Spoiled Americans

I usually look for the things that I see as being as good if not better than what I see in the States. However, there are times when I feel I’ve been spoiled by certain innovations or behaviors back home. So here I’ll point out some of those things I miss.

Screens on doors and windows are such an amazing invention. I can’t imagine what I’m going to do without them when we move to Europe. I guess I’ll have to do what locals do and hang up those hanging bead or string curtains. I really hate it that I can’t have all my windows and doors open to let in the fresh air without losing the view behind beads. The other day we were talking to an expat who mentioned that he leaves his windows open even when he’s gone. Not remarkable for Portugal really, but it begged the question—what about the flies? He said, “I’ve got screens on the windows.” We were amazed! He modestly admitted that he’d hand-made them.

Clothing dryers are another invention that hasn’t caught on over here. I’d say it’s an electricity usage issue, but a lot of people, like us, go to the laundromat and pay to dry their clothes. I told Joe that one of our biggest extravagances in moving here would be to purchase a dryer.

Here’s one that isn’t better or worse, just different. The hot water heater is always in the kitchen (as is the clothes washer) and it’s on-demand. So when you turn the water on hot, the heater kicks on. One thing I’m not very fond of is the exposed tubes and pipes that seem to be part of every kitchen. Remember, we don’t stay at hotels, we stay in homes. So, my complaint is that the water has to be on full blast to get hot water… as soon as you turn the volume of output down (to save water) it goes cold. Plus, all the piping is exposed. :/

There are wall heaters throughout most houses, or maybe a fireplace. The nice thing about wall heaters is you only heat up the room you want to be warm. For example, I like the bedroom to be cold but the front-room to be warm. This place has two rolling heaters, which is nice.

There must be an EU rule regarding toilet seats. Maybe there’s an extra tax on them or something? I’d say that the vast majority of restaurants don’t have them. If they do, then I’m in ecstasies over it. It is one of the things that will get me to go back to a restaurant. Most bathrooms are like the ones on a boat—extremely small and lacking toilet-paper. Even here at our condo the toilet seat is actually bolted down off-center. :/  The absolutely most bizarre public bathrooms I’ve seen are in São Martinho. The public bathrooms have bidets. I know SM is a little ritzy, but bidets in public bathrooms? And all the toilets have seats. Very luxurious here. It’s a bit ironic that one of SM’s nicknames is “the bidet of the Marquises” because it was so popular with the Portuguese nobility.

Speaking of toilets, here they’re called bath-houses… casa de banho. The fun part is the huge variety of signs telling which is male and which is female. S is senhora-female, H is homem (though senhor would be appropriate, but you can’t have two Ss), with various depictions of men and women. The most common is a skirt versus pants, but some are more creative.

Oh, and remember that WC refers to the bathrooms. Here’s my favorite sign telling me the general location of the WC.

A cool household item here is the de-humidifier. It’s absolutely amazing how much water accumulates in the water tank. It’s nothing to empty out a half-gallon a day. When living in coastal towns like up in Humbolt, California, everything stays so wet. It’s really destructive to a house. Everything gets moldy and yucky, clothes and even dishes take forever to dry. This machine is brilliant, especially in the bathroom. The mirror takes forever to defog after a shower. With this little thing it's cleared up in minutes.

Some things are just etiquette or societal norms. Here, people don’t greet you on the street unless they know you… unless you greet them first. Then they look surprised and respond politely. One thing I really miss is the lack of public displays of affection. In Italy people greet each other with hugs and kisses. Women stand holding hands while they catch up. Here in Portugal, I’ve never ever seen a hug, no matter how excited they are to see each other. One time, just once, I saw two ladies do the cheek kiss. They are very physically affectionate with their children though. Lots of cuddles for them. It’s rough because I’m a hugger.

I’ve mentioned it before, but a lot of people smoke cigarettes in Portugal, and Italy too. Because it’s so normal, they don’t really get it that we don’t like it. Though the law forbids smoking in public buildings like restaurants, they just step right outside the door frame and smoke. It’s so weird. There’ll be two or three of them chatting and puffing away just two feet from where your table is. We usually move further into the place to avoid it.

