2026-04-16 Get on the bus, Gus

The fog rolled in on little cat feet this morning as we got ready to take the bus from Porto to Figueira da Foz. We got ourselves out of the house about 7am.  First, we take the metro to the Campanhã station which houses the Metro, Regional/National Trains as well as a bus station.  It's a few stops from our (Bolhão) station which is around 5 minutes or we could have walked it in about 25. It was cold, around 10C/50F and breezy.

The ride was uneventful, with a brief stop in Aveiro. It's mostly highway, so it skips right along pretty quickly. JR sketched while Stacey finished the newest Jonathon Maeberry book.

Figueira da Foz (Foz) is a on the Mondego River which empties into the Atlantic Ocean. There's a lovely street that takes you along the Mondego and their main street, and leads you to the Forte as well as the Atlantic, the praia, shops, etc.

The marina and the street both have opportunities to enjoy some public art.

These trees are super cool! They are Norfolk pines (Araucaria heterophylla)

While we waited for our friends from Alcobaca, recent ex-pats Heather and Katrina, we had a snackie and some coffee on the boardwalk near the clocktower.

This guy was over Stacey's shoulder on an A frame sign.  He stayed put long enough for JR to sketch him.

Soon after, Heather and Katrina arrived and we headed to the beach.  As you can see, it was super windy, but we walked almost 3 miles and it was glorious.

The ocean was very foamy.

After walking on the beach and then finding a spot for lunch, we of course had to stop and get gelato, because you can't let the penguins have all the fun.

Katrina interacting with the fish

Stacey loves lantana and this is the biggest lantana 'bush' we'd ever seen.  The blooms themselves were massive and very happy.

And of course, theres a ton of public/street art.  This was a beautiful mosaic.

All-in-all the day was lovely, we enjoyed our friends and we all headed back to our respective domiciles full of sun, gelato and good conversation.

 

2026-04-14 Rainy days and Mondays

 

Chapel of Souls at night from our balcony.

Monday turned out to be a little rainy, but we were able to sneak in a trip to the grocery store during a lull.

Tuesday was a chilly and partly cloudy. Stacey got a pedicure, we did our Portuguese lessons and in the afternoon decided to take a walk before the expat happy hour.

There are numerous parks and cemeteries.  Today's walk led us to  Prado do Repouso Cemetery

This is a very old and lovely cemetery and unlike those in The States. There are many more mausoleums and fewer headstone type graves. There's everything from traditional stucco, marble, tile and some very interesting art deco style. There are some more modern structures as well.

This is called  'grotto' style

There is a beautiful walkway at one end of the cemetery. It mixes a columbarium wall or niche wall. Upon further research, we learned, "Burial niches or loculi (singular: loculus) the individual compartments, a term going back to Roman catacombs Wall crypts — when they contain full caskets rather than urns, as well as Ossuary wall sometimes used more loosely. The entire stacked structure is often called a "wall of the dead" — and in Portuguese/Spanish cemetery tradition, these are extremely common and have a specific cultural name: "nichos" (pronounced 'nee-shoosh'). You'll see them all over Portugal, Spain, and Latin America, typically decorated with flowers, photos, and mementos."

There is also a cat colony.

How many cats do you see?

This one was way more interested in the mausoleum than the people strolling the cemetery.

We will explore this in the future with some frequency. There's a lot of history here, some great sketching to be had and appreciation of different types of architecture to be enjoyed, and it is so calm and peaceful. We'll stop visiting when that is no longer the case.

We meandered our way back to the apartment and saw a lot of really cool tile selections.

This building had an interesting run of inset tiles and ended in a beautiful arc.

This hidden gem was not yet open as it was too early for aperitivi

And of course, street art:

Yes, I'm aware (Stacey) I caught my finger in the bottom, but I really liked the undulation of the street and didn't want to crop it out.

2026-04-11 Weekend at the Ronczy's

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On Saturday, we decided to go to the Produce and Flea Market in Maia using our newly minted transportation cards.  We walked to the corner, down the entry for the metro and proceeded to the C (green) line that goes to Ismaia. It's a short 30ish minute ride to the end of the line in Maia from Bolhão (our station) where we wandered around until we found the produce market (OK, Google did help a little). Sadly, it wasn't as big as we'd hoped, but we did stop by the pastry lady and bought two of each of the napoleon and apple tart (fork for scale). The total cost was €4. We did find some produce and decided to try these lovely cherry tomatoes and carrot (scale for scale) for a total of €2.10

The flea market wasn't scheduled to start for another hour so we decided to wander the city a bit. Maia is a combination of more modern architecture and feel. As you get farther outside where the metro line lets you off, there is a lovely suburb of smaller houses, churches, cemeteries and other structures with cobblestone streets and granite/marble sidewalks. It's actually pretty quaint in this part and is, as is the norm here, at the top of the hill. The weather was nice, around 60F (15C) , intermittent sun and a stiff breeze. As always, street art calls. This one felt super sweet.

