large lagoon just inland from the coast called the Aveiro Lagoon, with a two-lane road which runs down the ocean side of the lagoon.  We followed it to the very southernmost tip, a town called São Jacinto.  We snooped around a couple little seaside towns on the way, too.  Everything was closed down since it's now well past beach season, but it was beautiful today and we had the places all to ourselves.  

We followed a boardwalk at Praia de São Jacinto ("beach of São Jacinto"), and then found lunch in town.  We had tostas mixtas, a popular Portuguese toasted ham and cheese sandwich.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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New Friends, New Books, New Homes

 Last Thursday we went over scores of house listings online.  The listing site we're using sends us daily digests of new listings in our selected categories and the volume is pretty daunting.  We trimmed down our filters a little to reduce the flood.  That night Gerrit made Bacalhau à Brás for the second time, and it was great.

On Saturday we went to Staples (yes, they're here too) and shopped for office chairs.  We've been making do with the chairs that were in the apartment, but Gerrit's back is killing him from long sitting in them.  We found some nice ones, Gerrit's being a "CAD and gaming" chair for those extended sessions.  Pérola (our new "supermini" car) has these amazing fold-up seats in the back, so we were able to fit the two large boxes in easily for the trip home.

"Some assembly was required", so we spent the rest of the afternoon peering at instructions and reefing on hex-head bolts.  Gerrit found that his chair was not quite as comfortable as it was in the store after a few hours, but a little rolled-up lumbar cushion does the trick.  Pat's chair has been great.  It's her new beading chair.

We worked with our real estate agent a little more also, lining up several homes to view on the coming Wednesday.

Sunday saw us doing chores around the apartment, and a trip back to Staples because we had been charged full price instead of the sale price on Pat's chair.  It was no big deal to us, we were cheerful about it, but all four employees clustered around us seemed embarrassed or uncomfortable.  The manager gave us the difference in cash a little stiffly, with no apology.  Maybe hand-wringing store apologies are a US thing.

Our new friend and real estate agent Bernardo had invited us to his new flat for um copo de vinho (a glass of wine) at 5:00 on Sunday.  The flat is still under construction but liveable, and will be beautiful when it is done.  He and his partner Carolina were wonderful hosts, and we ended up lingering until 9:30 and enjoying some takeout sandwiches from a nearby bistro courtesy of Bernardo.  Carolina is Uruguyan and speaks Spanish, English, and Portuguese, and we all had a great conversation.  Pat even made a provisional identification on a neighborhood night bird which screeched a few times outside.  We left warm and happy after our first actual Portuguese home visit.  We spoke English almost all night, but Portuguese will come.

Monday we did some grocery and hardware shopping.  The Leroy Merlin store here is very much like Home Depot in the states, with all kinds of home improvement and hardware in a beautiful big warehouse.  So far there hasn't been anything we haven't been able to find locally or online, and it's generally equal or better quality and price to Seattle.

We also did some heavy housecleaning on Monday: shower stall, floors, and some hidden mold.  Pat found mold all over the back of the framed pictures here, so we took them outside, swept clouds of mold from them, and gave them a good disinfectant spray.  Yuck.  We've been cleaning mold from other surfaces too.  We think with our new dehumidifier the mold will be a thing of the past.  At least we hope so.

Pat found a line of adult beginner European Portuguese books from the Porto People expat group, and she ordered three of them.  The books are by Susana Morais, creator of Storyglot, and they come in everything from beginner to advanced levels.  The books contain a story or stories in Portuguese, the English translation and grammar notes, exercises, a glossary, and a link to download the Portuguese audio.  The books just arrived and we'll dive into them and let you know how they are.

Today, Tuesday, we spent some time carefully looking over the three house listings we will tour tomorrow.  We put together lists of questions and got all prepared.  Our first impressions will be in the next blog post, so stay tuned.

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Life is Good, Portugal Style

There were many sad stories which came out of the storm of wildfires which recently hit Portugal, but we learned about one unfortunate winemaker, João Tavares de Pina, from our Porto People expat group.  This poor guy had his vineyard and facilities burned TWICE, once by a wildfire several years ago and again this year.  He rebuilt from the first one, only to have it burned again.  Here he is in a video where he talks about his wine (in English). 

People are pitching in to help.  He doesn't want charity, he just wants to sell his wine so he can rebuild again.  His distributor is helping by waiving their commission and giving all their proceeds to him, and asking people to buy his wine.

