On the road again
Goin’ places that I’ve never been
Seein’ things that I may never see again
And I can’t wait to get on the road again

Perhaps the best part about this new journey is that we have wi-fi again! Woo hoo! While we love our new place, and even more the generosity and kindness of our attorney in letting us use it, it’s sure amazing how quickly our lives have become dependent on good internet access. Of course that also means it’s once again a lot easier to post pictures on the blog (you can take that as a “Reader Warning! Lots of pictures below again!”) We used my iPhone as a hotspot for a while, but not only is that slow and intermittent, we went through our minutes faster than Trump goes through hairspray. Plus I can’t use my computer to do it, which puts a serious bummer on my blogging, dude.

And so, without further ado, here are two batches of pix, one from a trip to Nazaré, and the other to Albufeira in the Algarve, which is where we are right now.

Nazaré is world-renown for surfing waves that are totally righteous. In fact, world record-setting. In November 2011, Hawaiian surfer Garrett McNamara surfed a wave that was 78 feet from trough to crest. There have been a couple of surfed waves that may even be bigger than that since then. So we set out on a hour-and-a-half drive to see if we could rock a tube. Or at least see a big wave or something.

If you don’t believe how big those waves can get at this spot, just click here for a radical video. And yeah, that’s right where we were. We just have to come back in November or so to catch that surf. And we will, by God. That’s something we really want to see.

Next up– a trip to Algarve! Algarve is a big tourist destination in the summer, especially for the Brits. Even in the off-season, as we wandered around town we heard more British accents than the time we were in London. Well, maybe not, but after hearing nothing but Portuguese, it was noticeable. I did get a kick out of a musician singing Neil Diamond and other American and British pop songs in a restaurant. Why do people want tastes of home when they’re traveling in another country? We’re glad we didn’t consider moving to Algarve permanently.

You know you’re retired when your idea of fun is to try on different sunglasses and laugh at each other and take pictures. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is what retirement is like.

As a final flush– er, close to the blog, I just have this one question. What in the world is this bidet-thing used for? I mean, I’ve used a bidet. In Japan, they have sophisticated toilet seats with controls that rival an airplane cockpit. They make you want to sit there for hours, just luxuriating in the, well, we can leave the rest to your imagination.

I was going to joke about all the bidets here in Portugal by asking what we’re supposed to do with these feet washers. Now I wonder if that’s really what they are. The faucets only point down, so if they’re supposed to wash your nether regions, well, let’s just say no one could ever unsee what they saw if someone were actually washing their nethers with that faucet.

Since we’re pretty sure no one has ever used it, we’re using it as an ice bucket. Cheers!

 

That is, we’ve been evicted if your definition of “evicted” is “when your previously agreed-upon move-out date has arrived.”

The really cool part about this particular move is that we have moved into a very nice apartment owned by our attorney. She wasn’t using it, and so offered it up while we await for our properties to close. This is but one of many kindnesses we have seen or been the recipient of from the Portuguese in general; whether strangers or friends. People are people, so it’s not like everyone in Portugal is dancing around throwing daisies at everyone while kissing them on the cheek (although they do do that here. That’s the standard greeting between females and everyone else (Men just shake hands with each other, thank God.). The standard greet and good-bye is air kiss-air kiss-both cheeks touch. It’s really kind of sweet. After I got over my initial American-bred discomfort with the practice, I’ve approached it with gusto. I did have to be reprimanded a couple of times though: “No tongue! No tongue!” Also, grocery store checkout clerks and cops aren’t particularly appreciative of the greeting.

 

The only downside to this apartment is that it has no internet or TV. I can get on the internet with my phone and iPad, but it makes handling pictures a little cumbersome. So, for the next month or so the blog may not be as bloggy, or as picture-full, as it has been. Which I know will disappoint all of our fans, most of whom have been pestering us with emails, and I quote: “Enough with the pictures already, I want to read more words!” And “You’re only blogging every couple of days, could you please try to make it a couple of times a day?” And “I’ve reread the entire thing from top to bottom four times now, going all the way back to your first visit to Europe, and I found a couple of typos. Can you fix them please?”

To all of you lovely fans, including those of you who were thinking all of the above but simply neglected to send the email, I say, “hey, I don’t want to walk out of this apartment to a hoarde of reporters and papparazzi, which will interrupt and complicate our sightseeing, so you’ll get what you get, and be happy with that. There’s always some John Steinway or Earnest Hemingbeck to read instead, y’know? Better yet, I heard something about this Shakespeare fella, apparently he’s an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more. Try him.”

