Skip to main content

A new car

We were told that buying second hand car in Portugal is a bit of a mission. Dodgy dealers, lots of tax, changing your driving licences into Portuguese ones...the list goes on. What is common knowledge is the price of second hand cars, I mean my old metro could have been sold here for about £500 and anyone who knows my old car knows it ain't worth £500!

Our neighbour Jon, introduced us to Joao who runs a second hand car garage and repair shop in one of the towns locally. First great thing - he speaks perfect English, second great thing - any car he sells comes with a years guarantee, third great thing - his brother in law runs an insurance company and final great thing - he is prepared to find us a diesel car for our budget of 500 Euros!

Trouble is, it can take some time...a week later we get the call, he's found a Seat Ibiza converted car into two seater (cheaper here as the tax is lower on 'commercial cars'). It's a bit old, about 10 years old and needs some attention.

We tell Joao 'yes' and about three weeks later, once it is done up we have ourselves a car! Although it does take ALL day to get - things happen slowly here. Very slow sometimes. But 9 hours after we start to collect the car we have it in our posession!

It's black, OK maybe not great for the 35 degree heat, but lets ignore that. It's diesel which is about 40 cents cheaper a gallon than normal petrol!

Needless to say, I have not be allowed to drive it yet!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Building our Barrel Vault Wood Fired Oven

This is a short description of my barrel vault build that I have done here in Central Portugal. The final internal size is a 1m squared floor with a arch height of 50cm. I hope you enjoy and get some ideas from it. I wish to thank ukwoodfiredovenforum  for their advice and support. • 1: First I dug out a hole in the flower bed, on top of the stone wall, where the oven was to be built • 2: Set up a form to pour in the concrete base • 3: Pour the concrete base, which was about 5-6 inches deep • 4: On top of the base I cast 4-5 inches of LECA (light weight expanded clay balls) mixed with cement to hold it's form • 5: Then I cast a 2-3 inch heat retaining base, to add to the thermal mass, using calcium aluminate cement with large grain sand, as a flat base for the hearth bricks to sit on • 6-8: I then dry laid the hearth bricks on a dry bed of fine sand and clay mixture, with th...

oh what a lovely bougainvillea

It was something I wanted to grow, a plant which would cover the wall, give shade, give colour and really stamp the fact we lived abroad.   Bougainvillea. We have the other Mediterranean type of plants growing; we have olives in abundance, we have the grapes thriving, we have the figs establishing, but alas no bougainvillea.    I looked up how to grow it and it says:   Bougainvillea thrives in full sun.   “At least 5 hours a day of direct sunlight is the minimal light required for good bloom. More hours of direct sun are better. Less than 5 hours and the plant may not bloom very well.”   5 hours of sun ‘check’, good light ‘check’, south facing ‘check’….but alas the Med we are not!   This little peak of Central Portugal has cold air in winter (snow even), a vigorous breeze at dusk and is prone to a late frost.   Our courtyard is just too exposed to the elements, there is no little ‘nook’ for a bougainvillea, there is no wall for it to climb...

Chestnuts and Saints

St. Martinho or St. Martin of Tours, became the first non-  martyr  saint to receive official church worship and became one of the most popular saints in medieval Europe. (Source wikipedia). His feast day is 11 November, deep into autumn and the chestnut season. In Portugal, as it's chestnut season 'Magustos'are celebrated in St. Martinho's name. A magusto is a group  of friends and/or family who get together and bake and eat chestnuts.  We have our village magusto at the weekend.  Meanwhile at home I've been celebrating the chestnut instead of the saint.  This 'celebration' involves collecting the chestnut harvest, splitting, cooking and shelling hundreds of these shiny brown chestnuts. Well, there's not much else to do on a wet Monday in these hills. Now I've got a bowl full of chestnuts I'm looking for recipes.  Here's what I've tried so far: Chestnut cake.  Made by using blitzed chestnuts instead of regular flo...