We couldn't find any of his wines locally, so we ordered five bottles from the distributor.  They just arrived Friday and we started sampling them.  We are lucky that doing good tastes so good.  And we do sincerely hope this fine winemaker can recover again.  Maybe he needs some more help.  We should send in another order.  

Saturday was a beautiful day and we went to Pat's favorite haunt, the bird refuge at the mouth of the Douro river.  Oystercatchers, one of her favorite birds, are sometimes seen there this time of year.  We saw no oystercatchers, but plenty of flamingos and a beautiful little iridescent kingfisher.  We watched the kingfisher hover and dive for small fish for quite a while.

Sunday was also nice.  We drove out to the town of Ponte da Barca, the furthest north we have been in Portugal, to see another likely-looking property and its neighborhood.  We couldn't see too much, but the surroundings didn't wow us.  We're going to put this one in a secondary category and move on.

The dehumidifier we ordered arrived on Monday, ahead of schedule.  It's about as loud as a medium sized fan, which is not too bad.  It works well; we typically get about a gallon of water after running it overnight in the main room, where it drops the humidity from about 80% to 55%.  In the bedroom it should dry the clothes well.  It's strange to pull a bucket of water out of the machine and realize that it just came out of the air!

Pat found a website with Portuguese tongue twisters.  Here's a great one that shows off the raspy Portuguese hard R sound: O rato roeu a roupa do Rei de Roma e a rainha raivosa resolveu remendar ("the mouse chewed the King of Rome's clothes, and the queen, angry, decided to mend them").  Fortunately that's not a phrase you use every day.

Pat noticed some cracks in the shower stall grout a couple weeks ago and Gerrit told the landlord he'd caulk them up.  On Tuesday he used the new dehumidifier to dry out the bathroom thoroughly to prepare for that.  About noon the bathroom (and the cracks) were nice and dry, so he caulked them up.  

Yesterday, Wednesday, we went to see the house we're interested in, near the village of Arouca.  Our agent Bernardo drove us there, about a forty minute drive from here.  We had a great time in the car getting to know each other.  He is the same age as Gerrit's youngest son Ian, he has had an interesting life all over the world (like Ian), his English is excellent, and we shared stories and house philosophies.

In Arouca we met with the seller's agent, who spoke very little English, and we drove to the house a few minutes away.  It had been raining but was just drying up.  We met the owners of the house there and we toured it inside and out, accompanied by the Portuguese practice of everyone talking at once.  Fortunately Bernardo steadily interpreted and we learned about the property and had our questions answered too.

When the woman of the house got home she gave us our first ever beijinhos (little kisses), the little kiss on each cheek which is common in Europe.  It's an air kiss, but you touch cheeks.  She did it so naturally and sweetly that we passed with flying colors without embarrassing ourselves (by heading for the wrong cheek, slobbering, or the like).  What a sweet custom!  Beijinhos for total strangers and friends alike.

The place is a beautiful rustic property, being sold by the original owners after 30 years.  The walls are thick stone and there is lush greenery all around.  It is really beautiful.  Unfortunately the property would be a bit too much for us.  It's quite steep, which we didn't get in the pictures, and it would require a lot of work to maintain.  It was a little dark inside too.  Afterwards, the seller's agent gave us a tour of the village of Arouca and stopped just before we left to buy us a gift of a box of castanhas doces ("sweet chestnuts"), made by a local confectioner.  They're not actually chestnuts, they're egg yolk, almond, and a bit of sugar rolled up in a little chestnut-sized ball and lightly flame-roasted.  Oh, they are so good!

On the drive home we arranged a guided tour of Porto with Bernardo, including a fado performance (fado is a traditional Portuguese song form) and dinner.  He has also been a custom tour guide in Porto for three years.  The friends we saw when we took our brief trip to England in early August will be in Porto for eight days in a week or so and it will be a great way to show them the town and to hear some fado, which they wanted to experience.  We've been meaning to attend a performance since we've been here, too.

It was a beautiful day!  We met some lovely people, experienced more Portuguese culture with the castanhas doces and beijinhos, and set up a very authentic Porto tour with an expert local.  Life is good.

Bernardo picked a persimmon for us from a tree at the house we looked at yesterday and explained how to prepare it.  We tried it with our breakfast this morning and it was delicious: juicy and delicately sweet.  It would be great in a pork dish, so Gerrit has a new recipe to pursue: "Gerrit's Pork and Persimmon Surprise".