In the meantime, we have made an offer and had it accepted on an apartment in the Alfama district. It’s a small one in a very old building, which is what the Alfama is all about. It is a tourist hotspot within Lisbon. We hope to close in a week or two, after which we’ll be scrambling to furnish it so we can stay there until we can move into our home on April 1st or thereabouts.

So yeah, if you’re wondering if we should “get a job,” somehow we’re staying plenty damn busy. We’ve been living out of suitcases for so long we can’t wait to get into our house. But with everything going so well and then some, we’re sure not going to complain about anything.

This entry might be a little mundane for those preferring pictures of the beautiful scenery of Portugal. But for some reason, the differences between the US and Portugal (or any other advanced country) fascinate me. Sometimes the differences are minor and inconsequential, but sometimes they’re a slap-on-the-forehead-why-don’t-we-learn-from-the-other-country kinds of issues (in both directions).

Since the process of buying a car is not all that consequential (despite the fact that it is usually one of the most expensive things most of us ever buy), the differences noted below aren’t really head slappers. I just find them interesting.

When we began our search, it was a bit confusing. In the US, you have rows and rows of new and used cars on all sorts of dealer lots. Just drive to “car dealer row,” and you can meander through thousands of choices. Test drive one, decide you like it, negotiate, and off you go.

In the Lisbon area, there are plenty of car dealers, but none of the new dealers we could see had lots filled with cars: just shiny showrooms with new cars on display (without any price stickers or anything else on the car windows). Just outside of Lisbon we passed by some used car dealerships that were clearly on the low-end side of things. We didn’t feel inclined to shop in those dealerships; I’m guessing our experience would have been more similar to used car buying in the US than it turned out to be in Portugal.

Otherwise, it was difficult to find used car websites that gave you any idea what to do from there, especially with them being clumsily translated by Google into english. So we decided to simply drive to a dealership on a Saturday to see what’s what. Lo and behold, they were all closed! Yep, car dealerships here are closed on weekends. Those are surely the busiest days of the week in the US… and Portuguese dealerships are closed. To which I say, “hurrah!” for the Portuguese. They put family time ahead of making a buck. And as long as everyone’s doing the same thing, no one misses out on any bucks at all, because surely no fewer cars are sold, they’re just all sold during the week, and all the employees get their weekends.

Of course, that’s something that can never change in the US, because it would not only involve a bunch of collusion between all the dealers, but a vast cultural change as well.

Our friend Erika steered us to a company called Santogal. Again, we looked at their website, but that really didn’t help us. So we ventured out once more (not on a weekend- see: we’re learning!) to find the dealership. It turns out that Santogal, as I understand it, is basically a company that networks all the top dealers in the area. And so ultimately, you sit down with a salesperson who works through the website with you, once he finds out what you’re looking for. And that’s simply how you find your car.

We were assisted by a gentleman named Pedro, who not only spoke excellent english, but he was a delightful, friendly, unassuming man. The only salesmanship he exuded was being helpful and friendly. He was about as far away from the “What can I do to put you into a car today?” schtick as Donald Trump is from being a scientist (even if you’re a fan of his, you have to admit he’s no scientist).

Pedro showed us all the VW Golfs and Polos that were available in our price range. Since I had never been in a Polo, he found one on the lot (as far as I could tell, none of the ones on the lot were quite for sale; maybe they were in the midst of being processed. In any case, it was apparent you wouldn’t point to one on the lot and ask how much it was). Once we were comfortable with the feel of the Polo, we went inside, perused through all the options, and found one to our liking.

(By the way, I typically prefer Japanese-made cars because of their reliability and quality of construction, but in Europe, Japanese cars are not only a fair amount more expensive, but getting parts and service is much more problematic. So German, French, and Italian cars tend to dominate the landscape.)

As to the deal, there was no negotiation: they listed the price and that’s it. I tried a little bit, but I believed him when he said they simply don’t do that. I confirmed this fact with Erika, and ultimately was happy for it. The other option was of course to try and buy one from an individual, but due to the language barriers and our newness to the culture and so on, we decided that wouldn’t be the best idea. Besides, you really have no idea what you’re getting, unless you take it do a mechanic and go through all that rigmarole.

So we now wanted to see the car in person. He said he’d have it delivered and we could come back in a few days to test drive it. Once it was in, I went back to the dealership, test drove it, found it to be perfectly great, and was ready to drive it off the lot.

