First of all, that little squiggle on the a is important – it means you’re supposed to pronounce it thru your nose. The nasal tone is what differentiates bread from dick, from what I’ve been told 😂
Last week, I talked for a bit with the woman who runs the padaria (bakery that mostly sells bread). I’m sure I made a gajillion errors, but I was thrilled with how much I was able to communicate!
It was a slow day, so I was able to ask some questions about the different types of bread.
She commented on how difficult it is to learn Portuguese, and it takes time. And, yeah, I’m still only around an A2 level, which is like advanced beginner, not yet intermediate level. Adjusting to a whole new country and starting a business, learning how to do the marketing and write sales copy and all of those skills that go into running a business… that has been a lot to process! I haven’t had the mental energy to consistently study and practice learning. I reached a level at which I can navigate restaurants and the market, and then kind of plateaued.
But, it wasn’t just the language!
I have SO MUCH to learn about bread here!
I learned that I love rye bread (pão centeio), which I don’t think I ever tasted in the US!
But not all rye bread. There’s a really dense version that this shop carries that I didn’t really care for.
Pão de massa mãe is naturally fermented. The apps translate it to sourdough, but doesn’t have the sour taste I associate with sourdough. I don’t know if that means it’s a different recipe or if I just didn’t get to know sourdough well enough before moving here!
This is the first time I’ve lived in a place where it made sense to go to a local bakery for my bread instead of to the grocery store. You can also get pre-packaged sliced bread at the grocery store here, but the bread from a padaria is so much better!
There are things that Portugal does better than the US
I’m not here to pretend like Portugal is some perfect utopia, because it’s not, because nowhere is perfect. There’s plenty for people to complain about here. (The neighborhood facebook group reminds me of any Nextdoor group in the US 😬)
But today, a couple of things are standing out as making the US look like a real shithole country.
First, today, Sunday, is election day. They scheduled their presidential election for the day of the week when people are most likely to be off work. What a concept!
Sure, there are still some businesses open. The major chain grocery stores, the big shopping malls, and a lot of restaurants and pastelerias are open. But most local shops are closed today.
If your goal were to make it as easy as possible for people to be able to go vote, today makes a lot more sense than a Tuesday would!
The other thing is the banking system. This came to mind because I bought something online, and that process was a little confusing until I figured it out.
And I’m going to describe what I understand, instead of claiming to be any sort of expert on this system.
So there’s the MB, or MultiBanco network here. There are several banks, but as long as I go to an ATM with the MB logo, I can use it without a fee, regardless of whether I’m at Millennium, Santander, Novobanco, or any other bank.
And, there’s a system called MB Way that lets you pay easily through your bank app. I think there’s also a separate MBWay app you can use, but my bank app has that built in.
It makes it easy to transfer money without having to figure out what third-party app to use – zelle, cashapp, venmo, or whatever.
To pay digitally at stores, you can use your card, or you can open your app, and then scan the QR code on the card reader to handle the transfer that way. I assume you probably could touch your phone to any card readers that accept contactless payment, too, if you use a digital wallet. But honestly, the bank app is so simple and feels more secure.
And I also use MB Way to pay online. Today, I:
Entered my phone number into the payment portal
Received a notification immediately to log into my app to accept the payment
Clicked to accept the payment as was asked for my code
And that’s a whole other thing that was completely new to me here, but that feels so much safer than shopping online in the US!
When you set up your bank account here, you get a 7 digit multicanal code. And then, for a lot of digital transactions, they ask you to verify it by entering 3 of those digits.
So if your code was 1234567, one day they may ask for the 4th, 2nd, and 7th number of your code – 427. Another day, it may be the 7th, 1st, 5th – 715.
I don’t think I’ve needed to verify when I scanned a QR code to pay, but I do have to verify it any time I set up a transfer or make a purchase online.
Not every online purchase here is quite so streamlined. For one past purchase, instead of having their website programmed to connect directly to my phone number, they just showed their info – an “entity” identifier and reference number. I had to go into my bank app and type those into the page to pay that way.
I have to admit that I lean toward luddite in a lot of cases – not anti-technology, but not particularly trusting of those offering the technology. There’s a reason I’m typing here instead of on some social media platform!
So I didn’t jump on every new trend with digital wallets and try every new feature immediately in my bank apps in the US. I never particularly trusted Zelle, and only ever used it when I needed to set it up to pay one particular person that was helping me with some things, so I didn’t want to be difficult!
