We settle in...

Over the last few weeks we have been settling into this new life. I'll start by being terribly English and chat about the weather. The first week or two we had an unseasonably cold wind, it was warm enough during the days but the evenings were very chilly. Apart from having bedroom furniture aka the brick bed we were pretty much still camping out in the house, so evenings saw me retiring early to watch one of our many DVD's, Phil being much hardier weathered it out on the veranda. The temperatures soon warmed up again and then soared to some near record breaking temperatures, we could barely move, everyone was announcing it was very hot, even our neighbours were retiring to the cool of the interior. It was over this weekend that we had invited everyone round to eat, I thought I would melt!The hot spell was followed by some much cooler weather which frankly was a relief especially as we had another trip to Lisbon to finalise the new kitchen.We now seem to be settled into a period of pleasantly cool misty mornings and evenings with some high(ish) temperatures during the days. The inside of the house is pretty much decorated, we have furniture in all of the rooms,the kitchen has been ordered and the bathroom is still in the planning stage. Phil's daughter Vikki has been for a three week visit and it was wonderful to be able to share something of our new home with her. We have done shopping trips down to the Algarve and up to Lisbon, from Leroy-Merlin to Ikea. Ikea is off the list for future buying of large items there delivery prices are extortionate! We got a 10% discount (I say discount but we have to spend it at Ikea) due to our kitchen being on offer which was pretty much snatched back on the delivery cost, we are not amused! We lightened that visit with a trip to Quinta da Regaleira, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinta_da_Regaleira. Due to time constraints we only saw part of the gardens but it was beautiful! Our journey home was via the Troia ferry across the river Sado, I admit to singing ferry cross the Sado in my head on the crossing.I saw my first wild dolphins a very exciting trip. Much pottering has been done, little bits and pieces that needed doing, one of these was fencing to keep the dogs out. We love the dogs, they are very friendly but they do leave little presents all around our property especially on the lawn. Fifty metres of wire later we are relatively dog proofed, we are going out to collect some decent sized stones to finish the job off, over a period of time we hope to build it up into a low wall to hide the chicken wire.