Catching our Breath

This week we marked one full month in São Martinho do Porto! It was also the first week where we didn’t have at least one significant administrative or logistical dragon to slay.

That’s not to say we didn’t make solid forward progress on getting dialed-in to life in Portugal. We now have 900 index cards, for making flashcards to practice Portuguese, courtesy of Amazon Germany. The index cards were successfully delivered to our back patio while we were out having lunch with friends in Nazaré, putting into question the horror stories we’ve heard about last-mile delivery challenges. We also successfully tested out the CTT locker system, called Locky, by having an air filter delivered there from Amazon Germany (I’ve been a little sneezy, which I attribute to the plethora of blooming things all around us). It’s a pretty slick system. We have the order sent to CTT’s central Locky office in Lisboa with our name and a unique code, which identifies our preferred locker location. CTT routes our package to our preferred locker location and, once the package has been deposited in the locker, sends us the unlock code for our locker. Once they send us the code we have 5 days to retrieve our package from the locker. The only limitation appears to the maximum dimensions of the biggest locker in the bank of lockers which is 64cm X 54cm X 45cm. With these two successful deliveries under our belt, we have already started keeping a running Amazon Germany cart and will be making periodic orders. Free shipping via Amazon Prime is not a thing here, so we will consolidate items in our cart and monitor the shipping cost until we find the sweet spot. On our first two Amazon Germany purchases, shipping has been in the €7.50-€10 range.

Experimenting with Amazon Germany aside, we spent this past week just taking it all in. After a year of planning (by Jill) and a flurry of move-related actions we are finally in a position to make an initial assessment of our new reality.

Spoiler alert: It’s more than a little awesome.

One of the things we are intent on is never taking for granted just how fortunate we are to be on this grand adventure. To that end, we both have fallen into the habit of marveling aloud at the nonstop highlight reel of natural beauty that is Portugal.

Our daily routine starts with a cup of coffee and our daily word games. I do Wordle, Connections, Quordle, and Octordle. Jill does all of those plus Strands. That’s usually enough to get us through a full cup of coffee. And Woody and Bulleit, who are quite serious about their morning walk on the beach, are pretty good at lettings us know if we are behind schedule. We scarf down a cup of pre-walk Greek yogurt (W&B are supportive of this minor delay because they get to lick the yogurt cups clean) and we are off!

Having never lived by the ocean, I’m enjoying learning about tides and waves. This is a great place to learn because we generally have a 2+M tidal swing twice a day. One of my favorite things to do is check the tide charts before we head out on our morning walk around the bay.

I enjoy low tide walks the most because the sand along the water still has enough moisture in it to be firm for walking on and the dogs like to zip around on the firm sand. What I have learned is that when the tide is coming in, the sand has lost enough moisture over the preceding 10-12 hours that it gives way easily underfoot and makes the walk a little more on the trudge side. Low tide walks are also the most fun for W&B because they have more previously submerged beach to snuffle.

Our morning walk all the way around the bay and home clocks in at 5+ miles and about an hour and a half. We are usually back home around 9:15 or so and we cook a proper breakfast, usually eggs, toast, and whatever fruit caught our eye at the market the last time we were there.

Woody and Bulleit are always happy to sunbathe on our patio after their long morning walk. We usually keep the sliding door to the patio open so that they can avail themselves of the warm tile.

We’ve been trying an experiment where we eat as many different types of fruits and vegetables as we can each week, which is fun because the selection at the local fresh market is pretty amazing. We are still eating meat, but thinking of meat as more of a condiment than a focus of the meal. Our local market in SMP is really good, but yesterday we went to the fresh fruit market in Caldas da Rainha, which was next level.

The Caldas market is the deep end of the pool in terms of our comfort zone interacting in Portuguese. At the popular stalls, there’s a lot of commerce being done without any apparent queueing protocol. We finally figured out we just needed to wave insistently until we caught the eye of one of the people manning the stall so they would know we were next up after they finished their current transaction. We do our best to ask for everything in Portuguese. Here is a list (in Portuguese) of all the different types of in-season produce we’ve bought so far from the various markets:

• Cenouras – Carrots
• Cebolas roxas – Red (they call them purple) onions
• Cebolas – Yellow onions
• Alfaces – Lettuce
• Couve roxa – Red cabbage
• Rabinetes – Radishes
• Coelhos – Cilantro
• Limões – Lemons
• Limas – Limes
• Melancia – Watermelon
• Tomates – Tomatoes
• Cerejas – Cherries
• Pêssegos – Peaches
• Ameixas – Plums
• Morengos – Strawberries
• Maças – Apples
• Peras – Pears
• Nectarinas – Nectarines
• Mirtilos – Blueberries
• Pepinos – Cucumbers
• Pimentos – Peppers (decidedly NOT jalapeños, but we are remedying that as fast as we can with the plants on our patio)

A thing we are getting used to here is the way various municipal services work. This week’s example is trash and recycling. There is no home bin collection like we are used to in Austin. Trash and recycling bins are placed at regular intervals along the roads. We are fortunate that ours are right outside the gate of our building and it’s easy to just walk the trash and recycling out when we are headed out with W&B. But, if you’re unlucky you may be 300+ meters from the nearest bins. We see people pulling up to bins in their cars and popping the trunk to offload recycling and trash. It all works out. The bins seem to be emptied by magic. We never see any trash trucks, but they are empty every morning.

While the bay is generally the destination for morning walks, the cliffs to the north of us are where we tend to walk in the afternoons. The variety of flora in the meadows along the cliffs is pretty breathtaking.

A thing we have discovered is that restaurants here sell 375ML bottles of wine, which is half of a 750ML bottle. Genius!

We’ve also been trying to do more restaurant scouting in SMP. There’s a Welsh pub here in SMP, called simply “The Welsh Bar”. We had two reasons to check it out:

1. They supposedly have the best fish and chips in town (Confirmed)
2. We have good friends, Gareth and Jackie, who have Welsh roots and we want them to come visit. We figured we would drop some Welsh sound bites on them from The Welsh Bar to sweeten the pot for a potential visit.

This brings me to my penultimate topic for today:

We decided to move to Portugal as a grand adventure. Additionally, I decided to try and use the move as a compelling event to focus on my overall health and well-being. Lots of exercise, getting plenty of sleep, and eating scads of fresh fruits and vegetables are right down the middle of the plate in that regard. I’m pleased to report that after one month my blood pressure, which has been borderline high even with medication for the last several years is down into the nominal range. If it stays down consistently, I’ll see how I do without blood pressure medication.

Finally, our little town is starting to gear up for summer. The beach vendor shops are popping up and the workmen are busy assembling the beach tents that people rent. Apparently the unofficial kickoff of summer every year in SMP is the Festival of St. Anthony (those of you in Texas may know him as San Antonio). They take St. Anthony seriously in these parts. He rates a 10 day festival.

We have been told to expect bedlam. Stephanie and Clara will be here for the back half of it so I’m sure we will end up in the thick of it at some point.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print from the front lines here in Portugal…

Adventure is out there!