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First House

 Man, it's humid in Porto!  Especially when you have to dry your laundry indoors in October.  It's been 75% - 85% steadily for a few weeks now.  So we broke down and did what many people do around here: we bought a dehumidifier.  It should be here the middle of next week.  It will be useful to make it more comfortable in the main living area, then when we do laundry we'll hang it in the bedroom, put the dehumidifier in there, and shut the door.  Laundry Porto style.

We're still nowhere near being able to hold an actual conversation with a native.  Gerrit is getting pretty good at simple phrases and talking to clerks and waiters (as long as they mostly don't talk to him), but Pat is still overcoming nerves and having trouble retaining her lessons.  It's nerve-racking to talk or respond in a foreign language, you freeze up and forget everything you learned.  It's like the anxiety of public speaking.  We're both doing our lessons an hour every day ("tudos os dias"), but it's slow going.  We need actual practice with a real live native speaker who doesn't mind talking to four year olds.  Fortunately they actually have those, people you can pay or exchange English lessons with for video calls on the internet.  Now we just have to work up the nerve to tackle THAT.

Yesterday, Thursday, the weather was beautiful so we took a trip to the little town of Arouca, about an hour's drive due southeast of us.  We have found a house for sale in the outskirts of Arouca which we like.  Here's a picture from the listing.  We're going to see it with our agent next week, but we thought we'd drive around the area a little to see how we like the neighborhood.  (We didn't want to pop in on the home unannounced, especially being unable to explain ourselves.)

The drive was lovely, especially the last third or so.  You approach Arouca along a wide valley dotted with villages and forest, along a small winding highway.  We went to the house itself first, at least the foot of the driveway leading up to the property.  It's a beautiful forested secluded setting, just like it shows in the ad.  We'll see more of it next week.

We spent an hour or so driving all around the small town of Arouca and its surroundings.  It's just the right size to have a supermarket, a health center, a grade school, parks, many little shops and restaurants, and specialties like optometrists, pastry shops, and so forth.  It's clean, quiet, and well-kept, with some cool modern sculptures in its roundabouts.  We drove past a city road crew cleaning leaves from the street.  With rakes!  Quiet, old-fashioned, smoke- and noise-free rakes.  What a delight.

We were thoroughly pleased with what we saw.  But if we buy the first house we look at, after moving to Portugal without even a visit, you can call us completely insane.  Or maybe it's just a really nice house.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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More Home Hunting

We just learned that it's actually a law in Portugal that the elderly, the infirm, or women who are pregnant or with babes in arms are to be given preferential treatment: seats on buses, places in line, and so forth.  So not only are the people here just kind and considerate, but they have codified it into law.  Is this a great culture or what?

We took a short trip to Porto a week ago to the bird observation park we got fogged out of last time we tried.  It was a beautiful sunny day this time, but about the only birds were gulls and cormorants (ho hum).  Pat got some nice pictures though, and it was a pleasant outing.  We got "lost" on the way back and had a fun time wandering some more through Porto.

Bird park on the Douro River

Residents of the bird park

A week or two ago Gerrit tried to make Bacalhau à Brás for dinner, a classic bacalhau preparation like he had enjoyed for lunch some time ago.  He found some good recipes, but they called for potatoes and he was sure the lunch he'd had used rice, so he decided to substitute brown rice.  He got some shredded bacalhau and the other ingredients.

The bacalhau needed to be soaked overnight to get the salt out of the cured fish.  Gerrit figured it wouldn't need to be refrigerated during the soak since there was so much salt, but he figured wrong.  In the morning it began to stink and the whole mess had to be thrown out.  Must have been some of that salt-loving bacteria from the Great Salt Lake.

He had better luck next time.  Last night, Saturday, he tried again after properly soaking the cod in the refrigerator, and also used shoestring potatoes instead of his brown rice substitute.  It was excellent this time, not quite as good as he remembered his restaurant lunch, but a good recipe to experiment with.

Most of the week, though, has been devoted to house hunting.  Normally in Portugal there is no real estate agent for the buyer of a home, only the seller's agent.  This seems a bit peculiar, putting the poor buyer in the position of negotiating with a professional agent, especially if the buyer is not fully familiar with Portuguese language and culture.  Buyer's agents are becoming more popular now though, largely due to the demand of foreign home buyers.  They split the seller's agent's fee, same as they do in the US, and there is no additional cost to the buyer.

