Today marks 3-months since we arrived in Portugal. In many ways the time has flown by. In other ways it’s been a brutal three months. And as I suspected when we started this blog, I have been horrible at keeping up with it. Since I know some of you aren’t on Facebook and don’t see our updates there, I will try to touch on everything that has been happening since we arrived.
We arrived safely in Lisbon the morning of the 12th, all of our luggage arrived, our driver we hired was waiting for us and we got to our rental house about 11am local time. The dogs arrived the next night and were delivered right to the house. They quickly settled in and we were all happy and cozy in our new home.
On December 17th the real adventure started. We met Chris, our contractor, at the house we had bought to discuss the renovations we wanted to do to the house before moving in. He was onboard with everything we wanted to do and put our mind at ease that we could accomplish what we wanted to do so we set off to draw up some plans so he could get started as soon as possible. And that’s where the good news ended.
As Chris started to dig into things after Christmas he said, “I think there’s been a fire here.” We said yes, the old boiler in the basement burned up. He said, “No, I think it was bigger than that.” Boy was it! December 27, 2023, our house had made the news. As Chris began to look into things in the house we discovered a lot of hidden damage. Our minor cosmetic renovations were quickly turning into a nearly full gut remodel. For legal purposes that is about all we can say at the moment, but we are pressing ahead and we’re finally about ready to start putting things back together.
As if that wasn’t enough drama, then came Kristin on January 28th. Storm Kristin, officially classified as an extratropical cyclone, developed rapidly and came ashore in central Portugal before dawn on January 28th with the strongest winds ever recorded in Portugal! The level of destruction was beyond words. A path about 60 miles wide north-to-south and well over 150 miles from west-to-east was devastated. Countless houses lost rooves, power and cellular service was out for about 1 million people, and 15 million trees were toppled. Total damages in Portugal are estimated to be over €6 billion. Power was just restored last week to the village where the house we bought is located. We have never been happier to be living in a rental.
We were very fortunate to have only suffered minor roof damage to both our rental house and purchased house. However, we lost a lot of huge old cork oak trees, which took out a lot of fencing at the new house and the barn roof sailed away like a kite. It took about two days to clear the driveway of trees. We still have a lot of cleanup left to do so if you want to come visit please do, but don’t forget your work gloves!
Despite all that, we love Portugal and, aside from our friends and family, we can’t say we miss the U.S. at all. Actually, I’ve never been happier to not be in the U.S. I’ve added some pictures below showing damage from Kristin.
I’ll try to do better going forward with more regular posts.