Food is different here, just as it is all over the world. Some things I prefer, some I miss. I like the country-style of buying eggs unwashed. That way they can be stored on the shelf, not the fridge. It also means that part of making breakfast is washing eggs.

Butchers at the grocery store will cut up anything you want, anyway you want. However they draw the line at cutting a piece off a whole chicken. Some stores have prepackaged sort of fresh meat. So, if I luck out by getting to the store before the leg quarters are gone I’m fine. But when I say I want leg quarters and they don’t have any already cut up, even though there’s ten chickens piled on each other, they’ll say no. “We don’t have any.” I point to the chickens and they shake their heads no. Today I asked the guy to cut a whole chicken for me. I demonstrated by making imaginary cuts on my chest and hips. Every cut had him looking questioningly at me. It’s like he’d never done it before. Even at our favorite BBQ place the guy told us, “We’re sold out of half-chicken plates. You can get two quarter-chicken plates.” I wish you could see my face as I write this… one brow up and a half smile.

The concept behind dried fish is brilliant, but not my cup-of-tea. Especially cod. I can’t stand cod. This will deeply hurt my Portuguese friends, but I can’t help it. Cod is gross here. It’s fascinating to see rack after rack of fish drying out on the beach. Octopus, squid, cuttle-fish, and of course, cod.

Pink hot dogs in a jar offends every American sense. I like a higher-end dog back home, like Hebrew National dogs. Here it’s either a pink doggy or a hard sausage. And why, oh why, can’t they have sour cream? I’ll admit cream cheese can substitute on a potato. Funnily enough, our Lisbon friends really like the way I serve baked potatoes with cream cheese! Another thing I have to adjust my recipes for is the lack of relish. It’s kinda fun to buy the pickles, olives, and onions in a jar. I just dice ‘em all up and call it relish. Europe, in general, I think has a different view on salad dressing. In the States, salad dressing is an artform. Here it’s olive oil and vinegar… period. Plus, we really, really like our sauces. Barbecue sauce, for example is hard to find.

Police do give parking tickets here, but they make a show of it. You don’t want to be the first car they fine, but everyone else has time to run out of the cafés to buy tickets before the cops get to their car.  The other day a cop looked around for the owner of the tuk-tuk in front of us. The guy sitting by us was sipping a beer and told him, “I’m waiting to get change so I can buy the parking pass.” The cop shook his head with a smile and walked off. Stunning. Then the waitress brought his change and he did go over and get a pass, so I guess he was telling the truth—maybe.

Lots of Airport Information, Random Pics, and Expat Humor

The Portuguese just had an election and now there’s talk of bringing back the NHR tax scheme. This would allow retirees and (digital nomads) to live here for ten years (spending money, not taking jobs, not committing crimes) without having to pay Portugal taxes on passive income we already pay taxes on back home in the States.

Plan B? We’ve discovered an Italian tax scheme aimed at retirees. If we move to one of the designated southern states, to a city with a population under 20k, we can pay only seven percent taxes on our passive income. Hmm, I think I can handle southern Italy! Right now we’re looking at Otranto in Puglia. Have you heard of this town? Have you been there? What do you think? The three states we’re interested in are Abruzzo, Campania, and Apulia (Puglia). [Red dots are states involved in the 7% tax, the white dots are the states our Italian friends advised against us for various reasons]

Airport advice: When coming from San Francisco to Lisbon on TAP Air you will land at Terminal 1. In our experience, you turn right as you exit the plane to go through immigration and customs. Follow the signs, and people, to get to immigration. A giant set of arches are in front of you. To the right is the one you will be tempted to take. That is a really slow line. The one in front of you that says electronic passport is probably for you. There are lots of English-speaking employees standing around for you to ask if you feel nervous about which line you should be in. When it’s your turn, you will hold your USA passport against the scanner, stare at the camera, step forward to have your passport stamped, and be done. This will save you about an hour. Go down multiple flights of stairs to the luggage dungeon.

