The first week in Porto

So, moving is always a big deal, right? Imagine that multiplied by a factor of I-don’t-know-how-much … that’s what moving internationally is.

I started to try and do a day-by-day breakdown of everything we accomplished in week one, but as I was getting it all written down, I realized how much we overdid it. Basically, we were trying to cram everything in as quickly as possible – and in the process, making ourselves crazy and overwhelmed.

I want to give a big shout-out to my sister Kathi, who has pointed out to us that it’s not a race – her words of sanity have been extremely constructive! It’s not giving away the story to tell you upfront that we eventually slowed down, but we started the week hot and heavy.

MONDAY was, of course, a red-letter day since it’s when we took possession of the apartment. In some ways, it was the most leisurely day of the week – we came, we signed, we conquered.

As a celebration, we went back to a restaurant that we’ve enjoyed on previous visits – À Bolina, which is along the Douro just past the famous Ponte Luis I bridge. The owner is from the Trás-os-montes region of Portugal, in the upper right-hand corner of the country, and has local small-producer cheeses and sausages sent in daily (via the public bus system!).

It was exciting that the staff recognized us as return customers when we came in, and they were thrilled and enthusiastic to hear that we were now neighbors. The food was as delicious as we remembered, the wine as reasonably priced, and the overall experience a suitable reward for our big day.

TUESDAY is the day that we went a little crazy. I think we were both feeling very insecure about the empty apartment and thought we needed to get as much in place as quickly as possible.

Our first task was to check out of the Palacio Hotel and take our luggage over to the apartment. We unpacked to a degree and readied overnight bags for later.

As I’ve mentioned before, we basically have nothing but an empty flat and some luggage at this point. We have a mattress on order from IKEA that will arrive Friday afternoon, but we need everything else – furniture, kitchenware, appliances, you name it.

I knew from previous research that there is a shop in Porto not far from the flat that sells refurbished Danish Modern furniture. We had decided earlier that it would be fun to splurge on at least a quality dining set, so I made an appointment for us to visit and take a look.

The selection was great, and we wound up with a fantastic teak table. We also got a set of chairs, which will be reupholstered in a better color as part of the deal.

A funny thing – it’s almost August, which means people are in vacation mode, so no-one will be working on the chairs until sometime in September … Anyways, we made our selection and arrangements for things to be delivered later in the week.

Next stop – utilities. Because I’m using the flat as the headquarters of my company, we get to write off the utilities – IF we change the billing into the company name. This requires two stops – the Porto Municipal Water Bureau and the EDP electric company.

The water company is at the Gabinete do Munícipe (municipal offices) in the beautiful Praça (plaza) Aliados, which is sort of the heart of the city. Unfortunately, because of COVID, they are not operating at normal capacity, which we didn’t know until we got there. You have to have an appointment, which you have to call for … and the first available appointment was 13 August. Oh, well, this isn’t going to happen today! We did make the appointment, though, so we’ll get to return in a few weeks.

EDP has offices in a few spots, but Alina told us the easiest to get to was in the Bom Sucesso shopping mall over by the Casa de Música. This was a lot more successful, although I did have to wait in line for about 45 minutes for my turn. The woman at the counter had limited English but an excess of goodwill, and between the two of us, we managed to get it sorted out.

Next to the mall is the Mercado Bom Sucesso, which is a cool upscale food-court. They’ve got everything from sushi to Italian to Portuguese regional, plus beer, wine, liquors, and lots of desserts. This place is a must if you visit Porto.

The lunchtime sangria possibly affected our next decision – hop on the metro and ride it up to the outlets at Vila do Conde, about a half-hour north of town.The outlets were on our radar already, since we knew they had a few houseware-type places, plus a Le Creuset outlet. We left our cookware in good hands, but this is one of the places where we have chosen to get good stuff (and once you cook on enameled cast-iron, you’re spoiled for life).

Riding the metro in Porto is easy, cheap, and safe, even with COVID. Keeping in mind that Porto hasn’t had any new cases for a month, we feel pretty confident out in public here. Yes, everyone wears masks inside unless they are eating, and yes, everyone uses hand sanitizer every time they enter a restaurant or store. Walking in the open masks are optional unless you’re in a crowd, or waiting in line, or something like that.

They’re also running metros and buses more often to keep the crowds down and are frequently disinfecting everything.

Unfortunately, when we got to the outlets, our brains sort of shut down for a bit. We were decision-paralyzed – mostly because we didn’t know where to start! We found the Le Creuset store, and they had most of what we wanted, but we just couldn’t decide what to do.

In hindsight, this is easy. The reality is that we didn’t buy everything at once in the US – we accumulated things over time. We could have bought one, maybe two pans; they would have been heavy, but we also could have purchased a rolling grocery cart (which we need anyway, and which we found a perfectly fine one at the outlets that we then didn’t buy) to carry them in.

So, we wandered around for a while and then bailed … but it was our next step which proves how dangerously deranged we had become – we went to IKEA!

Actually, this wasn’t completely stupid. IKEA was on our way back to town, and there were things we knew we wanted – remember the stuff we couldn’t get them to deliver from the Lisboa store? We got all that stuff and more.

IKEA also delivers for a very reasonable (by US standards) fee – and for an extra 10€, they’ll even pull all the stuff from self-service for you. As we picked out new things, sales associates would add them to the ongoing order. We also filled up the cart with plates, glasses, and other odds and ends, and then after we paid took it all over to the transport desk and had every single thing shipped.

And here’s a typical Portuguese reaction for you – the lady at transport tried to save us money by letting us know that if we held back a portion and carried it out ourselves, we could save 8€. I had to convince her that it was worth it to us to pay the extra money, although we actually probably could have managed it.

We Ubered back into town, stopped by the apartment, and checked in to the new hotel around the corner. By this time, it was about 7:00 PM, so we put our feet up for a bit, and then headed out for dinner in the neighborhood.

In case you’re wondering, the Portuguese don’t eat as late as the Spanish, but still later than the US. We have been eating dinner around 8:30, which isn’t quite the early-bird special … the crowds usually show up around 9-9:30.

I’m exhausted just writing about the first two days … I think I’ll continue this in the next episode!

Next Episode: MORE of the first week in Porto