The one fly in this ointment is that there is no financial incentive for the buyer's agent to negotiate a lower price.  Their fee scales along with the seller's fee, upward with the selling price.  So we have decided to give our agent a bonus of double what they lose with a reduced price.  If they get a 2.5% commission on the sale price, for example, we will give them 5% of the amount by which they can reduce the asking price.  That's pretty cheap money for us: for each €1000 the agent gets the price down, we save €950 and they lose €25 of their fee but gain €50 from us.

To firm up our own ideas of what is important to us, we went through the "ideal home" list we made a couple years ago.  Back then we thought we wanted a large traditional home on a large piece of land, but now we're not so sure.  We kind of like the modern features of this apartment.  We have also gotten some distance from the rooms full of stuff we had in Normandy Park and learned we really don't need that.  We're not so sure we want to upsize back to that after all our downsizing to get here.  We're also a little reluctant to take on all the gardening and home maintenance of a big home.  We'd rather be traveling or enjoying ourselves at this point in our lives.

So we sharpened our pencils.  We figured what we really wanted for our now-smaller-scale projects, what we needed for guest accommodations, and our tolerance for discomfort and home responsibilities.  Our current ideal home has a modern kitchen and amenities, high speed internet, is on one floor, has only three or four bedrooms, and is on a modest and reasonably secluded lot no more than 20 minutes from supermarkets and hospitals.  Oh, and a swimming pool would be nice.

We connected with a good buyer's agent in the Porto People forums and chats, had a video call with him, and sent him our most recent home wish list.  We sent links to listings for properties we liked, so he could get an idea of our taste.  He seems like an excellent guy and comes highly recommended, but we caught him at a bad time.  He is just moving into a new flat, so he won't be able to devote full time to his clients for a week or two.

But that's okay.  We're primarily using an online Portuguese real estate site called Idealista, which is pretty flexible and thorough.  You put in the region you're interested in, all the filters you want like price, size, etc., and it comes back with a list of matching properties.  We drew a region comprising the area in northern Portugal which has a suitable climate for us, punched in some features of our ideal home, and got back 1,200 results.

Whew.  Most of those results were not suitable for one reason or another, but it still took a long time to wade through them.  We have dueling laptops on the kitchen table here and one or the other of us would periodically say, "oh, this looks like an interesting one" and we'd huddle.  We have it down to a list of about two dozen now, and will get down to two or three to actually visit.  We can do these initial visits without our agent, while he finishes his move.  (The rainy season has come, too, so we'll need to get umbrellas.)

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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House Hunting around Braga and Barcelos

 On Friday Gerrit made a traditional Portuguese dish for dinner, Porco Alentejana: pork chunks and clams in a white wine, spice, and garlic sauce over fried cubed potatoes.  He had found a straightforward recipe a couple days earlier, we did some shopping for the couple ingredients we didn't have, and soon dinner was on the table.  It was delicious, and a great everyday addition to our menu.  We sat in our lovely Portuguese apartment, enjoying our Portuguese food and drinking our Portuguese wine, feeling very native.  We're even saying little Portuguese phrases to each other now and then.

We have been doing some house hunting online, as we mentioned earlier.  We found three places which looked pretty interesting, and Pat found their exact location by comparing Google Maps with the aerial views and general locations shown in the ads.  On Saturday the weather was clear and bright after the recent rains so we headed to the Braga / Barcelos area to see them in person (from the outside anyway).  The ad photos were generally good, you can get a good feel for a place from them, but sometimes other things show up when you visit in person.  Like the major power lines near one place, and the construction chaos going on all around another.  The third actually looked better than its pictures though.  The setting was very nice, secluded and natural, on a large lot near a small river with no nearby neighbors.  We'll be looking at that one a little closer.

We had another wonderful lunch on the road at a little café near Lanhas.  Our waiter was cheerful and quick, the crowd was boisterous, and lunch was excellent.  We were surprised to see that the plate of the day was Porco Alentejana, just what we'd made the previous night!  That was fine though, it was fun to compare them.  We split one meal (which was huge), had two glasses of wine, espresso, and carioca de limão for €8.  We know, we promised not to gloat over prices, but this is just ridiculous.

On the way back we passed through a surprisingly beautiful little village called Vila Verde.  We had to pass down the main tree-lined street a couple times to soak it all in.  Here are some pictures of village churches and trees, including a wedding party outside the main cathedral:

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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Wildfires and House Hunting

Last Friday some rain came and helped to dampen the wildfires in the area.  There was a strong burned eucalyptus aroma in the air from the smoke and the rain, from all the burning eucalyptus forests (see our earlier post here).

