PERIODIC UPDATES FROM
Portuguese independence from its 48-year dictatorship ended on April 25, 1974 with the bloodless turnover of power termed the "Carnation Revolution." Throughout Portugal, the 50th anniversary of the revolution was marked by festivals and celebrations. The small Algarve hill town of Alte held a festival which included both bike and trail running races. Mark, who had been jogging with friends for the past couple of months, decided with them to participate in the 14K trail run, his first foot race in almost 40 years. The course conditions were tougher than we had expected. Both uphill and downhill grades were at times quite steep, and the trails were not just dirt and gravel. Softball and basketball-sized boulders were common. Sections were so steep and dangerous that participants had to walk, rather than run. We all finished the race, most with some scrapes and bruises. It could have been worse. One participant broke his arm, and the paramedics had to rescue him. This was probably Mark's first and last trail run!
0 Comments
We had a meeting with the builder of our under-construction apartment to discuss its status so we could begin making our plans. We found out that because of a new law which came into effect in Portugal this year, habitation licenses are no longer required in order to begin "transferring of deeds" (i.e., sales), and our builder expects transfers to begin in mid-June. This new law will make it imperative for us to create a "pre-close punch list," items which must be completed before we will be willing to complete the purchase. The good news is that our builder is not pressing buyers to close by a certain date, due primarily to their being behind schedule. Once we are reasonably confident of an expected closing date on the new apartment, we will then put our existing apartment on the market. All in all, we hope to be in the new apartment by around the end of this summer. This is the latest video of our new apartment complex. Our kitchen is shown at 1:06-1:10.
Our dealings with the bureaucracy of the Portuguese immigration system are completed for another three years. In the last year, Portugal has taken to opening up renewals on a quarterly basis. So if your residency card expires in a given calendar quarter, a set of instructions will be issued sometime in those three months on how to renew. Unfortunately, the rules can also change with little notice, which is exactly what happened to both of us. Mark's residency expired in Q4 2023. In late October, it was emphatically announced that all renewals would be done in face-to-face appointments. After scrambling for several days to secure an appointment via an online booking system, Mark was able to get an appointment for late November in the Algarve. Lots of paperwork was gathered in anticipation of the appointment. Then in early November, an announcement was made on the website of a no-longer-existent government agency: online residency renewals (which required no meeting and no paperwork) were now open. Should we believe this announcement or not? Eventually, we saw enough comments from people on Facebook that we decided to believe online renewal was indeed possible, so that's the route we took. We registered for renewal, paid the fee, and cancelled the meeting appointment. On January 19, Mark received his new residency card, good for three more years.
Debra's residency expired in Q1 2024. In January, it was announced once again that all renewals would be done in face-to-face appointments. This time, however, appointments were extremely difficult to get anywhere in the country. A friend of ours was able to secure an appointment in January, but she had to go all the way to Porto, about 350 miles away. We tried every few days, but never were able to get an appointment. We had a feeling that online renewals were once again going to be offered soon. Sure enough, in early March, we read on an obscure Facebook group that online renewals were again open on the same website of the no-longer-existent government agency. We registered Debra for renewal and paid the fee. We received her new residency card four weeks later on April 5th, and it's good for another three years. And what happened to our friends who went to face-to-face meetings in January and submitted lots of paperwork? They are still waiting for their cards over three months later! After much cajoling by our friends, we held our second Chinese New Year celebration, this time in our new (to us as of 2023) apartment. We hosted many people from last year with a few new additions. We lucked out with the weather which didn't rain, allowing us to use (at least for a while) our outside terrace. Like last year, one of the guests is a professional photographer, so we just let her do her thing, and she shot some wonderful photos. We all had a great time, even Ryder who for a time was put into a bedroom timeout for "excessive drooling." As you may recall, the builder of our apartment which is under construction posts regular video progress reports every 4-6 weeks. In the video posted in February, there are many seconds of video showing our unit. In the video below, our unit begins to be shown at about the 43 second mark and continues on until about 1:04. Our takeaways from this are: (1) the windows/sliding glass doors are installed; (2) the flooring is installed, and (3) the bathroom and kitchen tiling appears to be complete. We had noticed that the outside progress on the building (at least what you can see from the street) seemed to have slowed down, but it appears that the inside progress is moving along nicely. You'll see in video that the rooftop pools are mostly complete. Our ground floor unit has a pool, but it will be completed near the end of construction as it will be located where the crane currently is.
