New England

I'll admit that we were a little apprehensive about our trip to the US.  We had tried to shift our focus to more local and regional news but the stories of heavy handed police action and the overall anti-non-US-born tone coming from the USA had been difficult to ignore.

Our arrival at Boston airport reset the tone.  The customs official was friendly and welcomed us with a "I've heard that Portugal is a wonderful place to retire!  Welcome back!"

Driving from the airport, Anne kept on gasping at the amazing new greens of the plants waking up to spring and the vibrant colors of the blossoms and new leaves on trees lining the streets.

Spring in Boston - photo by Anne

As usual we stayed at the Swampscott house of the first American friend we'd met when we came over here in 2001. Mary has a sweet little dog, Trixie, who likes to watch TV and barks hilariously at any animal that appears on the screen.

Trixie on guard

We ended up being a bit frantic over the few days in New England, driving miles to meet close friends in suburbs far apart.  One friend pointed out that we should organize an event-based catch-up and invite people over rather than trying to cram in lunch and dinner dates.  Unfortunately we didn't get to see everyone that we wanted to see so we are going to aim for something less frenetic the next time we visit.

Leaving an established home is no joke.  Each of our visits back to South Africa and now to the USA reminds us of close friends we have left behind and of course raises questions about the wisdom of choosing to relocate in the first place.  We have resolved this question rationally but the heart may have a more nuanced story than the one we tell ourselves when the topic comes up.

photo by Anne

We have been recounting to our friends here how much we love living in Portugal.   The sense of community and friendships that are developing there are exceptional given how difficult it is to make connections as you get older.  I think the reason is that we are surrounded by people who took the leap themselves and are as open to socializing and making friends as we are.

Some of the friendships that we have in New England were formed in the months before we relocated to Portugal and we found ourselves wishing that we'd known them for longer!  One of the couples are parents of an outstanding ex-pupil of Anne's and they invited us to join them for a few days at their cottage on Martha's Vineyard.

I had been there once before for a work retreat where we got to see very little of the island so it was amazing to have another chance for a very informed tour of all of the towns and regions of the island. 

We walked on to the ferry in Wood's Hole and were picked up by Tom and Dottie at the ferry landing point in the Vineyard.

Ferry coming into Vineyard Haven

The weather was cool but perfect for driving around and learning about some of the historical high-lights (and lows) of the island's history.

A very quaint area in Oak's Bluff started as a Methodist campground which over the years evolved into little cottages built on the footprint of the original tent sites.  

Gingerbread house in the Methodist campsite - photo by Anne

We were taken on tours of the five towns of the island with highlights that included views of all but one of the lighthouses,

Gay Head light - photo by Anne

and the incredible clay cliffs of Aquinnah (formerly Gay Head) beach.  The red rock of the cliff turns out to be malleable red clay!

Rain fed etching of red on the beach from the clay cliff

The cliffs are beautiful.

Gay Head cliffs 

and our friend had us stand for a portrait with the cliffs, lighthouse and mainland of Cape Cod in our background.

photo by Tom

We visited the botanical gardens and drove past some really interesting trees with branches hanging almost to the ground and stretching out like a spider.

In the botanical gardens we came across these simple chairs that I'm going to try to replicate when we stop traveling.  The design is very simple and they are quite comfortable! 

Adirondack chair design

Portuguese e America club

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Mo's lunch in the buildings of the Portuguese American club and it was cool to see their emblem on the wall.  

The restaurant leases the space so there was no Portuguese spoken there but this is one of quite a few such clubs in the North East.

Another highlight was the sculpture garden (called the field gallery) which was founded in 1970 in West Tisbury.  The sculptures are playful and we walked around the garden in the evening sun.

Anne posed with one of the sculptures.

Anne and the leaning woman

We visited a beautiful gallery the next morning with an entire room devoted to the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt who spent over 50 summers in the Vineyard from 1930 till his death on the island in 1995.  His iconic images included many celebrities and the famous kiss in Time's Square on V-J day.

Alfred Eisenstaedt gallery

The gallery is beautifully curated with displays and supporting books and includes beautiful contemporary art of residents and past residents of the island.

It was a lovely visit and Tom and Dottie gave us such a warm welcome and a very interesting tour with great historical anecdotes.    

In all, my only regret is not figuring out a way to see more people.  We'll have to plan the next visit better.

After New England we are on to New Mexico to see Matt and Audrey.

Temporary resident

Monday morning early I was off to the Portuguese consulate in Boston.  The person who had helped Anne first, and had then handled my application was sitting at the reception window and very apologetically let me know that the entire computer system handling visa applications and visa issuing was down in Portugal for two days because it was being upgraded.

The previous weekend I had decided to change my flight from the 4th of July to the 8th to make room for error because of how short the week was with the July 4th celebrations, but it was disconcerting to learn that the visa would not be ready for at least two days.

Of course when they told me that the consulate general was not in the office that day I immediately extrapolated from that he might also not be in the office on Wed or Friday due to American holiday festivities which ratcheted up my anxiety a few notches.

Some good news did arrive in the form of confirmation that our driving records from the RMV were ready for pickup at the mail handling facility so my plan was to go into the city to see the Secretary of State on the Tuesday.