But when I did use Zelle, it was a pain in the ass and felt less secure than MB Way. Learning my multicanal code has also felt kind of like a pain in the ass, but it seems like a useful extra layer of security.
Of course, Portugal also has universal healthcare! But, they’ve been under-funding that for years, which is pushing more and more people to sign up for private insurance. As an immigrant, I have the private insurance to avoid adding more burden on an already strained public health system. Because the public health option is still there, my private insurance premium is only around $100/month.
And, Portugal has its own far right candidate on the ballot for president today. I really hope for anyone else to win today. But I’ll be looking at those results to see what other parts of Portugal I still want to explore, and where to stay away from.
I celebrated this new year the same way I did for the last two years – watching fireworks from my kitchen window! This year, some were being set off in a parking lot near my apartment. But there was absolute chaos coming from the distance – all along the horizon, people shooting off big sparkly fireworks, for a solid 5 minutes.
When I first arrived in Lisbon 2 years ago, I didn’t know what to expect. My new landlord was an older man who wanted to be helpful – offering suggestions for where to go to shop, mentioning cafes nearby, and so on.
And he warned me to not expect anything to be open on New Year’s Day.
I was glad to have the warning to get my groceries in advance. And, just to be safe, I bought a small jar of instant coffee, which I still have somewhere in my kitchen!
Thankfully, when I took Mocha out for her morning walk, I found a couple of cafes open, so I was able to get something good for my morning fix.
Now that I’ve been here long enough to have a sense of the normal rhythms of this neighborhood, it was almost eerie how much was closed today. As before, a couple of cafes were open, but the vast majority of businesses were closed – including restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, and so on. The only other days I can think of with so much closed are Christmas and Easter.
Looking back through my photos from my first full week in Lisbon, one of the things that stands out is just how enamored I was with the ready availability of fresh produce. Now, I’m looking at these photos, and too embarrassed to post them, because they look pretty sad. Like, just a plate with olives and dates and a banana peel, as if that’s anything particularly special 😂
I also have several photos from my first week in Lisbon of the local corner stores.
Now, for context, there were a couple of corner stores in the neighborhood I lived in in Atlanta.
They did not carry a single fresh anything.
One day, I needed milk for a recipe – just like 1/3 cup – so I walked over to Reggie’s to see if they had single-serving bottles of milk. Nope! Not even that!
Cigarettes, chips, soda, or beer, sure, but anything with a shelf life of less than 6 months? Nope.
So living in a place where the local corner stores look like this still feels absolutely magical.
I haven’t looked for milk at any of the local corner stores, though I have gotten butter at the one on the right… But milk is processed differently here, so that it’s shelf stable for a lot longer, and doesn’t need to be refrigerated until you open the container. So that wouldn’t really be a fair comparison, anyway!
I also filled up my camera with photos and videos of a park nearby. The first photos are from the day after I arrived, but I honestly have a ridiculous number of photos and videos from that park! I’ll have to do a separate post just about it.
Another big thing from this time two years ago was that I finally gave in and bought myself a couch and dining table. I had gone to Ikea at some point between arriving and 1 Jan to try all of their couches and get a few essentials. And then went home and ordered the cheapest of the acceptable couches and a table to be delivered.
I think I mentioned this last time, but one of the themes of these first couple of months in Lisbon was low-key anxiety about my visa. I was scared of going out and buying a whole bunch of stuff and then being rejected. So I made to with as little as I could until my long-stay visa got approved.
My mattress had been delivered a day after scheduled, on 29 Jan – I’m just realizing I left that detail hanging, because I thought I’d post more often for a little while! But I had that just laying on the floor until sometime in mid Feb.
Honestly, the apartment is still really sparsely furnished compared to a lot of people’s homes, because I just got used to the super minimalist vibe. But now, at least it’s just because of inertia, rather than fear of not being allowed to stay here in Lisbon!
Today is officially the second anniversary of my arrival to my new apartment in Benfica, a suburb of Lisboa.
When I visited earlier in 2023 to explore Portugal and decide whether I would really want to live here, I did spend a little time in other parts of Lisboa. But when I was looking at easy proximity to the airport, this part of town seemed way way out there.
I’m obviously not going to pinpoint my address on here, but the Mercado Municipal de Benfica is a useful reference point.