Hold on there big fella! We don’t work that way in Portugal! It was a Tuesday, and I’d hoped to be able to pick it up by Friday because that’s when our rental car was due back. He said that should be okay, but what he thought I meant was a week from the upcoming Friday; in other words about ten days out. Once we cleared up our miscommunication, I expressed surprise that it would take so long.

He told me they had to service it, and he showed me some little dings here and there that they’d want to touch up and so on, and that it would take at least over a week to get all that done. Yes, they even provided touch up paint on the little dings a two-year-old car will always have. I couldn’t have cared less about them, but they wanted the car to look brand spanking new.

I couldn’t object too strenuously because after all, they were going to do good things to the car. It did mean that I had to rent a car for another week; but renting a car here is crazy cheap… about $5 a day (before taxes) gets you a nice little four door just like the Polo.

When the day arrived to pick it up, he told me it wouldn’t be ready until about 5:00. They had to download some additional software updates and make the final delivery to the dealership. I wanted to return the rental car to the airport by noon to avoid extra fees. When I told him that he said he’d be happy to come pick us up when the car was ready.

As it turned out, he was able to pick us up before 3:00, so all we had to “suffer” through was a leisurely lunch at the airport and about a half hour of reading.

The car was beautifully detailed and looked as good as new. They even replaced the license plates even though the car was less than two years old, because the new ones they’re using now look so much nicer. Hard to beat that attention to detail!

Santogal also provides a one year warranty on the car, which includes pick-up if there’s a problem as well as a replacement car for 48 hours. Even for a flat tire.

I noted with interest that the displayed price was actually calculated with a 23% tax included. That’s a hefty tax; I’m glad it wasn’t added in afterwards, I might’ve really suffered some sticker shock. I don’t begrudge Portugal their taxes, however. I did a search on tax burden by country, and Portugal wasn’t even on the list of the top 27. (Neighboring Spain was 19th on the list, while the worst was Argentina followed by Bolivia. Of course, this was a report on business taxes, but hey, I can only do so much research for a stupid blog only you’re reading (prove that anyone else is!). While we’re at it, however, the lowest tax rates belong to Macedonia, followed by Qatar. Neither the US or Portugal were on either list, so I guess they’re both somewhere in the middle.)

In the end, I was absolutely delighted with the process, the service, the warranty, the deal, the salesman, and of course the car. Santogal clearly dominates the used car landscape here, but the service they provide at reasonable prices clearly demonstrates that you don’t need 50 competitors to give consumers the best prices and services. I’d take the Santogal experience any day over every single car buying experience I’ve ever had prior to this.

Sintra is a beautiful town about 30-40 minutes outside of Lisbon, and is a must-see during any visit to the Lisbon area. A bit of trivia we learned from our expert guides is that Sintra used to be spelled Cintra. I don’t know why they changed it. Maybe the Portuguese got tired of the high C’s. Doh! (I like to put bad puns like that in writing because I usually get punched when I say them out loud).  Hopefully they won’t change too many more spellings as we go along, because Portuguese is a difficult enough language to learn as it is! We’ve begun our tutoring, and can now mispronounce a couple more words!

Our realtor and good friend Marta enlisted the aid of her sister Cati and her husband Tom, who live in Sintra, to give us a guided tour of the iconic Pena Palace and the spooky-looking Quinta da Regaleira estate. Sintra is known for its many 19th-century Romantic architectural monuments, resulting in its classification as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so we jumped at the opportunity to see the area while guided by very knowledgeable people. We enjoyed a full day of walking and picture taking, but still didn’t see nearly everything Sintra has to offer. We shall return!

 

 

In the meantime, here are some of the shots we captured:

 

And now, twelve separate scenic views gleaned from our visit. Much more impressive in person. I would never grow tired of seeing views like this. Must’ve been great to be king!

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Our estimation of the good nature of the Portuguese has come crashing to the ground. We assumed the “no party” clause in our rental agreement meant no political party. I mean, given the turmoil and chaos in the US right now, that was a natural assumption as to what they meant, right?

But no-o-o. Apparently it means you cannot throw a “festa” and hire a rock & roll band to play in your room all night (with the speaker volume turned to eleven, of course).

Maybe a Fado singer would have passed muster? (Fado is sort of the national music of Portugal, known for its emotional and mournful tone.)

Or perhaps the sound of lit firecrackers plummeting down the stairwells at 4:00 AM was just a bit too much. But I did think it odd they complained about chairs being thrown through the sixth-floor window despite the fact that it improved the air flow in the apartment immeasurably. Those are pretty standard party shenanigans, right? Talk about a clash of cultures! Besides, hardly anyone was seriously injured!

