House viewings

 After an relative easier morning of work in the garden (clearing brambles and mulching), we went to view houses....

After an hour and a half in the car, we arrived in Serta, which was a lovely town on a river. Whilst we waited for our appointment, we whiled away some time in a cafe drinking latte and eating vegetable soup. an absolute bargain at 4.30€ for 2 lattes and 2 bowls of soup!!

 We arrived at the estate agent, only to be told that the estate agent would be 10 mins late, she eventually turned up after 30 minutes, we told her that it was too late to see the property and left.

After a quick trip to the supermarket (thankfully air conditioned) and another supermarket for an ice cream stop where we handed out Cornetto's to strangers ( we could only buy them in a 6 pack), we arrived at the second estate agent. 

He took us in his van to our first property viewing, unfortunately the owner hadn't arrived with the key so we had to wait for 15 minutes, during this time we walked around the outside. Initial thoughts were:-

Land too small

Property too isolated

After looking inside the property, we both agreed, it was overpriced, too small inside, needing a new kitchen and there was no views from any of the windows. On the upside it was cool inside.

The next property awaited so on we went, we arrived very early and drove down tiny narrow streets clipping a step of a property as we reversed! Shouts form inside a house were heard and we quickly parked.

We asked a lady on a balcony if she knew where the property was using hand signals, the odd Portuguese word mixed with Italian and English, she gestured up the hill. We arrived at what we thought was the property and looked over the gate and garden, it was clearly empty.

We sat and waited, the estate agent rang saying he was going to be late

As we waited a small child walked to the font with her mother to get water for their sheep, neither spoke English but the child was listening to an English song with the lyric 'fuck your bitch' in it!

Steve tried to explain it was a bad song but just got smiles and nods from the mother whilst the child carried on listening.

We checked on Google maps to see if we were at the right property as the photos were not matching up, we weren't, we were 200 metres away!

Again.... we asked... using our unique mix of Portuguese/English and sign language, this time, another lady worked out what we wanted and took us, round a narrow alley past  several houses and right to the door, opening the gate and telling us to go and look around.

We wandered around, each of us exploring our priority areas, Steve the garden and me the house!! 

Initial thoughts on this one....

Garden - good size, good soil, fruit and vegetables already growing including 100's of cabbages! Steep terraces in place.

House - much better, a bigger living area, small kitchen needs updating, small bathroom needs updating, nice outdoor terrace overlooking the church, outdoor oven, room for chickens, wine making equipment, good sized loft, new roof and area for entertaining.

Location in a small hamlet, we would have to learn Portuguese very quickly, steep streets, less than 2km to a river beach, cafe and small village.

After the viewing, we both decided that it had potential and would remain on our possible list and we drove to the river beach and cafe...absolutely beautiful location, cafe by the river, old Roman bridge, seating area and font for free water.

Definite possibility however more viewings tomorrow.