My flight landed around 6:30am, and I had to stop at the airport vet before I could leave the airport. Unfortunately, I think this was the time when I was stuck in line behind a woman who failed to get her paperwork in order before arriving…
When traveling into Portugal with an animal, you have to have documentation of your animal’s microchip number and rabies vaccinations. Within the EU, vets provide a Pet Passport, where they enter their official stamps to validate your vaccination history, which makes it a lot easier to travel between member states. Coming from outside of the EU, I had to get a USDA health certificate. That meant that I had to visit a qualifying vet, have them do a general health exam and then fill out a form with Mocha’s info, and give them a self-addressed overnight shipping label. Then they send it off to the nearest USDA office where it gets signed, stamped, and embossed, then sent to me. This all has to be done within 10 days of my arrival, which is why it needs to be overnighted!
You’re also supposed to email the airport vet with a copy of these documents and your expected arrival time at least 48 hours in advance. I don’t know how important that step is.
Anyway, when I arrived at the vet’s office, the vet was dealing with this woman, and there were 2 other people in line ahead of me. I had plenty of time to get my checked bags onto a cart while waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
This woman kept arguing and pleading with the vet, but in Portuguese, so I couldn’t understand what she was saying. So I can only assume it was because she didn’t have the right documents!
Whatever the case was, it felt like it took hours for the vet to finish with her. She definitely took more time than the next 3 of us combined.
When I finally cleared the vet, I used the airport wifi to Whatsapp the consultants who helped me rent the apartment. I had let them know my travel itinerary in advance, but with the caveat that I couldn’t know how long it would take to see the vet.
Again, I took a taxi, but this time I had cash in euros!
I wish I had written this out when it was fresher in my mind, because this part is kind of a blur. But I remember feeling this mix of excitement at all of the new scenery and a little apprehension, like I hope I didn’t just make a huge mistake, along with a lot of exhaustion!
I splurged on a first class ticket for this flight so that I could get a seat that reclined all the way flat. It was a long distance to share foot space with a 23kg / 50lb dog, and I’ve never been able to sleep at all while sitting up. Even so, I was only able to get maybe 2 hours of light sleep on the flight. And really, my arrival time was only around 1:30EST, which is around the time I normally go to sleep, so that made it even more difficult to get any sleep on the flight.
So I wasn’t in terrible shape yet when I arrived to my new apartment, but I was pretty tired!
When the taxi dropped me off, there was a woman standing outside – I assume waiting for someone to pick her up. She was very friendly and seemed to know someone would be arriving to move in, but didn’t speak much English.
She opened the front door to the building for me, so that I could put my bags inside and possibly wait in the lobby for Miguel, one of the consultant team, who was on his way to deliver my keys. But, with my bags safely stashed, I messaged Miguel that I was going to take my dog for a short walk while I waited.
I assume I must have given Mocha a chance to pee outside of the airport, but that memory has faded… Regardless, I assumed she had more business to take care of. No matter how many times I tried to get her to relieve herself in the pet relief areas in airports, she refused.
I had been checking my map app, and saw a nice little park just a couple of blocks away. So we walked over there in hopes of finding some grass. We walked past the Mercado on the way, and found a nice patch of green space with a paved trail around it, just a couple of meters from the edge of the park so you have greenery on both sides. There’s a children’s play area and some outdoor fitness equipment at the closer end, and then a covered area with tables and a concrete ping pong table at the other end.
And even at this ridiculously early time – around 7:45am – there were people out and about using the park.
It seemed so bright and vibrant and alive!
When we got back to the apartment, Miguel had taken my bags upstairs and was waiting for me.
In addition to hiring the consultants to help me rent the apartment, I hired them to take care of getting all of my utilities set up for me. So the electricity and water were already all set, and my telecom was ready to finish setting up. Miguel helped me connect to the wifi and activate my new SIM card. And I had to physically sign and initial each page of my lease – I had signed digitally in advance, but needed this version to make it fully official.
And then, here I was in this unfurnished apartment with just two checked bags and one carry-on bag. Each was the max size allowed, but still, that’s not much to set up a new life!
Before leaving ATL, I had gone to the IKEA website and ordered a mattress and sheets, and scheduled the delivery date for the 28th.
In one of my checked bags, I packed a king size quilt that I bought shortly before I decided to make this change. On one level, it feels like a silly thing to waste so much luggage space on bringing, but I really do love it.