Actually, we blame everything on the cereal we’ve been eating. We knew the Portuguese had (very wisely) decriminalized basically all drugs. Not legalized, mind you, they simply took away the idea that people who want or need to get high should be thrown in disgusting prisons so they can learn better how to steal in order to feed their habit. Instead, they put them into treatment. The result? Crime and addiction have plummeted. Whether you agree with the concept of decriminalization or not, you cannot argue with results. Why the US, for example, refuses to learn from other countries totally mystifies me. Still, this cereal seemed a little over the top; we just can’t remember what happened after we ate our third bowl. Our first treatments begin in April.

So, after finding ourselves thrown out on our ears, we hurriedly got on Airbnb to find another apartment. The new one happens to be right around the area where we’re looking for a rental property to buy, so now we can avoid paying the 1.35 euro freeway toll we had to fork over every time we drove from Cascais to Lisbon. Just to be safe, we tossed out the Golden Crack (or maybe just finished up the box, we can’t remember), and bought some coke instead. Coke Zero anyway.

(Carolyn, my sweetheart of a proof-reader, contributor, and companion was worried that people might believe we actually had a party like that and so asked for a disclaimer. The truth is, we are wanting to move rental locations every now and again just to experience life in different parts of the city. This new one is right near the “Alfama” district, which is famous for its old buildings and is quite a touristy part of town. So there. Besides, we only know three people here. The parties won’t happen for a couple of more months yet.)

Here are some of the recent pictures we’ve accumulated:

 

 

Street artists create impressive sand art, hoping for a few euros to be put into a hat. If things get tight here, that’s our next gig.

Here are some random pictures we’ve taken recently. It seems that everywhere you go in Portugal, there’s something beautiful or amazing to see. We are so incredibly fortunate to be able to live in a place with so much beauty!

 

One of the reasons we made this move to Portugal was so that in our retirement we could see and experience things we never could on a regular basis, if at all, had we stayed home.

So when I saw the below link on Facebook, I eagerly clicked on it, ready to catalog some of its featured destinations for a future trip. Lo and behold, the second one on their list was in Portugal! I searched the town name of Óbidos in Google Maps, and discovered it was only an hour away from us!

In fact, the very first place they listed was in Salamanca, Spain, which is about a five hour drive away and certainly doable as well, although we’d probably want to spend the night instead of making it just a day trip. I think that will be next on our list!

Anyway, this day seemed like a good day for a Sunday drive, seeing as how it was Sunday and, well, Sunday drives are best when they’re done on the day they’re named after. If we tried a Sunday drive on Monday, I’m sure the Portuguese would really think we’re weird, and throw metric-measured tomatoes at us as they passed us by on the freeways.

So we hopped into the car and input the city name in our Waze app in order to listen to the dulcet tones of one of the Top Gear guys guiding us to our destination. By the way, Waze is a much better app for driving directions than either Google Maps or Apple’s Maps. Plus the Waze voice says funny things –sounding all the more amusing in their chipper British accent– such as: “Make a U-Turn, which means turning your car around in the completely opposite direction,” and “Congratulations! You have now reached your destination! Although, to be honest, I did most of the work.”

The town of Óbidos is located on a hilltop, and is encircled by a fortified wall from medieval times. We immediately hearkened back to our vacation last year when we delighted in seeing castles of all sorts throughout Ireland and London. We like castles!

So here follows a bunch of pictures we took while wandering about. To be honest, the cobblestone streets were not as much out of a fairy tale as we’d hoped. I think TripAdvisor oversold the fairy tale aspects of the town, and I’d certainly never want to stay in a hotel there just to be inside an area that can all be viewed in a couple of hours. Still, due to the castle itself, and the rest of it certainly being charming, we enjoyed ourselves immensely. We hope you do too:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to Marta, our real estate agent, most of the time when Portuguese are looking for a home, they look at three or four properties before deciding to buy.

We increased her average by a substantial amount.

However, it proved to be a worthwhile endeavor because the wide net we cast resulted in reeling in a home we absolutely fell in love with. It’s about fifteen minutes from downtown Sesimbra, fifteen minutes from some beautiful beaches, including Praia da Foz, which may actually be where the Fonz “jumped the shark” in his leather jacket, I dunno.

It’s also twenty minutes from the Cabo Espichel Lighthouse, which we showed pictures of in a previous post, 45 minutes from the airport, and a little under 14 hours as the crow flies from Portland. It’s in the “country,” but we have neighbors (although not very many), and all the services we need are within a fifteen minute drive. We won’t be able to take possession for a couple of months, but we’re excited!

