This morning we packed what was left, cleaned our hotel room up and headed to the new house. Next it was a massive grocery run to stock the fridge of an empty house. You have no idea how many condiments and things you keep in your fridge until you have to start all over from scratch. After all the groceries were put away and we’d unpacked a little bit we hopped in the loaner car to go look for a car of our own. On the way through the towns we got lost and then found again a couple times. We stumbled into a really cool looking festival in the biggest city on the island, Angra, and it looks like it runs through the 30th, so we’ll have to come back and check that out. We found the Azorean version of Walmart, called Continente Modelos, and shopped there for some stuff. We got some fresh mussels and shrimp for dinner from the seafood counter inside.
We have European maps for our GPS, and amazingly enough it has maps of the Azores and this island on it. People here give horrendous directions, all landmark based and confusing as hell, and I wondered before I got here haven’t these people ever heard of a GPS? I finally got brave enough to ask the question on a Lajes Facebook group and many people said they didn’t want to pay for the European map update to their GPS (which we already had because of living in Germany) and those that did said they couldn’t rely on their GPS to be right. Well we experienced firsthand what they were talking about today. We had a receipt from a place we wanted to check out, a store called Deborlas that is kind of like a Big Lots but a little better and more selection. We typed in the address and our GPS couldn’t find it. We tried everything to get it to pull up. Nothing. I used the iphone to google the place and found an address on the website, no luck. Finally I noticed the webpage also had GPS coordinates on it, so we tried putting those in and voila! We weren’t so sure the GPS was even taking us to a legitimate store since it seemed to be in the middle of absolutely no where, but we figured we’d follow it to where it wanted us to go and see if there was anything good there. It was right for the most part and we found it. So now I have to navigate my way around this island without a GPS , looking for landmarks, while attempting not to destroy my car, myself or anyone else because I am forced to drive a manual in the land of never ending hills. Yep….prisoner! LOL I’m fairly certain I may soon have the best ass on the island, considering the amount of walking and bike riding I will be doing to get anywhere!
While on the subject of appearance, at least my ass will look good, because my hair is going to be a total rats nest. We were told before arriving that it is windy all the time here. Windy is an understatement. Seriously. This is not windy, this is worse than most hurricanes I’ve boarded up the house for in my entire life! Today’s wind was sustained at 18 knots and gusts up to 40 knots. Strong enough to almost blow poor Colin over! I’m going to be restricted to knotting my hair in a ponytail or bun for the next two years, and even then it gets all wild and windblown. Sigh. 5 days down, 725 days to go!
We have European maps for our GPS, and amazingly enough it has maps of the Azores and this island on it. People here give horrendous directions, all landmark based and confusing as hell, and I wondered before I got here haven’t these people ever heard of a GPS? I finally got brave enough to ask the question on a Lajes Facebook group and many people said they didn’t want to pay for the European map update to their GPS (which we already had because of living in Germany) and those that did said they couldn’t rely on their GPS to be right. Well we experienced firsthand what they were talking about today. We had a receipt from a place we wanted to check out, a store called Deborlas that is kind of like a Big Lots but a little better and more selection. We typed in the address and our GPS couldn’t find it. We tried everything to get it to pull up. Nothing. I used the iphone to google the place and found an address on the website, no luck. Finally I noticed the webpage also had GPS coordinates on it, so we tried putting those in and voila! We weren’t so sure the GPS was even taking us to a legitimate store since it seemed to be in the middle of absolutely no where, but we figured we’d follow it to where it wanted us to go and see if there was anything good there. It was right for the most part and we found it. So now I have to navigate my way around this island without a GPS , looking for landmarks, while attempting not to destroy my car, myself or anyone else because I am forced to drive a manual in the land of never ending hills. Yep….prisoner! LOL I’m fairly certain I may soon have the best ass on the island, considering the amount of walking and bike riding I will be doing to get anywhere!
While on the subject of appearance, at least my ass will look good, because my hair is going to be a total rats nest. We were told before arriving that it is windy all the time here. Windy is an understatement. Seriously. This is not windy, this is worse than most hurricanes I’ve boarded up the house for in my entire life! Today’s wind was sustained at 18 knots and gusts up to 40 knots. Strong enough to almost blow poor Colin over! I’m going to be restricted to knotting my hair in a ponytail or bun for the next two years, and even then it gets all wild and windblown. Sigh. 5 days down, 725 days to go!
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