I decided to take an Uber to avoid the stress of having to find the building and having to find parking nearby.  In Boston you can easily pay $30 for parking for several hours so the Uber fee seemed like a reasonable compromise.

The building is right behind the imposing State House with its gold dome that faces over the one corner of the Boston Commons.  I had read up on the process to get the driving records "apostilled" and had filled in the online form and had made a check out to the state department as described in the online instructions. 

In reality, the entire experience was pretty pleasant compared to what I'd imagined given the warnings about how many forms you could bring and how you might have to leave them there if they didn't get processed by 4pm.

The room was fairly chaotic because it turns out there are a lot of people looking for apostilled documents for many countries.  The desk clerks were rotating to the counter calling out country names for people to pick up already processed documents, sending people off to the cashier to pay if they didn't have a check or a money order (two forms of payment that the web-site said were the only ones accepted), and calling on people in a line to step forward one at a time to hand over documents.

Columbia, Guatemala, Bolivia and a few European countries were called before I got to say "for Portugal" to the desk clerk who called me forward.

She took my check and pointed to the wall behind me and said "wait there" after pushing my carefully filled in form back at me (not needed), and then she vanished to her desk in a small office.  About 10 min later she handed me my folder with the completed documents.

One the way back I decided to take the Boston T which was fortunate because I was able to spot a sign on one of the street-side entrances with a questionable interpretation

and also stop at some places that filled me with nostalgia.

The State House of course, followed by a walk through the common to the State Street subway station and on to the Blue Line train which took me past our old home station, Orient Heights where I'd caught the bus to our first rental in Winthrop.

Our friend Gene had said that she was planning to take an evening ferry ride into Boston with a friend of hers and I should join them if I wanted to - we ended up having burritos for supper on a somewhat chilly, windy deck but with views of the airport,

Gene in the foreground getting ready to photograph the plane as well!

 the water tower in Winthrop

and a massive luxury yacht on the wharf.

I had lunch arranged with a colleague on Wednesday but had a phone call as I was getting ready to leave.  America has so many scams and ridiculous marketing calls that few people, myself included, answer their mobile phones when unknown numbers call them, but some instinct made me take the call.  It was the Portuguese consulate letting me know that my visa was ready to be picked up.

I raced into town and parked across from the consulate building and managed to make the pickup and get to my lunch meeting in time, feeling very much relieved that I'd now secured everything that I needed to return to Portugal where I can stay permanently (subject to one more appointment to get my residence card).

After lunch I went to Gillette stadium for what was probably my last opportunity to photograph the New England Revolution soccer team.  A privilege that I'd been enjoying since 2005 when a fellow camera club member had invited me to stand in for him while he was working at a National Park in the North West.

The evening was quite eventful because the media pass I was given was accidentally for a sportswriter and not a photographer so it did not give me field access.  I had to get the help of the person in charge of media liaison and then the head of stadium security to hand-write a pass for me and then tell all of the security personnel that my media pass was not fake.  Both of them were pretty busy in the lead-up to the game and I felt obliged to apologize for being so "high maintenance".  

At the end of the game as I was walking around to set up a spot to photograph the fireworks planned for after the game at least two security people looked and my pass and said brightly : "oh we were told about you!" 

As we've discovered before, traveling with gear that is not packed in a familiar container led to me realizing the next day that one of my really expensive camera lenses was missing!  I remembered having had it at the stadium for shooting the fireworks but could not remember seeing it when I got home.  That and the fact that the car I was borrowing ended up with a nail in one of the tires almost ruined my enjoyment of the 4th of July celebrations, especially the fireworks which I'd been looking forward to photographing. 

Another camera club friend had invited me to his brother-in-law's 4th of July barbecue. When I told him about the flat tire he offered to bring his battery-operated pump the next morning to get the car into a state where I could drive it to have it repaired.   I went out later on to take a look at the car after sending a few emails to the media liaison person and two of my sports photography friends asking whether the lens had turned up.  I reached under a seat and found the lens had rolled in there.  It is a black lens but it would probably have been revealed if I'd been a little less panicked and had used a flashlight during my two previous attempts to find it.

In the meantime, Anne had gone to England for a week to see our daughters (and their families) and Nick, and she flew back on the 4th to our empty house.  I took a screenshot of the security camera recording of her at the front door and called her to say welcome home despite not being able to be there to welcome her.

I arranged to see Matt on the weekend.  We met at this awesome restaurant at around the midpoint between Boston and New Haven.  It has lots of signed photographs of famous authors and has bookshelves lined with books on all the walls.  You can take 3 books from select shelves if you have a meal there.  The only problem is how long it might take to select the three since most people there are stopping for a bite on their travels.  In the end I found one book which I thought (in vain as it happens) that I might read on the way back to Portugal.   After lunch we took a walk around a nearby lake.

With all the admin tasks and the trip to see Matt, I didn't get to see many of the people I would have liked to see this time around.  This was possibly the last trip to the USA for a while.  My errands mostly involved taking care of things to prepare to move my primary residence to Portugal.  My tax residency will move to Portugal as well which means that next year (and forever more) we will have to file taxes both in America and Portugal as ex-patriot Americans.