And I brought one of my latex foam pillows. Those babies squish up to take up way less space than you’d expect, and they hold up like nobody’s business! One of them is old enough to drive 😂 I bought it in 2008 or 2009, and the foam is starting to degrade around the edges, but it’s still in surprisingly good shape!
Anyway, it turned out to be useful, because I was able to fold the quilt up and lay it out on the floor to try to nap as I waited for my Ikea delivery…
And waited…
And waited…
Finally, around 4:30, I messaged the consultant team to see if they knew of a place I could get a mattress delivered that day if the one from Ikea didn’t arrive. I don’t know what I thought I would do about the Ikea delivery if I did that, but I was desperate! I had tried to nap, but didn’t accomplish more than light dozing, because a quilt on the floor just wasn’t enough of a barrier against the cold concrete.
I also went on the website to chat with Ikea’s customer service, and was informed that my selected delivery date was not a guarantee, and my items would arrive within 5 days 🤨
Thankfully, Miguel was able to lend me a twin size air mattress until my Ikea delivery arrived! He also brought a blanket and some sheets.
It wasn’t the most comfy bedding situation ever, but I was FINALLY able to actually get some sleep!
I don’t remember what, if anything, I was able to eat during the day. I’ve always had issues with food – messing with my routine messes up my appetite, and sleep deprivation counts there! Plus, I was afraid to go anywhere for any length of time, just in case the delivery person might arrive.
But after it was clear the delivery wasn’t coming, and after I had the air mattress set up, I took Mocha out for a walk and stopped at a churrasqueira for a super simple dinner.
The chicken was good, and I stop there fairly regularly. It’s cooked over a charcoal grill, and you can get lemon sauce, piri piri (hot sauce), or both. I always do both. It’s not exactly lemon pepper (I did move here from ATL 😂) but it’s really good.
When I contacted these consultants about finding an apartment, air conditioning was not on the top of my list of requirements – mainly because I didn’t realize just how hot it gets here in the summer. But, even tho this was December, it was incredibly fortunate that this apartment does have it!
Most Portuguese homes do not have central heat or air. That was something I was a little worried about before I visited earlier in 2023, but I learned that it’s not too bad if you have good room heaters.
But, that wasn’t something I even thought about as I was preparing to move here. I’d like to say that was because I knew the wall-mounted a/c units also function as heaters, but I don’t think that’s true! I think I was just overwhelmed with everything else, and was lucky to have these wall units!
I got sidetracked from this story for a while by some crochet projects, but I’m back! I’m coming up on my 2 year anniversary of arriving at my new apartment here in Lisboa, and I want to celebrate here by reminiscing. But, I also like somewhat linear story-telling, so I need to hurry up and at least skim over most of 2023!
When I returned to Atlanta in April 2023, one of the first things I did was contact the real estate agent who helped me buy my house. In hind sight, that was a big mistake – I should have talked with a few more. But I avoid beating myself up over that by telling myself that things worked out this way for a reason.
This story might have gone differently if I had chosen a different agent who was actually good at selling houses. Instead, it took way longer than I hoped for her preferred contractor to do the work she decided was necessary to get the house ready for the market.
The real estate market in Atlanta was still fairly warm in late April / early May 2023. It had been hot and heavy for years, so I think this agent got used to being able to relatively little and still earn a fat paycheck.
And the contractor she wanted to use was… Let’s just say I would not recommend him for anything. What should have been a few days of work dragged out for weeks of two hours here, three hours there.
In hind sight, maybe she wanted me to fire her from the get go, and I was just too inexperienced and socially awkward. But again, I can’t change the past, so I’m going to justify it as what was meant to be 😂
The house FINALLY went on the market on June 24.
And it sat. And sat. And sat.
Meanwhile, I was continuing to work my full time job, nearly completely remotely. I was in “quiet quitting” mode, just coasting until I could sell my house and get my visa to leave. I had tenure and was making about $102K/year, and that meant I just kept tucking more and more into savings.
When I started on this path, once I decided to become a coach, my plan was to coast along in that job while I built a solid coaching business. From everything I’ve heard, it takes 2-5 years for a new business to become self-sustaining – as in, revenue minus business expenses equals a living wage for the proprietor. So financially, it would make sense to just coast along doing the least for at least 2 years.
But I just wasn’t happy where I was.