If there’s no line you can get your sim card at the Vodophone shop by the luggage carrousel, but no worries, there’s more shops elsewhere. If you don’t plan to be here for more than a month, this sim will work fine for you. If you plan to be here longer, like us, you may want to wait for a regular cellphone shop (Vodophone or MEO). This is only because the airport plan is just for one month, but after that you can put money on it and see how long that lasts you… when it runs low just pop into any cellphone shop and reload it (they’re everywhere) or download the app. After our month was up, we stepped into a camera-shop with Vodophone and MEO stickers on the window and put €15 on our cards. We’ll see how long that lasts. The Lisbon Airport has free WiFi, so you can order an Uber or Bolt, etc., without a new sim card.

Once you get to the really nice food court and shopping center inside Terminal 1, stay to your right until it comes to an end (past another Vodophone shop on the left) with “My Bistro” and escalators in front of you. To your slight left is a set of glass doors. Go out those and turn right. On your left is the metro entrance. Inside is a bank of ticket machines. For some reason, we prefer the ticket counter with its short line. Now you buy a metro pass-card and put money on it. When it runs low, put more money on it, but don’t throw away the pass… it costs money. These work on buses, ferries, local trams, and local trains all in the Lisbon area. I’m not sure about the fancy funicular trollies—we’ve never tried it.

When you are going back to the USA, you need to be aware that you will actually go through what seems like two security portals with a first one to get into the terminal and a second one to fly to the USA. We’ve made the mistake of thinking we were done and sat to enjoy breakfast and coffee. We almost missed our flight because we had to stand in a massively long line for forty-five minutes. But we got plenty of exercise before the eleven-hour flight by running to our gate.

My final advice is to purchase food for the flight home (from SFO to LIS you should bring food also). This is because TAP Air doesn’t give you very much food for the long-long flight. They will provide one hot meal and one mostly bread sandwich. I don’t eat bread, so I always bring food on the plane. I peel the slice of meat and cheese out of the bun and roll it up—which is about as big as a cigarette. Also bring a water bottle and fill it before getting on the plane. The attendants don’t come by very often. If you like beer or wine for the flight, you should know that the Portuguese government forbids the ordering of alcohol other than with food service on flights. I order two glasses of wine (Joe gets two beers) with the dinner service and I let the second one sit there until I want it an hour or so later.

Right now I sit at a café trying to write while a really nice Belgium man who was born in Scotland and living in Portugal talks to me in English. He’s telling me all about his dog… a Portuguese Podengo. It’s a hunting-dog breed, and his dog is deaf. He got it from a rescue center. Welcome to the world of a writer :) Another topic in town is the tsunami alarm that went off at six this morning for ten minutes. Normally it goes off once every day at noon. Ten minutes was exceptionally long. Joe and I got dressed and stood nervously watching the bay and listening for the resultant chaos from such a serious alarm. Not a soul stirred. Occasionally someone would stroll by at a leisurely pace. No one we spoke to had any idea what it was all about. Later our Portuguese waiter suggested that a fireman got drunk and accidently set the alarm and couldn’t figure out how to turn it off again. Whatever it was, I’m really surprised no one reacted to it!

A couple of fighter jets just flew overhead. They’ve done that a lot this last month. The friendly Belgium said it was Portugal’s entire military fleet. Then he chuckled for several minutes before adding, “One of ‘em is probably from Belgium.” One of my favorite things is when people joke about their own, or other, countries and politics. Fortunately, I don’t know enough about what’s going on to be offended.

Sometimes conversations take a more serious turn. In Lisbon we got into a discussion about mental health. We’d just seen a teen dragged from the street by the police—who had gotten tired of trying to reason with him. Cops came from everywhere. People stopped and watched. No one pulled out a cell phone to record it for social media. Our friends said the mental health problem in Portugal was a result of drug use. He made the comment that all people have a degree of mental health issues. Drugs just trigger it. I imagined us all with various types of flammable material in our minds… some have pinecones, others kindling, and others wet oak. With the right amount of flame, we all eventually ignite, but that’s enough philosophy for now.

