We aren’t the type of people to clog your inboxes, if you have subscribed, just for the sake of publishing something. If we don’t really have anything groundbreaking to share, it’s highly likely that you don’t need or even want to hear about it. So, that means it has been a while since our last blog post.
We’ve still not done any world changing things to be fair, unless you count exploring another Port Wine house. We haven’t found our dream house yet either. So, here’s a short update on how things are going, how we are adjusting to life in Portugal, and some insights into our future plans on the back of them.
Full house
We always love it when family and friends visit. In the previous two homes we’ve always had enough space for people to stay at ours, and while it was convenient, it is also always a bit weird. Being used to living with just the two of us (three if you count Lily), anyone staying in the house immediately makes a huge impact, no matter how wonderful, fun, considerate and quiet people are.
In Espinho we simply don’t have the space to host people in our home. We just have enough space to do our own things. So, a big change here so far has been that people visiting are not staying in our own home. And it has been a delight.
So far we’ve already had 3 family visits done this way and it has been a revelation for semi-hermits like us. We can spend time together, but people also have their own space to go back to and relax when we are working, hopefully having more of a holiday themselves as well without us being in their hair!
The downside is that people visiting have to fork out a bit more money for their stay. But, that’s something we really want to be able to help with once we find our new house. Not in the least because that will be in less touristy areas with fewer options. Of course, we had already thought of being able to provide some independent housing for friends and family before. And now our wish-list now officially includes an ‘independent annex’ in the Must column as a bare minimum provision, and “a separate 1-bed small building” under Should.
For now, if you want some recommendations of where to stay (and where not to stay), just drop us a message!
A lot less “Fala Inglês?”
We’ve said it before, but learning Portuguese is really hard. Still, we can see it will be worth it, and, dare we say, we have made some improvements already.
Being 2 months into our 3-month Portuguese A1 language course there’s a few base things we have down now. Numbers, asking who and how people are and tell each other a bit about where we are from. We can tell people where we live and what we do on a daily basis. When we prepare for it.
Our group of learners is still very diverse and everyone is lovely. The only small downside so far is that sometimes the different commitment levels make it a bit more slow going. We’ll surely continue with face-to-face group lessons while we live near Porto. However, perhaps once we move out to the countryside and into the B-levels we might switch to private lessons online.
Reading and generally understanding what people are saying in certain settings is already becoming easier. While responding confidently and forming spontaneous sentences is still a few steps too far at this point, people do see us trying and encourage us to keep going. They slow their own speech and saying we’re doing very well for people who have only been living here for 3 months. We know they are lying, but it is the thought that counts. We haven’t gone into the shop next-door yet. But maybe we’ll make that visit our A1-exam and we’ll consider it a graduation once we walk out with a bottle of wine and some olives.
Lily, in case you are wondering, has already got her feline Portuguese down though. Which is basically snoring while lounging in the sun.
We need to make and take more time to explore the area
Like I said above, we’ve already had family visiting three times. We had time to spend with them over the weekends. We took them to the places we have been able to discover and experience ourselves already. A few lovely walking routes through Porto, some great restaurants and places. But because we were working during the weeks, it is fair to say those who have visited us have now already seen more of the surrounding area than we have.
We’ve been very focused on settling in, arranging all the admin stuff, and, well, work quite a bit as well. It’s easy to get focused on ‘saving all your annual leave for when you need it later on in the year’… And then end up not taking too much time off.
We really need to fix that. And soon. Because working too much isn’t fun. And exploring is. Without the van, we bought a new tent and some basic equipment that we were missing (like a stove to cook on etc…). We’ve also bought a car! This allows us to do some exploring over the weekend and not be dependent on public transport. We picked the car up end of April, just before the family visits started. So far we’ve mostly used it to drive us to language class and Lidl. Exciting! But, with family visits out of the way and having weekends to ourselves, it’s now also ready to take us places and be a key tool in discovering potential places to live.
Exploration is go
Last weekend we started off our exploring drive! We went out for a lovely long walk around the Rio Inha, at not even 30 minutes from home. Diverse trails, sunshine, lovely views. We didn’t see a single soul during the entire 15km walk. People were surely missing out, but it also gave us a wonderful experience of just peace and quiet. It really made us look forward to doing more exploring and more hiking, both within day-trip driving distance from Espinho and farther afield, and to test out the tent!
But not this weekend, apparently. Of course, because we planned a 3-day weekend it’s raining in most of the country. Particularly heavy in the areas that we had planned to explore. Typical. Sure, we’re adventurous and not made of sugar and all that. But, walking around in torrential rain under some umbrellas is not really high up our list of ‘fun’.
We now have booked a week off work though in the somewhat near future. Hopefully during that week there will be a place we can go to explore where it isn’t pissing it down. And we’ll need to take more days/weeks off too. Because while the garden is wonderful to enjoy during lunch, there is so much more to do and explore here!
In the meantime, let me know if there’s anything you want to know, if you have some things you think we should do or check out (for you) or if you want to visit the area and want some recommendations.
See you next time!