It's shocking, but probably a number of the fires were arson, too.  14 people have been arrested on suspicion of setting fires.  The Portuguese prime minister alluded to this, and a criminologist explained that there could be economic incentive to sell burned timber or to devalue land for purchase.  There's always plain old mental illness to explain arson too.  More than 5000 firefighters have been involved, over 50 people have been injured, seven have died including three firefighters, and tens of thousands of hectares have been destroyed.

On Saturday the air had cleared considerably here in Gaia just south of Porto, but fires continued in some of the areas we're interested in so we didn't do any road tripping.  We've started doing some house shopping in earnest now, and we spent part of the day looking at real estate ads and learning about buying a house in Portugal.  We have been attracted to the cities of Braga and Guimarães so we'll see what is available in those areas.

On Sunday the fires in that region were contained and safe, so we set off on a circular trip to see Barcelos, Azurém, Fafe, Celorico de Basto, and back home, about four hours of driving time.  At least that was the plan.  We didn't get going until noon, the Waze mapping system sent us on a different route than Pat had specified and we had to get synched via slow cobblestone roads, and by the time we'd made it to Barcelos and had lunch it was three o'clock.  Sigh.  

We did add to our list of excellent lunches in small restaurants with friendly, helpful, and energetic waiters though.  We split an order of oven roasted pork and sausages, creamy boiled potatoes, grated cooked spinach, rice, and tossed salad.  Our broken Portuguese and the waiter's one English word ("pork") got us through though.  Tipping is not generally done in Portugal, but we try to leave a little bit.  This time all we had was about 12% of the bill in our smallest currency note, and our waiter was so overwhelmed he almost refused it.  He was genuinely grateful; he and Gerrit shook hands and parted friends with effusive well-wishes.  In Seattle we would have gotten a dirty look for 12%.

Barcelos is a nice small city, but we happened to hit it when an enormous market or fair was underway.  Lines of cars were entering the city, even at three o'clock on a Sunday.  The town center was jammed with visitors, cars, and vendor's booths of all types.  We saw some coats of arms and other indications that it was partly a Renaissance fair.  We tooled slowly through the traffic, and then made our way out of town by the back way.  This church was on the way, just another like you find in almost any small town in Portugal.

At this point we headed to nearby Braga for another insufficient drive-by of this beautiful city, and took the fast highways home.

Monday, yesterday, we broke up our house-hunting to take a little early afternoon drive around the downtown neighborhoods of nearby Porto just for fun.  The weather was nice and the city is so beautiful.  We're getting to the point where we only use Google Maps (or now we prefer Waze) for part of the trip, and we know our way within a few kilometers of home.

That brings us to today.  It's been raining pretty steadily all morning, nice to see.  We got email this morning from the lawyers who are handling our immigration confirmation process, saying that the responsible agency is now soliciting email contact.  So Gerrit copied & pasted the prescribed email message from the lawyers and sent it off so we can hurry up and wait again.

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Where There's Smoke

We haven't been doing much outdoors lately because the wildfires here have been making the air very smoky.  Bad to breathe and bad for sightseeing.  There have been dozens of fires in northern Portugal the past week or two, some pretty close to us, but we're not in any danger.  Today the air quality is better and the number of fires shown on fogos.pt has reduced, so we're hopeful that we're over the worst of it.

Most fire departments in Portugal are volunteer and largely supported by community donations.  This is really a sweet way to do it and it makes you feel more connected.  A member of the expat community here set up a GoFundMe site and has been buying and delivering supplies to the wildfire fighters, so we contributed to that.  They exceeded their initial goal of €8000, now up to €11,000, and have delivered water, energy bars, milk and specifically requested supplies and equipment already.  This fund is ongoing, and great to be a part of.

We did make a trip to the local Vodafone store to straighten out some billing and a service problem with our TV, which was quick and easy.  Unfortunately the service phone number Gerrit was given does not in fact have an English option, so there's still some digging to do there.

Pat also got a haircut, from a nice-looking unassuming salon right next to where we parked for Vodafone.  The stylist speaks English too.  It's beautiful, as you can see.  She says she hasn't had her hair this short since grade school.  If you're going to move to a different country, a new hairstyle seems like small potatoes!

Her new hairdresser put mousse in her hair, and Pat asked if she could buy some.  No, she replied, but you can find it anywhere.  No rack of overpriced hair products as another income stream, no pressure, just a simple non-commercial friendly transaction.  It's hard to convey how simple and sincere the people we've met have been, but we see it wherever we go.

