Leaving for Portugal Tomorrow

Tomorrow we fly to Portugal to finalise the house purchase. We are both really looking forward to it, although undoubtedly we'll have some problems with Portuguese bureaucracy as we go through all the legal procedures.

The owner will be in Tabua from September 17th, which is a little later than we expected. Sometime after that we should be able to do the final transfer of the deeds, and then the keys will be ours. Meantime, he has assured us that we can enter the house (his mother-in-law next door can give us the keys), which means we can take a closer look and begin discussing details with the architect, Paulo. Thus far, Paulo has been a little slow at responding by email and we haven't been able to make as much progress as I'd hoped. Of course, Portugal hosting Euro 2004 earlier in the summer didn't help... the whole country seemed to shut down for a month. Then there were the Olympics?

Anyway, with luck he'll be able to come up with some suitable plans within a reasonable time, and these will have to go to the town administration for approval. Apparently it can take 3 months to get a response, so we want to get them in as soon as possible.

So, the priorities on this trip are simply to complete the transfer and make enough progress with Paulo that he can finish up without us being present. We'll see if we get that far!