Obidos, São Martinho do Porto, Nazare, and Italy

Obidos, this is a must see for everyone. An authentic castle town with completely intact walls. It is amazing. It has several streets with cafés and shops, but it doesn’t feel like Disneyland. I’d seen on a vlog that going early was a wise move if you wanted to walk the perimeter town walls. You can do it any time, but the idea of shouldering past people on a ledge with no handrails didn’t sound like a good plan to us. Joe insisted on splurging and taking an Uber from SM to Obidos. I would have stood at some bus stop hoping I was in the right place for an hour, but thankfully we used Uber and were there in thirty minutes.

We requested to be let off at the city gate. It was ten in the morning and the only person around was a guy singing and playing guitar in the giant guard room at the gate. We took an immediate left after that room and ascended the stone stairs past the sign that warned us how dangerous this decision was.

The walkway skirts the entire town. It’s not for the faint of heart or the frail. It’s a serious climb with really tall steps. The top of the wall is on one side and nothing is on the other side. The walkway is on the interior side of the wall to give the guards a view of the valley all around through cut-outs.

This city was apparently made for the king’s wife, way back in 1195. Over time it was fortified and inhabited, but never abandoned. The main church was an odd mix of ornate and extremely simple. The exterior is simple. The interior is also simple, except the alter which is gold-plated.

We found a “medieval bar” and plopped down to rest. It was perfect as it was on a narrow cobblestone street under an ancient arch. Plus it was nice and cool, which I appreciated because the wall-walk was pretty long and in the sun.

I highly recommend a day-trip to Obidos. It was magical, especially in the morning before the crowds arrive in tourist groups, though when it got crowded Joe struck up a conversation with a 91-year-old gent. They were like two peas-in-a-pod as they discussed exercise, travel, and Spanish language schools in Mexico.

We Ubered back for another thirty bucks. I have to say it was worth it. Plus, Joe says we’ve reached that magical age when muscle and money are about equal. In another ten years we’ll have more money than muscle. Sobering thought.

Here in SM is an object of deep fascination to me… an abandoned hotel. This hotel was a thriving business for many years until they got tired of it and decided to retire. According to rumors, they just walked away from it. It’s not like they went bankrupt. They just abandoned it. Now it is being consumed by nature.

Every time I walk past it, I think how much fun it would be to play around this building with its outbuildings. IF I lived here, and IF I were really rich, I’d open it up to kids. I’d remove everything from inside and hire a little herd of goats to come clean up the grounds. I don’t think I’d even put a play structure there, except maybe a slide from the second story to a sand pit at the bottom. This absolutely could never happen in the USA. Somebody would get hurt (without a doubt) and sue me, even though they knew it was a giant old abandoned hotel. But here it could work.

Now is time to give my verdict on living in São Martinho do Porto. Nope. Not gonna happen. It is a great place to come on a week-long vacation, especially with little ones, but to live? We couldn’t do it. First of all there’s no hospital that I know of. The grocery store is a minimart. The big grocery store that you have to walk to is limited. We learned to go to the far-away one early to get the meat, otherwise all the good stuff would be gone. The local open-market is great for fish and oysters, but no red meat. Lots of veggies though and a surprising area of clothing. By the way, I solved the lack of sleep and hip pain...Thankfully they have a memory-foam futon in the front room.

We are bored here, which is why we’re planning little mini-trips like the one to Obidos. I imagine this is a happening place in the summer. I’ve seen pictures and they look nothing like it looks now. I prefer Nazare, by far. ~~ Sooo, we just got back from Nazare. We decided to spend the afternoon there and walk back up to Sitio for the best burger and fries in Portugal. Then went came back down to walk around and build up our appetite for dinner reservations at Restaurante Tabernassa for the best steak in Portugal. Nazare was absolutely chaotic. There were people, children, dogs, pigeons, and seagulls everywhere. I was honestly a little overwhelmed by it all, especially when I got pooped on by a pigeon. Joe had to wash it out of my hair and off the back of my shirt. Thankfully, I’m a country-girl at heart. I just put it out of my mind until I got home to my shower.