The building's official completion schedule is still for April, but that's seems highly unlikely. More possible is a summertime completion with a late summer/early fall move-in, depending upon when an occupancy permit can be obtained. Those can take up to 3 months. For Debra's birthday, we decided to visit the Spanish capital for a few days, since we'd never had a chance to spend time there in the past. Our journey consisted of a car drive to Seville and then a high-speed train ride (up to 160 mph) from there to Madrid. All in all, it took about four hours. We knew Madrid was not like Paris or London, with dozens of sites that could take a week or more to see. We focused our time on visiting the Prado Museum and the Spanish Royal Palace, neither of which allow almost any indoor photography. The Prado Museum is the main Spanish national art museum, and it houses one of the finest collections of European art in the world, including famous works by Spanish artists like Goya and Velázquez. The Spanish Royal Palace is the official residence of the Spanish royal family. It is Western Europe's largest royal palace, nearly double the size of Buckingham Palace in London or the Palace of Versailles in Paris. Three Kings DayAnd though we didn't know it at the time we booked, we were arriving near Three Kings Day, which is one of the most celebrated "Christmas" days in Spain. On this day, the Spanish celebrate the arrival of the Three Kings who come bearing gifts for the Baby Jesus. For this reason, Three Kings Day is the day when Spanish children open their Christmas presents. It is also a day of Christmas parades, with the biggest being in Madrid and Barcelona. DiverXOWe ate at several very nice restaurants in Madrid. Not surprisingly, the city offers a wide variety of cuisines, and we sampled dim sum, Mexican, and Asian/Latin fusion. But the highlight of the trip was our meal at DiverXO. DiverXO with its chef Dabiz Muñoz is one of the most celebrated restaurants in the world. It maintains three Michelin stars and is currently ranked as the #3 restaurant in the world, while Muñoz has been ranked as the best chef in the world for the past three years running. We will go into the meal in detail (so please excuse us!), but it was quite a unique experience. As you enter the restaurant, you immediately see a recurring theme of "pigs flying." This apparently refers to a statement attributed to the chef's father, who early in his career said his son would accomplish such lofty culinary achievements "when pigs fly." When we were seated, we found that all of the tables were separated (from each other and from the servers' areas) by sheer curtains. And each table had its own waving pig. At the sommelier's suggestion, we ordered a nice Spanish white wine from the Ribera del Duero wine region. As this river flows into Portugal, it is called the Douro River, an area where some of the finest Portuguese wines and ports are made. As the courses began, we received small written descriptions with each dish. (NOTE: click on the pictures for larger views) When we were served the fifth course, we received something new. The restaurant had decided to create an illustration that would give an idea of how Chef Muñoz had conceived of the dish and its ingredients. They did not have these illustrations for all courses yet, but they wanted to give us what they had completed. In truth, the illustrations were very helpful in understanding the dishes and their ingredients. They also gave us an inkling of the artistic and culinary creativity that is needed to be a chef at this level. (REMINDER: click on the pictures for larger views) The next dish was a little challenging. Elvers -- also known as glass eels -- are young Atlantic eels that are harvested when they are still small and transparent. Elvers are a delicacy in Spain, and due to their scarcity, their price has risen to over $2,000 per pound. For this dish, the elvers were cooked and put atop a crispy oxtail ravioli, which was then placed on top of a bull's horn which was filled with a Chinese hot-and-sour soup. We were told that after eating the elvers/ravioli to drink the soup directly from the bull's horn. At the end of the savory courses (12 of them), we took a little break and wandered around the entrance of the restaurant, before returning for the dessert courses. Our meal at DiverXO was an amazing experience. We aren't sure if it was our best meal ever, but it certainly was our most creative and interesting. There aren't many restaurants like this in the entire world, and we were pleased to celebrate Debra's birthday here! We truly enjoyed Madrid and look forward to returning one day.