There was a point in late 2022 when I started thinking that maybe I would just list my house for sale, quit my job, and make the leap without even visiting. I was just that antsy to leave. But, then I talked with my supervisor about working from Portugal for a couple of months, and started planning my trip instead. I’m so incredibly glad that I did that, because I expected to love the Algarve and probably would have moved there and hated it.
But I digress!
So when I came back from my 8 week visit in April 2023, my plan was to stay in my job until I was ready to move. I needed to sell my house, apply for my visa, wait to get the visa approved, and then I’d have some time (I want to say 90 days, but maybe just 60?) to actually make the move.
So keep collecting that paycheck until I had the visa approved, and then put in my notice.
And then, the university president decided to issue a RTO mandate.
Now, I was tenured faculty, so I worked from home as often as not before covid. I went into campus when I had meetings to attend or classes to teach, but not on days when I didn’t. And when I did go in, I’d often only be there for 4-6 hours, getting the rest of my work done before heading in or later in the evening.
This was political nonsense that was stricter than anything I had actually done before covid.
And I knew there was absolutely no rational justification for this, it was just a magat’s political bullshit. And I’m too autistic to just go along with that!
So I put in my notice, with my last day being Aug 15, 2023. I did wind up regretting that a little bit, because if I had set the date for Aug 31, I would have had a perfect 12 years in that role 😂 But oh well!
It was a huge risk, since I still had no offers on my house.
Sometime around then, I fired that initial real estate agent and hired someone else. Within days, she had two crews of contractors out to give estimates on work that she thought needed to be done, and the only reason it took a whole week or two to get the house re-listed was for the optics on the listing site.
This new agent was actually good at her job, but the interest rate increases had poured ice water all over the real estate market in ATL. And having the house sit on the market for as long as it did was another strike against me.
I finally finally finally got an offer in late October!
I had all of this time, and did do some de-cluttering, but not nearly as much as I should have. So now I had to jump into high gear to clear out the house. I gave away almost all of my furniture – I tried selling what I could, but just didn’t have the energy to do much of that. The vast majority of it came from Ikea – I got the better quality real wood stuff instead of particle board, but still, it wasn’t exactly heirloom pieces.
And it was time to contact a consultant – someone a former neighbor recommended – to rent an apartment, because I would need a valid lease for my visa application. I told her that I wanted to move to Setúbal, and she could do that. It would cost a little more to cover the expense of traveling there, because she’s based in Lisboa, but we could do that.
But, she did know of an apartment in a great area in the outskirts of Lisboa that was being renovated, wasn’t on the market yet, and would be a perfect fit for my timeline… It was even getting air conditioning installed! That wasn’t a make-it-or-break-it requirement for me, but this felt like that path of least resistance, which was important for me at the time. The lease would be for 2 years, but I could break it without penalty after 1/3 of the way through – so 8 months – with proper notice. So this would work for my visa application, and if I don’t love it, then I can look for a new place while living in Portugal.
And that’s how I wound up in Benfica, instead of Setúbal!
My lease on this apartment started 1 Dec 2023. The sale of my house closed the day before that, on 30 Nov 2023. But, I still had to apply for my long stay visa.
Thankfully, a friend welcomed me to stay in her spare bedroom while I was in this transition. That month of clearing out the house and getting it ready to hand over was pretty frantic.
And then, I had to stalk the VFS website to get an appointment to apply for my visa – they were generally booked for months in advance, but if you catch the website right after a cancellation, you may be able to grab something on shorter notice.
And I kept going back and forth on whether to stay in ATL while I waited for my visa application to be processed, or whether to go over on a tourist visa. Portugal is in the Schengen area. I think some things have changed since then, but at that time, Americans could travel to the Schengen area without any prior approval and spend up to 90 days out of any 180 day period there.
I love the friend who welcomed me into her home, but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. So I started doing the math on finding a short term rental in ATL, and that was not great.
And then I was able to get an appointment to apply for my visa on 22 Dec! I would have to travel to Washington, DC for that. And I decided that I would go ahead and fly over to my new apartment in Lisboa on a tourist visa while I waited for that to be processed.
Getting the visa application together
The details of this process keep changing, so please remember that this is only a snapshot in time, focusing on 2023.
When I started on this path, I expected to apply for the D7 passive income visa. My understanding was that it was intended to attract retirees, but they interpreted “passive income” as any income from outside of Portugal – including active remote work. For that, you had to show assets + income worth at least the monthly minimum wage, which is less than 1000€.
