So we decided to get rid of everything. New life, new wife, right? Hey , wait a minute, that’s not right! (she’s going to kill me, but I just couldn’t resist the rhyme) No – new life, new stuff, that’s it! With so little to send we had to find a more economical way. Turns out it’s barrels. Yeah, like the barrels you see them dispose of bodies in gangster movies. Those kind of barrels. We found a guy in Fall River, MA who ships barrels full of people’s belongings to Portugal all the time! Who would have guessed, right? We’re only bringing with us our clothing, some personal items, and sentimental stuff that it will be nice to have with us in our new place, so we bought a few barrels from the guy, lined them with 55 gallon trash bags, wrapped our things in more plastic, stuffed them in the barrels, sealed the trash bags, and, voila!, ready to ship!
We bring the barrels to a warehouse in New Bedford, they put them in a container and put that on a ship. Easy-Peasy! The lids are held on with a locking metal ring that has a hasp for a small pad lock for security. When the load gets to Portugal customs can X-ray the barrels and if they don’t see anything suspicious they don’t even have to open them. $30 US to buy each barrel, which we should be able to recoup when we’re done with them, and $50 US a piece to ship. Again, we can’t be sure if there are going to be any other fees or charges to receive the stuff on the other end but with any kind of luck they’ll be minimal.
Now all we need is an address to send the barrels to, and permission to stay in the country for an extended period of time. Hopefully forever! Want to talk about VISA applications? Ok, let’s do that. In the next post . . . .