We decided to do some pre-Christmas traveling this year. We took a direct flight from Faro (our local airport here in the Algarve) to Basel, Switzerland. From there, we took the train to visit Mark's niece, Lindsey, and her family just outside Zurich for a couple of days. After that, we traveled back by train to Basel and on to Strasbourg to see their famed Christmas markets. Lindsey and her two children Chloe (6) and Owen (3) visited us in Tavira in May. We returned the favor by visiting them and Lindsey's husband Mike in their home in Wollerau. We came bearing gifts for both Chloe's recent birthday and the upcoming Christmas holiday. Our visit was short (and we failed to get many pictures), but it was wonderful to spend time with the whole family and look forward to seeing them in 2024. Strasbourg Christmas MarketsChristmas markets are popular throughout Europe with the most famous ones probably being in Germany. But Strasbourg, France has a close history with Germany, so it maintains many of their traditions (while having better food in our opinion). The history of Christmas markets in Strasbourg dates back to the 16th century with the earliest recorded market, known as the “Christkindelsmärik” or “Market of the Infant Jesus,” taking place in 1570. Our AirBNB in Strasbourg was pretty funky. The design was very retro, and with a spiral staircase to the second level, it took some acrobatics to get around. But the location and the views (over Place Kleber, one of the main Christmas markets in Strasbourg) were fantastic. Place Kleber was the location of the official Christmas tree of Strasbourg, and every hour (from 4-9pm) there was a music/light show in the square. We must have watched it ten times and never seemed to tire of it. Petite FranceThe Strasbourg Christmas markets are primarily in the older section of the city. But the very oldest, best preserved original buildings in the oldtown are in the quaint neighborhood of Petite France. The MarketsThere are a total of 13 different Christmas markets in Strasbourg. The markets run from late November through Christmas, opening from 11:30am - 9pm each day. The markets sell just about everything: gifts, decorations, and food including lots of vin chaud (French hot mulled wine).
Fine Dining in StrasbourgWe snacked at the markets' food stalls, sampling potato pancakes, sausages, cheese, and vin chaud. But we saved room for a couple of nice French restaurants, which was after all the reason we chose Strasbourg in the first place. Colmar Christmas MarketsThe town of Colmar is a 30-minute train ride south of Strasbourg. We stopped here for one night to see their very famous Christmas markets. Being a smaller town, the markets are more intimate and weave throughout the streets, making it into a Christmas fairy tale. The City of BaselAt the end of our trip, we had an early flight back to Faro, so we stayed one night near the airport in Basel. As it turns out, we have friends who live in Basel part-time when they are not living in the Algarve and playing golf with Mark. Markus and Jenny were nice enough to show us around the beautiful city of Basel, located on the Rhine River, including a bit of their own Christmas markets. We crossed the Rhine using a boat with no motor. It is connected to a cable that spans the river, then uses the current to move across. Some entertainment while having gluhwein and bratwurst at the Christmas market
In 2021, we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner. This year, we were invited to another American's apartment to celebrate the holiday. Our host, Janice Woodard, is a good friend we met through the weekly beach dog walks. Like us, she bought an apartment in Tavira this year. However, due to her small kitchen and her being a vegetarian, we offered to roast the Thanksgiving turkey and transport it to her place. It was a bit of a logistical challenge, but it all worked out. The attendees who were mostly Americans, with a few international folks thrown in for good measure, enjoyed the foods and traditions of this most American holiday. Happy Thanksgiving to our friends and family! Work on our next apartment continues and a new video was just released. The projected completion date remains April 2024 (though we take that with a grain of salt!). There are a couple of interesting things to note in this video. At about the 0:45 mark, there is a picture of our kitchen with the backsplash tile being installed. The reason we know it is ours is that we chose those specific tiles, which are not standard. The second thing to note is the central air/heating system which is shown at about the 0:51 mark in the video. Central HVAC is exceedingly rare in Portugal. We continue to keep our fingers crossed that construction on this new apartment proceeds as planned!
|
Debra & MarkUS Citizens, we have escaped to Southern Portugal to live the European lifestyle Categories |
Contact
Copyright © 2022