We've done some other shopping in the last couple days, and Gerrit has been recovering from an external backup hard disk failure.  Not very exciting for an adventure blog, but we wanted to let you know we're fine and we'll get back on the road as soon as the fires die down and the air clears.

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Day Tripping and Marketing

 Last Friday we went shopping at the big Continente supermarket nearby to take advantage of a coupon we had there (plus we just like it there).  They have a good selection of frozen fish, produce, wine, and most everything.  We are testing various 10 year old tawny port wines (for research purposes only you understand), and picked up some Graham's this time.  We (mostly Pat) planned a trip to the city of Vila Real for the following day, and Gerrit spent some time reading our new car's 653-page owner's manual.

The following day Gerrit had to cancel the planned trip to Vila Real.  He'd had a miserable night of insomnia and wasn't up to a full day trip.  We did take a short afternoon drive to Póvoa de Varzim, a beach town about an hour north of us up the coast.  Here are some photos of a Romanesque aqueduct circa 1700 and a beach scene.

On the way home we did a double-take at two long rows of cars parked ON the freeway on- and off-ramps all the way up to the freeway.  What in the world?  Then we saw the sports stadium right nearby.  I guess those futebol fans will park anywhere for their team.

Here in urban Portugal there is a good integration between banks and services.  The default bill payment method is by direct withdrawal from your bank account, rather than separate billing and payment.  Debit ("multibanco") cards are ubiquitous and used for most shopping payments, and there is a seamless integration between your multibanco account and both the metro transit system and a toll payment system called Via Verde.  Pat set us up with Via Verde, so highway tolls will be paid automatically via a transponder in the car (like the Good to Go system in King County).  It can also be used to pay for parking or for charging electric vehicles.  Parking meters all seem to use coins, but some also have Via Verde connections which use your phone's location to report the exact meter you are standing in front of in order for Via Verde to dispense the dashboard ticket for you.  Pretty slick!

On Sunday Gerrit woke refreshed so we decided to head to Vila Real.  This is for some research on areas we might like to pursue for a home, and also just for fun.  Vila Real is a one- or two-hour drive due east from here, and is a medium sized city in our preferred climatic region.  We liked it, but probably not enough to look for a home in the area. Here are some photos taken there:

Old town square	Storefronts

Ornate wrought iron gate	At Jardim da Carreira

Igreja de São Pedro	View from Miradouro da Vila Velha

We did see a number of beautiful sites there.  But we skipped the main attraction of the Palácio de Mateus.  This is a beautiful Italianate mansion, garden, and grounds, built in the first half of the 17th century, but we just didn't feel up to the hike around the place.  It also seemed like a bit too commercial a venture.

Here is a sweet sign we saw at the drop-off point for a school

We had lunch at Sabores Do Brasil, a Brazilian "rodízio" restaurant.  We didn't know what that was when we entered; we thought it might be a cooking style.  Gerrit tried to order a single lunch to split, our usual method, but the waitress said no, you can't do that.  OK, we decided to order two of the "mini" versions.

Well, the reason you can't split an order is that "rodízio" means that the waiters with spits full of meat fly around the restaurant, serving the patrons direct from the skewers, which came straight from the fire.  It's kind of a big communal grilled meal.  Waitresses come around regularly with huge bowls of rice, beans, and shredded greens (kale? collard?).  You're done when you tell them all to stop, so its an all-you-can-eat affair.  It was quite a delicious (and filling) surprise.

On the return trip we saw and smelled three different wildfires in the area.  Today, Monday, there was a bit of smoke in the air in the morning before we left but now, within two hours, it is so thick the apartments a half block away look like they're swimming in murk.  The air is full of stinging smoke and haze.  It looks like wildfires up the Douro river are sending their smoke down the river valley to Porto and Gaia.

This morning we headed south to Espinho for the famous Monday market, before the smoke started building.  There was a lot of traffic on the way, and Gerrit was grumbling that this market thing seemed to be like Kim Kardashian, famous for being famous.  Well, that was wrong!  This market is indeed a unique and amazing attraction, covering acres and offering thousands of goods for sale.  About a third of it at the north end is fresh vegetables, meats, and fish, and the rest is clothing, shoes, household goods, farm implements, fabrics, houseplants, cages of live birds, and on and on.  

We got a lucky parking spot on the street a little north of the food portion of the market, wandered most of the market, and shopped for some fresh groceries just before leaving.  When we got back home we had a delicious lunch of dark bread and ham sandwiches, a tomato and cucumber salad, and melon, all fresh from the market.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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