We wandered back around to the train station where we could see into the Park where they were setting up the flea market. We wandered into the central commercial building across the street and found a coffee shop, in and among the retail stores, and had a coffee and snackie. Afterward, we moseyed our way through the flea market. We had come on this excursion with a friend we made in one of the expat groups and she was on the hunt for a hat pin. Stacey was keeping her eye out for a planter box for the herbs on the balcony. We didn't find either but we did enjoy the company and the walkabout.  We returned home, watched The Masters tournament and enjoyed the layabout.

It's Sunday morning, we've enjoyed our coffee and pastries, JR has done his Portuguese lesson, and we're contemplating a walk.  It's Sunny, but windy and is in the 50'sF (15C). We are told we will most likely experience some the sahara dust today and some of this week, so we may have to stay inside some.  These slow days are heaven and feel indulgent.

Here's a video from our balcony this Sunday Morning. We will never tire of the view.

2026-04-10 You are now free to move about the city

 

      

This also begs the question, what errands do you do once you've arrived on your VISA and gone to the grocery several times?

Whelp, one thing we are excited for here in Porto is the expanse of the public transportation system. There are 6 or 7 metro lines and a bazillion buses available.  Also available is at least one tram and one funicular. As we may have said, we aren't interested in owning a car here. Stacey is one year away from being considered a 'senior'. That being said, her monthly card is €40 and JR's is €30. (For those of you keeping score at home, NYC monthly pass was running at $200 when we left in 2017). It provides access to all the Metro

All the local buses as well as these lines.  We are at the purple dot.

What Stacey calls the 'deli ticket system' is deployed at most places in Porto.  You don't just stand in line, there is almost always a place to get a number - digital or paper - to be served.  The again, helpful, smiling cashier spoke excellent English and explained our options. She took our passports, NIF (national number) and our Portuguese phone numbers along with a real-time selfie and produced our monthly, plastic cards. We maybe waited 15 mins before she called us up and maybe 20 mins with her. Not only was she helpful, but she also encouraged our Portuguese, gave us some pointers and wished us well.  Now THAT'S service. 

We will be traveling to Figueira da Foz next week on the Rede Expresso Bus - not included in the card - but for both of us direct and roundtrip, it was €13. Map for reference - we are the purple dot.

We've also been attending multiple expat coffees and happy hours and connecting with people and seeing who we want to hang with.  On our way back from coffee yesterday, we were so happy to stumble on this:

          

We visited a local plant store that had a lovely variety of plants and trees. They even had a few fruit trees for €7 - that's right, €7 for a tree! Well, a sapling, but a fruit bearing tree nonetheless. We haven't discussed what we'd like to grow on the patio, but good to know we can come to this local store.

We visited our bank which is a half block past the grocery we frequent, to change our address & phone from USA to Portugal and found out we can't do that until we get our resident card.  The process for the bank is a ticketed system like the public transport office.  The 'bank teller' was at what we would describe as a booth in a diner and called up the numbers in sequence. He was incredibly helpful, spoke great English, explained the system very well. This maybe took 20 minutes.

We visited the local internet/cell phone/tv provider office which is in the mall down the street - again, deli counter method - to see how to turn on the Sports upgrade we purchased. There weren't many people there and we waited maybe 5 mins.  And just when you think you have everything figured out, (under the category of almost everyone speaks english), our customer service rep did not speak English but we had Google Translate for the win. She was nice, happy and welcoming and showed us what to do.  Another pleasant interaction.

Under the category of things Stacey should have packed was her insulated water mug - it wasn't a huge Stanley, but it was bigger than a pint glass. She's been on the hunt for one that is similar. The apartment glasses selection is varied but none are very big - think mostly juice or rocks glasses - and none have a way to ensure it doesn't leak when it tips over - she is a self-admitted clutz. She is enjoying this hunt as she gets to go into all kinds of interesting stores to see if they have one.

Today, we are visiting a produce and flea market!