Passive income could mean Social Security payments, rent payments, dividends from investments, or whatever. But, since remote work was getting lumped in this space, I came up with a bunch of new courses for Library Juice Academy!
To qualify based on assets alone (money in the bank, not recurring monthly income), you need to be able to show enough to cover that monthly amount until you can start drawing retirement – so the younger you are, the higher this amount will be. But I wasn’t focused on this, because I expected to be able to meet the monthly income level with remote work.
And then, they introduced the digital nomad or D8 visa. That separated out remote work from fully passive income and quadrupled the income requirement for those relying on remote work. That’s still not a huge amount by US standards, but a lot more than I was ready to show on any sort of reliable basis.
In theory, I could have kept my house, rented it out, and used the lease to show the required passive income. But that seemed risky. I know most tenants are good, but I’ve seen what a bad tenant can do.
When I was a kid, my mother and her husband mostly worked as the prep team for apartment complexes, cleaning and painting units between tenants. And when I visited in the summer, I’d go to work with her. Most of the time, I just helped with removing the covers from light switches and outlets, and covering them with tape, but every now and again there would be absolutely disgusting trashed units. The one that stands out in my mind was where they had thrown at least a dozen eggs on the walls and left them to dry there.
And that’s not even counting the horror stories I’ve heard since people started cooking meth in their bathtubs.
The whole process of hiring a property management company and dealing with them from abroad just seemed overwhelming, and I was ready to shed that connection. So I decided not to go that route.
And so, I needed to sell the house and get that money in the bank before I could apply for my visa.
I bought in a gentrifying neighborhood in 2018 for $265K, and sold for $385K in 2023. I also refinanced in 2020 and rolled those costs into the mortgage. So I cleared about $120K – which is an astounding amount of money to me, but not enough to cover the D7 requirements at my age.
But, that would still cover nearly 3 years of the amount required for the D8 visa before factoring in my actual income. So I hoped that would be good enough for that initial visa!
I had to compile a whole packet explaining my finances plus bank statements, plus get an FBI background check, plus have a valid lease or purchase agreement for a home in Portugal, plus have a funded Portuguese bank account, and a few other things. I took care of getting the bank account while I was in Portugal in early 2023. I did include evidence of my income from teaching at LJA, and a letter from the founder verifying that my location would not affect my ongoing contracts there. I also probably went into overkill, because I included a business plan showing how I intended to build my business to meet the D8 income requirements over the next two years, so that I would be self-sustaining before I exhaust my savings.
And then I had to travel to a VFS office to submit my application in person. VFS Global handles this process for a whole bunch of countries. They basically collect your paperwork and payment, make sure you have everything in the right order, and then hand it off to the embassy to process… At least, that’s the case for Portugal.
There are several VFS locations around the US, and where you live determines which one you have to go to. At some point during the time I was in this journey, the DC office was overloaded, and opened new locations in Miami and Houston. So I could choose between the three locations, and wound up going where I was able to get the earliest appointment once I had everything I needed together.
So, I traveled to DC on 20 Dec, so that I’d have time on the 21st to get my bearings to make sure that I would arrive on time in the right spot the next morning. And it was the first time I spent any time in DC, so I did spend a little time exploring on foot!
Everything went smoothly at the VFS appointment, and I flew back to ATL on 23 Dec. That was its own mess with a flight that just kept getting delayed and delayed further, until I was able to book on a different flight. My original flight eventually made it to ATL around an hour after I did! And luggage wasn’t an issue, because I didn’t check anything for a 3 day visit.
I don’t remember whether my friend was still in town then or not, but she headed off to spend xmas with family. So I had a couple of days in an empty house packing and repacking the two bags I planned to check and my carry-on.
I was getting ready to go move into an empty apartment, but was anxious about the visa application.
What if I take too much and it gets denied?
That was a theme for the next couple of months, until I finally got the approval!
And then, on 27 Dec 2023, I headed to the airport to depart at 2:44pm ATL time. I would connect in Boston – which I don’t recommend. JFK is much simpler, at least if you’re flying on Delta. And then my flight was scheduled to arrive in LIS at 6:25am on 28 Dec.
And that feels like a good stopping point for today!
I can’t believe that tomorrow will be the 2 year anniversary of my arrival in Benfica!
