Oh, how many years have we dreamt of the day when we could close on a tiny apartment in a 200 year-old building so we could charge hapless tourists 150 euros a day for the privilege of spending sleepless nights listening to cats yowling, fellow tourists barfing in the street (or maybe it’s the other way around), and having their arms torn out of their sockets by cars speeding down tiny streets slightly too narrow for motorcycles.

Yes, it’s the Portuguese-ian dream. And it has come true for us on this very day!

All kidding aside (well okay, never for long), we closed on our Alfama apartment today! Of course, since Murphy’s Law is an international law, when I carried my bride over the threshold (see, I told you the kidding wouldn’t stay aside for long), and we inspected our new home away from home for hundreds of sucker– er, tourists, we quickly discovered a water leak that threatened to turn the front staircase into a waterfall.

It seems that they forgot that tightening the washers on a water heater provides excellent assistance in preventing the actual water from moving into places other than inside the pipes.

But, we decided to make lemonade out of the lemons, and so I rushed out to purchase some fish to stock up the lake that was now the apartment. I thought, “Fishing right in the Alfama!” would make a great marketing campaign. Unfortunately, to my dismay, I discovered that the fish in the seafood sections of the grocery stores are all dead. They looked so alive every time I scurried by while holding my nose against the noxious odors.

So with that marketing dream down the drain, we contacted the seller to complain of the problem, and he hustled right over with his handyman and they fixed ‘er right up. Just one of those simple oversights. All is well, and it’s back to being our nice little place.

It’s a small apartment, as they all are in Alfarma, a little under 500 sq. feet in size. But it’s right in the middle of a very tourist-friendly area, literally just steps from the “Panteon,” which is something every Alfarmasist will want to see upon visiting.

So there you have it! It won’t be available for rent for a couple of weeks since we have to stock it with furniture, dishes, a bed, a couch, etc., as well as of course a shredder with a sign above it that says, “Insert your comments and suggestions here.”

Next up, our house in Sesimbra closes on March 31st. April Fool’s Day will be a great day to move into our new home! And that’s no joke.

Just 30 minutes outside of Seville is a sleepy little town called Italica. Roman history buffs may find it interesting to note that it is also the birthplace of Roman Emperors Trajan and Hadrian. It was founded in 206 BC.

Carolyn and I founded it in 2017.

There is no entrance fee nor is there a lot of information (and none in English) about the place once you’re in. Still, it’s fascinating just to walk as you will throughout a reasonably well-preserved Roman town.

Like some other places we’ve seen so far, the amphitheater, which is very impressive and reminded me of a smaller version of the Coliseum in Rome, was used during the filming of some episodes of Game of Thrones.

So here are a bunch of pictures… you can wander through them like we did the town! (Click on the ones you like to expand ’em.)

And this, dear reader(s)… (the “(s)” is just in case, there might be more than one of you), will be our last blog for a little while because we’re headed back to Bobadela and our spacious and nearly perfect apartment with the slight blemish of having no internet. As it turns out, I burned up all sorts of minutes by playing music through the iPhone as we drove here, so I probably won’t look at much on the phone either. I wish there was some sort of meter that showed up in the background telling you when you’re using minutes, because we had no idea we were burning up minutes faster than a pyromaniac in hell. Apple puts in these great technologies like “music from the cloud” but neglects to tell you that you’ll spend $50 on one road trip listening to them. Now we’re going to force ourselves to love the sound of rubber on pavement during our four hour drive home.

At any rate, we went back down into the heart of Seville, where the three main things to see are the streets and charm of old town, the Real Alcazar (as opposed to the pretend one), and the Seville Cathedral.

Here is the best of the 4,302 pictures we took today (give or take three or four thousand):

Next up was the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See, better known as Seville Cathedral. It is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world as well as the third-largest church in the world. It was completed in the early 16th century, not long after Christopher Columbus sailed for the new world to “find out what all those Indians were doing over there.” It’s also the place where he’s now buried, as you’ll see below.

As mentioned above, Christopher Columbus is buried in this church, or at least half of him anyway. The rest of the bones may or may not be in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Or maybe even Cuba. In any case, since one of his sons and some other relative is also buried here they were able to do a DNA test to confirm that the bones in the coffin in this cathedral is actually that of Christopher Columbus. Not that he cares anymore.

And this is the tomb. As you can imagine, Chris is a pretty popular figure around these parts. After all, if it wasn’t for him, there wouldn’t be any McDonalds or Burger Kings in the city!

The tower below is part of the cathedral. We walked all the way to the top, which I think was 143 stories or something like that. It was all via ramp, because the king who had the tower commissioned wanted to ride a donkey all the way up. We appreciated that, even though we didn’t get a donkey.

And here are the views from the top:

We also took a guided tour of The Alcázar of Seville, originally developed by Moorish Muslim kings. The palace is renowned as one of the most beautiful in Spain, being regarded as one of the most outstanding examples of mudéjar architecture (which is a combination of Islamic and Christian) found on the Iberian Peninsula. It is the oldest royal palace still in use in Europe.