My last trip over the Nahant causeway was an opportunity to take one more photograph of that view with the evening sky and a plane coming in to land at Logan airport.  This last trip was tinged with sadness but I was very happy to be on my way back to Anne and my new home.

I discovered on my flight back from Boston that, probably because I had reserved an aisle seat early on, no one had taken the two seats next to me.  I thought this was fantastic but discovered that with the combination of my body clock (it was early evening when we took off) and the 5 and half hour flight duration I would have scant chance of sleeping even though I did lie down across the 3 seats for 30 min or so to try my luck.

I proudly informed the customs officer that I had a temporary residence visa in Portuguese after which I opened the passport to the page because he had no idea what I had said.  "Bit by bit" our Portuguese teacher says but this was not one of those bits, it was pure incomprehension.

But it was a big relief to know, once he stamped the page opposite the visa, that I was not going to have to leave Portugal every 3 months anymore.

I arrived in Faro at around mid-morning and insisted on staying awake all day which meant that Anne had to tolerate my zombie mode until 9:30 that night.

So on to the next adventure - settling in and exploring!

Massachusetts - Marblehead (May/June)

I have joked about being boomer digital nomads because we have to go back to be closer to our home town in Massachusetts to do annual and semi-annual visits to doctors.

I expect if we applied enough thought to it we might have come up with an alternative plan, but for now we are just setting our annual checkup appointments to coincide with when we expect to be there.  Most of these appointments are in December but Anne and I both had something set up for May so there we were.

Portugal rotary sculpture: metaphor for digital nomads and the danger of inviting them to stay

 

We have dear friends in Massachusetts and most of them have offered to have us over to stay when we are back there.   We are very grateful for the offers which are so appreciated. 

New York train to New Haven

It's a little tricky of course.  Such generosity should not be met with a resounding "thank you", followed by hauling out the calendar to reserve dates, because having people stay in your house for a while is hard work and we know it. 

We do make arrangements to stay where we feel we will be the least intrusive and are able to lend a hand by helping out with pet-sitting, internet or computer-related fix-ups, and that feels more comfortable.  We have also used AirBnB, long stay hotels and the house-sitting app (Trusted House Sitters) to find places to mix into our trips back.

The first friend we made in the USA lives in Marblehead and we stopped there in late May taking care of a few appointments.

Spring in the North East of the USA is breathtakingly beautiful. The explosion of new leaves and blossoms reminded us of our first Winter transition to Spring in May 2001 and I found myself (true to form) thinking - "Wow, we should buy a house here!" as we were walking down the street to the shoreline in Marblehead.

It's a vain hope, of course - we already know we can't really afford to retire in the USA and the houses in this little town are selling for well above what we can comfortably afford, but I did allow the thought to linger - thinking how as you get accustomed to your surroundings that they become bland to your eye.

The striking town vistas that I have enjoyed photographing in the places we have visited would all become ordinary once we have lived there for a while.

Anne will quickly point out that this is never true with a vista over the sea because those are so dynamic. 

After a few days in Marblehead we had a house-sitting set for the town of Amesbury which is north of the town of Essex where we lived for so many years.  It turns out that Amesbury is a quaint and very walk-able town with an attractive center featuring coffee shops and a variety of restaurants.

Right behind the town center is a stream with a small waterfall.

Our house-sit was a quiet few days with two King Charles Spaniels and two cats in a house full of rustic charm.

It was really great to be back in the vicinity of our work -  I had an opportunity to go to the RedHat Summit - what my Uber driver called a "nerd event" in Boston.

The Uber drive, over was probably the most interesting of my life.  My driver was a young man, Jerry Semper, who grew up going to Boston public schools and who took an opportunity to work for one of the large hospital organizations when they started a program for children to work for them over weekends and holidays.  He was able to buy an apartment after he left school and raise two deaf children before going back to school himself.  His daughter graduated from Boston University in 2023 (she was summa cum laude).  His entrance to Boston University is credited to an admissions officer who took an uber ride with him, heard his story and then suggested he apply for a scholarship that she knew matched his circumstances.

I was also able to take a hike with my hiking friends and ex colleagues, some of whom had done every one of the 4000 ft New Hampshire peaks with me.  The hike was short with not much elevation gain but the vibrant green of the new leaves underscored the beauty of spring in the North East.

We also took a drive down to Cape Cod to visit friends who took us for a walk on one of the local beaches.  The photo barely hints at what this beach looks like when the tide is all the way out - the beach extends for what seems like forever!

And of course living close to Nahant, we spent lots of quality time with our friends there.

We sold both of our cars on this trip which promises  a new challenge when we return.  Depending on the cost of car rental we might well buy a little beat up run-around for a few months and then sell or donate it to charity when we move on - we'll have to see.   We save enough to cover a good portion of a short rental but longer stays in the USA may require a more creative approach.

Our next stop is the UK to visit with our daughters and to take a look at Cornwall - a region of the UK that we have been encouraged to visit before we make up our minds where we will make our permanent home.  We have been traveling for 8 months and have given ourselves till the end of the year to finally decide.