4th of July Musings

We’ve been here nearly a month now and we figured we should take a bit of time to let you know how it’s going.  This week, probably thanks to all the effort we’ve put into the first three weeks, was incredibly productive.  So join us to find out what, exactly we did this week, and enjoy some of the images we pulled our phones out for as we ran around town.  

As these blog posts have been lately, this one consists of a bunch of not-so-random musings about getting adjusted.  There really is no story to tell, and this post, in particular does not adhere to any particular time-line.  Plus, there’s the fact that I’m losing all sense of time trying to get stuff done.  So let’s start.

Braga has a dragon.

We discovered that fact one day on our way to one of our destinations.  I think I’ll have to return when the light is better and take a real portrait of this fellow.  He was quite the pleasant surprise.

You all know by now that we bought a car this week.  I’m finally getting a feel for the car - both the plusses and the few minuses reviewers had about the car - but I must admit that it has a lot of features the Honda didn’t have.  It’s amazing how advanced cars can get after 13 years (cough, cough).  I don’t know whether this is a comment on how well I’ve adapted to the Peugeot, or to driving in Portugal in general, but yesterday Ann said, “Dan, you drive like one of them now!”  She then mumbled something or other about how she’s glad she isn’t the one driving . . . .  On greater reflection, it was probably a comment on my driving.  Oh well . . . .

Anyway, we also got a couch!  Hopefully a more targeted post will come soon, centered around the couch, but for now let’s just say - we now have a place to kick back and relax!

But that’s not all the shopping that we did this week.  No, a couch and a car were not enough (I’m sure the neighbors can see the euros flying out our windows).  Remember that trip down to Porto to buy a bed - our bed arrived this week too!  No more air mattress!!!!!!  That first night I wasn’t too sure whether I picked the right bed (I was the one who wound up deciding because I’m the one who has more problems with beds, and my dilemma was that one felt better on my side, the other on my back - I went with the better on my side mattress).  Well, if how well and, more importantly how long we’ve both slept the past two nights is any indication, I made the right choice.  We’re going to have to start setting our alarm clocks.

But that’s not all! (said like the fellow who voiced-over the Ginsu knife commercials).  Given it was the Fourth of July yesterday, we took advantage of the 4th of July sales . . . ok, they weren’t 4th of July sales, but they were sales nonetheless, to buy a couple of pieces of furniture that were on huge discounts and . . . a tv.  The TV is now on our living room floor.  The furniture (a media console, a coffee table, and two night stands) will arrive in about a month.  And then that’s pretty much our home until our household goods arrive.

Which also, quite surprisingly, happened this week as well.  I had to provide some more details about the contents and make-up of particular boxes (thank goodness I packed them).  Then, all of a sudden, the folks doing the customs paperwork said, “Ok, we’re good to go.”  We went to bed with an e-mail inquiring whether the place where we’re storing our goods would be ready to load the shipping container on Monday.  We woke up to a notice and e-mail communications that pick up would be that morning at 7:00 Pacific time.  That afternoon (our time), I chatted with Emerald Moving and Storage, and everything went well.  Our goods are heading to port (probably Seattle).  We’ll find out the shipping details on Monday I suspect.  

Quite the week, wasn’t it!

Fortunately for us, taking care of the smaller details of our business often required us to head into town, where we took full advantage of the walkable nature of Braga.  Once you go into town and find a parking spot, there’s no reason not to stay for a bit and do something like lunch, or coffee, or some shopping.  And the walking from points A to B can be really interesting (see dragon above, or gate below). 

Previously we’d walked by a “decorations” store that had caught our eye, in large part, because they advertised Alessi products.  Anyone who has seen our cool, open-by-lifting-the-handle stovetop espresso pots has seen an Alessi product.  They’re an Italian company that places a premium on great design.  After getting a couple of things at that shop, we asked the shop owner for a recommendation for lunch (because who knows better than the locals?).  She directed us to Ignácio, a restaurant “On the square just outside the gate to the city.”  As she described it, the first three restaurants on the left of the square make “real Portuguese food.”  

Well, Ignácio definitely looked it . . .

. . . and tasted it.

We’d arrived a bit early for lunch (12:45 - yes, we’re still getting used to “Portuguese meal times”), and was able to have a nice chat with our waiter about a number of things.

Side point - it happened at Ignácio as well as a few times here in Braga and in Porto in January, and I’m not sure whether to take it as a compliment, though I do.  Simply put, we are not readily identifiable as Americans (unless I’m wearing my Snow Canyon baseball cap).  On multiple occasions we’ve been asked if we are French.  Our waiter mentioned he wondered when I said something in Portuguese to Ann (one of the menu items) as we were reading the menu outside.  So while we’re immediately identified as foreigners, we’re not labeled as Americans.  Like I said, I don’t know if that’s good or bad.  Then again, everything changes once we tell them we live in Braga.   

As we make our various trips into town, especially if we need to go into the old city, we try not to go from point A to B and back following the same routes.  That’s allowed us the opportunity to explore some of the other areas of town.  Especially the narrow inter-connecting “streets” between major commercial strips in town.  

Given until recently we didn’t have much furniture, most of our time was spent in the kitchen and dinette areas.  Plus that’s where the coffee-making stuff is.  Thus we spend a lot of time just looking out onto the street (getting to know many of our neighbors by sight if nothing else).  The other evening I noticed the moon rising over the house across the street.  It’s a really lovely designed house (very interesting from Google Earth).  “Moonrise Over Braga” it isn’t, but at least my eye still wants to make the best images it can. 