Much of the grounds are dedicated to a large garden area. Pretty and peaceful, and surely a cool place to come during the heat of the summer.

That’s it! We wrapped up our day by enjoying a late lunch with Gary, a gentleman from Seattle we met on one of the tours. It was nice to chat with an American-accented voice and share our experiences. He takes a month out of each year to motorcycle around Europe. We all agreed that more Americans should get beyond the borders and experience the world!

Remember this picture from the last blog? No? Okay, well then you get an “F” in Retention (or maybe you just don’t read every word, eh? In which case, you probably missed the $1,000 reward I posted for the first person to send an email with a special code, buried in one of the blogs below, eh? And by the way, no one has emailed me yet, which means… well, um, hehe, I guess it means no one’s reading the blog very thoroughly. Oh, well. I’m doing it for our own posterity anyway.

In any case, I used this picture to illustrate where the Sagres Fortress was, at the far southwest corner of Lisbon. Well, do you notice the city of Seville off to the right? Yeah, we did too. A couple of days ago I mentioned to Carolyn, “while we’re down here maybe we should drive to Seville!” After all, exploring is sort of our job now.

So we booked a hotel for a couple of nights and drove the 144 miles from Abufeira to Seville. It’s the first time either of us has been to Spain. Now I’ll never be able to sing that Three Dog Night song again… “Well I’ve never been to Spain… but I kinda like the music…” Now I’ll have to change the words as I sing with it to: “Well I’ve never been to Croatia…” Of course, we may actually end up in Croatia sometime…  at which point I’ll really have to go all out and change the lyrics to Afghanistan or Kyrgyzstan or something.

The only thing I knew about Seville was from the title of the opera, The Barber of Seville. And that’s all I even know about that opera. I did need a haircut, so Carolyn agreed to give it a try, seeing as how I don’t present all that difficult of a challenge and all. True story: as she was cutting my hair from the back, suddenly she burst out laughing. That’s not something you want to hear when someone’s cutting your hair. I still haven’t seen the back of my head, but whatever happened, I figure it’ll grow out.

Seville has a population roughly equivalent to our hometown Portland, Oregon, except for some reason it has many more Spaniards in it than Portland does. It’s also the hottest major metropolitan city in Europe. We were tired of the chilly mid-70’s weather in Portugal anyway, so bopping over to Seville meant we got to bask in the warmth of weather in the 80’s. Yeah, we’re not complaining. We’re just glad we didn’t come in July, when the average high temperature is 97 degrees!

But it’s a beautiful city, and we thoroughly enjoyed walking around it on the first day. We ended up in old town after starting at the Plaza de España, built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition World’s Fair. Now it is mostly used as a government building. It is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive buildings we’ve seen, even if it combines multiple architectural elements and is now kind of overkill for government offices. Still, it  was also used as a location in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, so if you’re a fan of Star Wars, there’s always that. Otherwise, without further ado, and with no additional comments to speak of because all we did was walk around gawking and taking pictures, here are some pics of Seville, Spain. Hope you enjoy.

 

After traveling down to the Algarve and setting up shop in Albufeira, we set about exploring the area. Our first stop was Faro (pronounced Faru), which is Portugal’s southernmost city and has about 50,000 residents in the city itself.

 

While Faro was lovely, we didn’t find a ton of specifically interesting things to see otherwise. Additionally, I have no idea what it means when you search in TripAdvisor for “Things to Do in Faro,” and the number one ranked thing is: “Taxis and Shuttles.” Since we have Marco the VW Polo, we certainly didn’t need to engage in whatever frivolity and excitement that entails.

But we did find something called the Palacio de Estoi, which ranked number 8 (we passed up the Segway Tours and ATV off-road tours which also ranked ahead of it), and it sounded kinda cool, seeing how we like palaces and everything. When we got there, we walked in and politely asked how much it cost to enter as well as how late they were open. We were surprised to hear that it not only cost nothing to enter, but it was also open 24/7! We thought this place must be a very cool place to see if they has to be open 24/7 to accommodate all the throngs! But then we found out that it was actually a hotel. Oops. It is billed as a “small luxury hotel,” and was quite beautiful, as you can see by the below pictures.

So that was it for Faro. The next day we decided to bop over to Lagos (which we think is pronounced: Lagoosh, but we could be slightly wrong). While headed there, we thought it would be fun to first venture to the southwestern-most place in Lisbon, which is guarded by the Sagres Fortress. We ended up spending much more time there than we planned, because it was very cool. Speaking of cool… the weather wasn’t. A gorgeous mid-70’s day with nothing but sunshine. Which lead to our first sunburns. We had been meaning to protect ourselves, but didn’t realize that we’d end up in an area that would hold our fascination for so long. Oh well, goofy hats and sunscreen our now on our must-bring-everywhere list!

After enjoying ourselves immensely at the fort, we journeyed on back to Lagos, which now held a distant second place in our fascination with this part of the coast. However, as luck would have it, we found it to be an exceedingly charming town, with beautiful streets lined with lots of shops and restaurants. Probably our favorite city in Algarve so far.

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.