Well, that flew right by! It seems like I just posted about my first day and here we are nine days later (13 days for Yoav). The first couple of days sorta felt like a vacation, only without all the fun touristy things. I also felt a sense of familiarity due to our prior visits.
In the four days Yoav was here before I arrived, he managed to get out to IKEA to purchase a mattress and bed frame (which will become our future guest bed) and a bistro table and chairs for the balcony. After unpacking the bins, he got busy working on setting up our mobile phone service, Internet, and cable TV (they are generally bundled together here), along with various other tasks you need to do when you arrive in a new country to live.
On my second day, shortly after my last post went live, we took an Uber back out to IKEA. The ten kilometer trip out there was surprisingly affordable. Upon arrival, I immediately felt like a twenty something setting up a new home from scratch. We ended up buying a pair of nightstands and lamps, some very basic kitchen tools and dishes (who knew they had glass plates and bowls for €.60 each?), some European power strips, and a few other bits and bobs. We managed to leave with tons of stuff and only spent a few hundred Euros. The UberXL ride back was double the cost to get there, but it was still quite fair given it was in an SUV with plenty of room to hold us and all our booty.
The rest of the week has been somewhat of a blur in that we spent time doing all sorts of tasks, too many to recall... But I do remember daily highlights.
Tuesday, we had our internet installed by a lovely installer who spoke no English, but we managed.
Wednesday, we went to Parque Nascente Shopping Center in Rio Tinto (a close-in suburb about 4km away) to go to Leroy Merlin, the EU's version of Home Depot, but really more like Menards (IYKYK1) and loaded up on more EU extension cords and plug adapters. At the other end of the amazingly busy for a weekday mall, is an Auchan (I would compare it to Target) where we bought a microwave oven and an electric kettle for me to make espresso.
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Thursday was a return trip to Rio Tinto to look at laundry machines. We have limited space in our laundry room so I was considering a combo washer and heat exchange dryer. But after a tour of our neighbors apartment a few floors down in our building (an awesome couple who moved here last year from LA for essentially the same reasons) I saw that a side-by-side could fit. Ultimately we bought a side-by-side washer and heat exchange dryer. I will do a post about our dryer choice in the future.
Friday was planned as a "Me" day... After my morning 5k walk2, I ran into our downstairs neighbor in the lobby and he was returning from the market with his granny cart. But not an ordinary cheap granny cart, it was a really nice quality cart with an insulated section for frozen foods and plenty of space to carry your groceries. I knew we had to have one, and he told me I could find it at El Corte Inglés across the river in Gaia3. My "Me" day became all about going for a walk, and then a quick trip on the Metro to El Corte Inglés
in Gaia to get one of these magical granny carts for Yoav4. It was still a "Me" day as I navigated things on my own and found this very delicious 'suckling pig meat pie' at Bolhão Market for only €2.50
El Corte Inglés is HUGE! I don't even know how to describe it! There are 12 separate floors of merchandise, including a full service grocery store. I am reminded of the days when department stores in bigger cities were six, eight, even ten stories filled with a huge variety of wares à-la Macy's in Herald Square, Marshall Fields on State Street in Chicago, or Fredrick and Nelson in Seattle back in the 1980s. I learned that El Corte Inglés had inexpensive granny carts on the grocery store level, but on the fifth floor was housewares and that is where I found the much nicer quality granny cart shown above. And it was on sale to boot!
Saturday was an exciting day for us... At about 10am, we took delivery of our washer and dryer! The three delivery men were very nice and one of them had perfect English which made things much easier. With the delivery done, we decided to have a goof-off afternoon and then a date night. We walked over to the Cedofeita neighborhood to revisit some of our first experiences of Porto when we came the first time in 2018. We ended up having a delicious dinner in a somewhat touristy area and then walked the two kilometers home.
Yesterday was a day of rest... Well deserved naps, some reading, some relaxing, and more naps.
That about wraps up our first week. in retrospect, I can honestly say I have absolutely no interest in going back to the US. We are so very grateful for this new life.
I am planning to post again next week. Less about our daily achievements, more about how we are experiencing our new life.
One last thing.... We were very concerned that our boy Bixby would be overly stressed out, or even traumatized, in this move. It turns out to be the opposite. He came through just fine, and has been the happiest we have seen him in years. His favorite thing to do is fall asleep in the sun. This is the first home we have had in years with this much sun streaming in, so maybe this was what he needed all along.
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If you know Menards, you know Menards. I fell in love with Menards when I moved to Chicago 25 years ago. Their stores are clean, well lit, and the merch is on regular shelves vs the industrial racks at Home Depot and Lowe’s.
Likely the topic of a future post… I have walked an average of 3.3 miles a day, seven days a week for the past four plus years. In Philly I set a minimum of three miles but walked up to four or more at least twice a week. In Porto, 3.3 miles conveniently translates to 5km per day. So, now I am walking 5k a day here. I will elaborate in that future post.
Vila Nova de Gaia is the city directly across the Douro River from Porto. Locally referred to just “Gaia”, it is where all the port wine warehouses are located and the place to go if you want to do a wine tasting while visiting Porto. It is also the third most populated city in Portugal after Porto.
Yoav has almost always been the one of us who does the grocery shopping. Our main grocery store is a Continente Bom Dia about half a kilometer downhill from the apartment. The cart makes it much easier to schlepp groceries back up the hill.
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