While we really have not had the opportunity to truly go exploring (Braga nonetheless Portugal), it doesn’t mean we have not made a number of wonderful discoveries (like the Alessi store and the restaurant).  This week included another discovery that really will payoff in the long-run.  We found our local Jerry’s (for those of you not from the Eugene-Springfield area, think Lowe’s or Home Depot), except this one is called Leroy’s.  Ok, it’s actually Leroy Merlin, but to us it’s Leroy’s!  Finally, a store we can just walk through and think about what we need.  And like those stores, this one pretty much as everything - kitchen goods, gardening supplies and tools, tools, tools!

Now all I need to find is an equivalent auto supply shop!

Another step towards this place becoming home is reintroducing a sense of normalcy to everyday life.  Cooking your own food most of the time helps that (which is why we’ve set up the kitchen to be a functional place so quickly).  So does daily activities like taking walks.  We started pretty-much daily walks a few days ago after Ann’s new tennis shoes arrived and I nabbed a pair (again, on sale) at the local sports store.  So what if they’re blue!  They kind of go with the granite-bock roads that make up most of the older roads throughout Braga (to include the one in front of our house).  It’s not quite cobble stone, but thank goodness for that.  It’s much easier to walk on, though not necessarily easy.

On the fourth we decided to take a longer walk, tracking past part of our first walk (to get the name of a cafe that’s only about half-a mile away - on roughly a level walking route;  the daily lunch special at 6 € might become a staple for us).  But then we hit a fork in the road, and while we went right on our first walk, we decided to follow the arrows. 

As I’ve mentioned before, we live in the hills south of old city Braga.  We live in a neighborhood called Fraião - locals know exactly where we’re talking about, folks in Porto don’t.  Anyway, we’ve seen signs that it used to be its own little town, to include walking past some ruins that look to be old fortified walls.  If you look to the north, we can see that the old city is actually up on a hill - for defensive purposes I’m sure.  

We started descending through a neighborhood called Lamaçães, which is much more intimate than some of the newer developed areas right by us.  Here there were plant covered walls with some lovely flowers, with the scent of jasmine by multiple houses.

Generally the streets were narrow (all stone of course) and the vegetation around the houses offered privacy to their residents.

At one point we passed the community water fountain (no longer in use, with the warning that the water was not drinkable).  And then we ran into, not the first, but the second community laundry spots.  Yes, those are washboards in the foreground.  While the water is still running, I doubt many people actually do their laundry there anymore.  

Lamaçães is really a mix of the old and the new.  You have old laundromats and stone walls adjacent to new, modern houses, surrounded by older, more traditional houses (one house we couldn’t tell whether the new was added to the old, or whether they were two separate residences - the garage to the old place, and it’s multiple nice cars made us think it was an addition). 

And as these walks do, every once in a while you get a broader view of things.  This whole area consists of residential areas interspersed by small vineyards and fields (probably slowly being taken over by residences).  Every once in a while you’ll see a gap in a set of row houses, with a fenced in garden with fruit and olive trees and other vegetables growing where a house should be.  

In the photograph above, we live in the area to the very left up on the hill.  

By that point we were heading downhill and eventually came to a main road we were familiar with, in-between Leroy’s and the closest bank branch (where I’ve spent a lot of time this past week getting our financial affairs in order, and auto insurance for the new car).

So we made our way back on the nondescript main shopping drag, then turned off to take the back way home.  And when your morning walk takes you downhill, well, eventually you have to walk back uphill.

Now, this was the first way I learned how to get from our house to . . . Staples, Media Market, Continente, Lidl’s, you name it.  And while it was fun in the rental car (really, I only had about 3 close calls with cars on this strip), there’s no way we’re driving the Peugeot down this road!  It will just have to stay part of our walking routes.  It does, however, offer a good view of some of the near-by area.

And once you get up to the area near our house, you walk past another one of those fields that I hope stay around for awhile. 

Ultimately, it was a great morning for a Fourth of July walk.

As an aside, because Ann keeps saying it, in Portugal, a cão (pronounced roughly “cow”) goes “woof.”  So while on our walks (or drives) when Ann says, “Oh look, a cow . . .”  I don’t know whether she means a cão or a cow.  Usually it’s a cão, but once it was a cow.  Just one of the little perplexities of life in Portugal.  

A couple of more things happened earlier this week that made me realize that, despite the fact that I’m lost in my Portuguese, this is now home and I’m not at a total loss about how things get done.  One day I found a “Could not deliver” note in the mailbox and, instead of waiting till the next day, I tracked down the name listed as where it would be (still trying to figure out Portuguese handwriting - but my guess showed a CTT [post office] with that name) Ann stayed home to work on some technical stuff and I drove into town to pick it up.  After apologizing that I do not speak Portuguese and the postman telling me he didn’t speak English, we just went about our business and I picked up the nice sheets Ann had ordered!  Then, a couple of days after buying the car, I decided we needed to get a Via Verde transponder for the car (most nice highways are toll roads, and with a Via Verde transponder you don’t have to pay at the time of using the road, they automatically deduct your monthly amount).  Again, another trip into town and, again, another Portuguese line (the patience I developed with Brandon and Kit as kids is finally paying off [note the wearing of masks, and social distancing]).

Fortunately, this time, while the clerk did not speak English, the front door person (who had screened me to make sure I had all the proper documentation) did, and he helped in the transaction and the selection of several options for my device.  Like everyone we’ve done business with here in Portugal, everyone has been kind and patient with our lack of speaking Portuguese.  We truly do feel welcome here.  Even if they are at times perplexed about why we would leave the US for Portugal.

And we still get lovely sunsets from our windows at night.

Though this week I suspect we’ll not be gazing much at sunsets this coming week given a heat wave is supposed to arrive today and we’ll be shuttering things (and running the in-room ac) to keep from melting.