We walked to the quieter end of town until dinner. Tabernassa is an absolute favorite of ours, and last night was made more special by our waiter, Paulo. Joe and I always pray before eating. When we’re out in public, it’s a silent prayer, but we hold hands. When we’d finished our little speed-prayer we looked up to find Paulo watching us. He was actually emotional about seeing us pray. He brought it up several times and kept putting his hand to his heart and telling us how touched he was. It’s funny how something so simple can have an impact on a stranger.

That night when we returned to São  Martinho, it felt incredibly peaceful. It felt like home. So, I guess the verdict is: If São  Martinho had a good grocery store, we’d prefer it. We could always drive to Nazare for entertainment.

The weather is supposed to clear up for the remainder of our stay here. Joe will probably join all the school kids getting in the water. The other day they had a group of middle-schoolers out there in kayaks. I’ve mentioned this many times, but the willingness of the Portuguese to let their children take risk fascinates me. Until we started coming here, I didn’t realize how much we’ve removed risk in America.

Regarding the mysterious tunnel from the bay to the open ocean. I posted some videos on Facebook and I got lots of questions asking why the tunnel is there? What’s its purpose? I have two answers, one more charming than the other. The first hypothesis is the tunnel was built to help defend against invaders trying to get into the bay. I like that one. It’s very pirate-like. The other, and probably correct, purpose was it was built in 1948 to divert sewage to the open sea. That seems more of a medieval plan to me, but so does defending the bay. I don’t know which is correct.

Sao Martinho do Porto; Would we live here?

When we arrived in Nazare it was in the middle of a storm, but it cleared up a bit after that. For a few days the ocean was calm enough to get in and the lifeguards changed the red flags for yellow. Joe promptly got in. I watched. It was rough, but the enjoyable kind of rough. You know, the kind of waves you have to pay attention to and decide; over or under? Most waves were the dive under size.

One day we were walking down the promenade and we noted the overcast skies. I was surprised because my weather app is usually pretty accurate and it had called for clear skies. My next observation was the following morning when Joe came in from the patio with reddish-brown feet. That hadn’t happened before. I got the broom out and swept the red dust to the edges of the patio. Later that day we noticed people wearing covid masks. Finally the news made its way to us English speakers and we learned that a Saharan dust storm had reached us. The locals cheerfully told us that the red mud rain would come soon, but that night the sunset was stunning.

The rainy weather returned… and the red mud rain. We decided that we’d better make our climb up the cliff one last time before we wouldn’t be able to. We hadn’t taken into account how slippery the cobblestone steps would be when wet. Every couple of steps my arms would go shooting out to keep my balance as my foot would skate over a stone. I’m sure I looked ridiculous. I don’t know how Joe looked because my attention was on myself. They’ve also had an invasion of ladybugs. They’re everywhere! This is tough for me because I love ladybugs, and I don’t want to accidently step on one, so once again I look pretty silly.

Every day, a tsunami alarm would go off at 1:00 in the afternoon. It was an eerie sound. Tsunamis have devastated Portugal before, so they’re wise to be prepared. I kept eyeing the massive cliff wall surrounding Nazare and mapping out our escape.

The rainy weather has returned with a vengeance. Coastal storms are a different breed of storms. It’s so intense, it’s difficult to even walk… especially down the perpendicular streets. They normally look so peaceful and inviting. Now they look, and feel, like wind tunnels for testing jets. We forced our way through the wind across the beach to get a closer view of the crashing waves. Isn’t it incredible how powerful waves are?

We wisely retreated to a café along with a bunch of locals. After an hour of eating peanuts, we started our trek back to our condo. We almost made it, but growling stomachs and more rain drove us into our favorite tapas bar where we ate ginger-shrimp, bacalhau (cod fish which we still don’t like), sausage-stuffed mushrooms, and split a bottle of wine.

Well, we’ve arrived in Sao Martinho do Porto. This is a gorgeous little city with a natural bay shaped like a fan. It has a narrow mouth which makes for incredibly calm waters.