The house and property actually reminds me a little bit of our home in Wilsonville, albeit smaller and half the cost. It has three bedrooms downstairs, his and hers bathrooms (they are outside of the master bedroom, which doesn’t bother us in the least), and a house-long upstairs that’ll serve as the man-attic, plus room to hide a few refugees.

Next on the agenda: we have to find an apartment to use as a rental somewhere in Lisbon. Now that we have our main home in our pocket, we know exactly what we have to spend for the second place, and of course our realtor Marta is getting to know what we like very well!

 

Yup, this is all we did today: took a number and waited. Long story short, we spent all day obtaining our NIF (Portuguese tax ID) and Portuguese bank account. That’s it.

We’re closing in on it! We don’t want to jinx anything by saying something too soon, but suffice it to say we definitely can see ourselves living someplace in Portugal, and we think the final choice will happen soon.

So far, everything has gone according to plan. We always have backup plans and backup plans for the backup plans, and plans to make backup plans for the backup plans for… well, you get the idea. But so far, we haven’t had to back up anywhere. Except into the street from the street-side parking at the Airbnb apartment we’re staying at, where you have to back up into the street without being able to see whoever might be coming. You grit your teeth, and back up slowly, hoping you won’t hear a blaring honk followed by a loud crunch. So far, so good.

Today we ended up back in Sesimbra (detecting a theme here?). Mostly these are pictures of some of what we have experienced during the last couple of days. Yay! Limited writing for the reading impaired!

This is outside the main train station in Lisbon. I keep wondering why these elaborate statues are never erected on new buildings, in the U.S., for instance. They’re very cool, and I would have to think easier to make today than whenever they were crafted before. Of course, maybe I shouldn’t be giving Trump any ideas.

This is the view from our current apartment. The blue skies finally gave way to some January rain, which was needed. So we don’t mind, as long as it doesn’t last for too long. We brought just enough of Oregon along with us already, thank you.

This is a rooftop pool on top of a condo building with a view toward the hills in Sesimbra. We’ve decided the apartment/condo life isn’t for us, but we still had some of these properties on the appointment list. They’re nice, and feature awesome views, but it’s just not a lifestyle either of us have ever practiced, just like Buddhism or Plushophilia.

More views from the Sesimbra condos. We were sorely tempted because I don’t think we’d ever get tired of the views, but a house is the home for us.

Carolyn walking through one of the condos.

Here’s another set of condos outside the downtown/cliff area of Sesimbra. They’re new, and look nice, with a great view toward Lisbon. We got a kick out of our Portuguese real estate agent, who is a real sweetheart but whose English is at about 90%. She kept calling these places “condoms.” As a result, we preferred looking at new ones.

We stopped for lunch at a fresh fish restaurant. Caught right off the pier across the street. Portuguese cuisine is really growing on us (and might just make us grow horizontally as well), although I like fish better than Carolyn.

Carolyn demands action from our “transition helper” (I’m not sure what title she would pick, but that’s what she’s doing for us). Her name is Erika and she has been invaluable with helping us navigate the move. While she’s only spent a few weeks of her life traveling in the U.S., her English is near-perfect, and her understanding of our idioms and cultural stuff is spot on. She even gets all of my bad jokes!

This is a view of three directions while standing in the same place in downtown Sesimbra.

About five or ten minutes from one house we really like stands this lighthouse, and beyond it, the Atlantic ocean.  We’re jazzed about the idea of living just minutes from some awesome beaches while still only being about 45 minutes away from an international airport!

This is Cabo Espichel, which is right near the lighthouse. We didn’t go over there because it was raining too hard and, well, we plan on living near here so we’d rather go over during a sunny day. It was still worth a shot from under the umbrella.

Also nearby are some dinosaur fossil tracks. We didn’t get out to see them due to the rain, but I’ll be jazzed to take a look. It is said that local superstition interpreted the trackways as the path taken by the Virgin Mary when riding a giant mule from the ocean and up the cliffs, which led to the eventual construction of a convent there. A giant mule, huh? And what what she doing in Portugal? People are so funny…

Ain’t no giant mule here. Maybe an ass or something, but no mule.

We stopped at a store in Sesimbra. Prices are even better than in Lisbon. That’s 19 cents (100 cents make a Euro, which is close enough to even to a dollar that we just figure it’s about the same) for a container of salt. And those 79 cent price tags? For wine. Okay, it’s boxed wine, but the bottled versions can be had for less than a euro more.

I’d typpue somme tmore but thatt winne is prettyy gud!  %lk