Because of this, the Portuguese call it, “Baby Beach,” though I think “Geriatric Beach” would also apply. Recall, when I mapped out this three-month trip, it was to determine where we’d like to move. I chose this because it’s fairly level and easy to get around. There are some hills with homes built on them and that area has a two-stop elevator to ferry the residents down to the promenade. The rental prices are surprisingly low to a Californian; a furnished two-bedroom/two-bath goes for around 1,200-1,800 Euros/month. That’s pretty amazing considering this town has the status of Malibu or Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Unfortunately, the weather has not cooperated with us. I’m truly layering my clothes here and in a half an hour I can go from t-shirt/fleece jacket/raincoat shell/scarf to a t-shirt. When the wind blows here, it truly blows (like Nazare), and then it’s calm. The bay always has calm waters, but right now the water is a muddy brown. That doesn’t keep the school kids out of it though.

The other day it suddenly turned into a nice day, so we started walking along the bay. We found a boardwalk which seemed a reasonable choice. Forty minutes later found us completely around the bay, across a river, and in another town—Salir do Porto. The largest sand-dune in Portugal is here. It doesn’t look that big from across the bay, but it’s huge. We watched little specks run and tumble down the side.

One of cool things about Sao Martinho is that its market is Portuguese, not foreigners. That means it’s really calm and the prices are low. The most popular restaurant is Portobello Pizzeria (reminds me a bit of Il Forno Classico in Gold River CA). This is a high-end place and needs a reservation every night. The food was exquisite. We had the gorgonzola cheese garlic bread, the house pizza, carbonara, and three glasses of wine for 38eu… that’s only about forty bucks! In one of the most prestigious cities in Portugal. Amazing.

Apparently the first king of Portugal (Afonso I, The Conqueror and Founder ), back in eleven hundreds acknowledged Sao Martinho as a community. Over the next nine hundred years it turned into the royal’s vacation spot. The population seems to be a slightly more affluent Portuguese, which is hard to say because Portuguese see themselves as being equals. This is an odd mix of elegance and sand-covered children. Right now, I’m sitting at a café overlooking the park and bay. The glass of wine I’m nursing costs two bucks. I could get used to this.

Would I want to live in Sao Martinho do Porto? Hmm, I think so but services are limited. It’s close to lots of important towns like Caldas de Rainha with its big hospital and Obidos with its famous medieval castle. Nazare is only a twenty-minute drive for the surfer vibe. Peniche with its world famous surfing competitions is close. I think I could do it, but it would be hard because the grocery store is pretty lame. I know, I keep harping on that, but I like to cook. It’s easier and often cheaper to go out to eat. Today we finally made it to the market. It closes at 1:00, so we keep missing it, except Monday when it was closed. Today I lucked out and bought three fat salmon steaks, parsley, garlic, a lemon, and a couple of potatoes. Tonight should be a feast.

The number one flaw in this place is our house. It’s nice enough and well laid out with two bedrooms and two baths. It has three pretty windows that give us a sideways view of the bay. It’s only one block from the promenade. The problems are; The bed is too hard for me, it’s freezing cold, and there’s a bar below us. Normally I can solve hard mattresses by putting fluffy blankets under the sheet, but the blanket is needed to keep us warm. Now both of my hips hurt—common problem for me with hard mattresses. I can deal with the cold by bundling up, but it is by far the coldest home I’ve ever been in.

The other major problem is the bar. I’d read that a bar was below and that if you’re a light sleeper you may need earplugs. I was thinking it was like a café bar with people sitting out there chatting until ten or eleven… uh no. This is a hotspot bar for twenty-somethings. There’s nothing else like it in Sao Martinho. Dart board, pool table, and open until 4:00 am—04:00! The music is just loud enough to make everybody talk really loud, and of course they step outside for the national past-time of smoking. Really loud people seem to have no idea how many people don’t like it. I swear, all you have to do is add alcohol and they turn into noise-machines. And then once the bar closes the employees clean up and talk loud for another hour or so. Thank goodness for earplugs. The bottom line is I’m exhausted.