* If you’re landing here for the first time, this is the last of several posts describing my first visit to Portugal to decide whether I’d want to move here. If you want to read this section in order, start here: Chegada a Lisboa para explorar And here’s the beginning of the whole story: Onde esta história começou
Keeping with the pattern of strikes on this visit, there was no rail worker strike on my last journey, returning to Lisboa for a few days before my flight back to the US.
This time, I stayed in the Olivais neighborhood. And that’s so similar to Olaias that I kept getting the names mixed up 😂
My experience was that these different parts of town had very different vibes, but I can’t say how much of that is about the neighborhoods and how much of that was due to the way my perspective had shifted.
I picked this last spot because of its proximity to the airport – just about a 10 minute walk to a Metro station on the red line, which runs to the airport.
It turned out that the apartment was in a brand new building. Like, I think it even had central heat / air conditioning, which is incredibly rare in Portugal! It was way more than I actually needed, but my entire focus in booking this spot was to make my travel day as simple as possible.
In contrast, the place I stayed in Olaias was a very nice little apartment in an older building. It had wall-mounted space heaters and no a/c.
But over the course of this visit, I started judging neighborhoods by what I called the dog shit index – how much shit is there on the sidewalks? My assumption was that people who actually care about their neighborhood will be less likely to leave shit on the actual sidewalk, and more likely to discourage their dog from leaving a deposit there in the first place.
Based on that, Olivais seemed to be a much nicer area!
The most significant feelings that I associate with my time in Olaias were those of being a fish out of water, trying to figure out the basics of functioning in this brand-new-to-me space. Honestly, this is making me think that I should go back to walk around that area one of these days, to see what impressions I get now that I’ve been living in Lisboa for a couple of years.
The feeling I got in Olivais was relief to be back in a regular residential area where people are going about their regular lives, instead of on vacation or catering to tourists.
That’s not to say that no one stopped me to pet my dog, but it happened with a more comfortable frequency, and people were more polite about it!
One of my favorite parts of this stay was a little breakfast and lunch restaurant that I found about a block away from where I was staying. In a sharp contrast to the Algarve, the restaurant employees barely spoke any English. Thankfully, by this point I had started picking up some of the essentials, as long as people spoke slowly.
Like many authentic Portuguese restaurants, they have a “prato do dia” (plate of the day) menu instead of a fixed menu. As someone who prefers to check the menu online before deciding where to go, that took some getting used to!
And I think this was the first time I encountered getting both french fries and white rice as my side dishes with a protein! I forget what it was that I had, but steak, fish, chicken, whatever, don’t be surprised if that is served with both fries and white rice!
At another nearby traditional restaurant, I tried alheira for the first time. That regularly comes with french fries (batatas fritas) and a fried egg. I should note that batatas fritas here are generally hand-cut, which tastes way better than those in the US. But they’re rarely seasoned, which is not so great!
My other favorite thing about this area was a low key neighborhood park with a dog park. Like, this was just a nice residential area that I could see myself living in. I was already set on moving to Setúbal, but I could see this being a back up plan.
But also, this was close to Estação Oriente, a major transportation hub, and the Parque das Nações. A lot of CP train routes begin or end at Oriente, and there’s a Metro station and bus station in the same spot.
There’s also the big Vasco da Gama shopping mall right across the street from the train/metro/bus station, but I wasn’t interested in that!
Once I passed those features, I made it to the park, which apparently was the site of the 1998 Lisbon World Exposition. The best part for me was the long trail along the riverfront on the Tejo river.
At this point, the Tejo is an estuary, rather than a regular river, so I think that stretch of mud between the walkway and the river is because we were there at low tide.
I didn’t get nearly as many scenic photos from this stay, because I was emotionally preparing myself to head back to the US on 19 Apr.
The day before I left, though, I did take time to bookend the day with photos of the sunrise and sunset from my balcony.
Sunrise over Estação Oriente, Lisboa
Sunset over Lisboa
I think the last little visual I have from this stay that seems worth sharing here is this short video of the blinds in the apartment:
These blackout blinds are so common here that I’ve started to take them for granted. My apartment has some that are controlled by remote control, which is a fabulous way to “turn the lights on” in the morning, but not so great when the battery in the remote dies 😂 And others use a pull string to open and close.
But this was something I don’t remember ever seeing in the US, and they’re freaking brilliant.
Even though there were challenges and I didn’t love every part of this 8 week journey, I was absolutely in love with Portugal by this point. I wasn’t looking forward to “going home”. I was preparing myself to go get my affairs in order so that I could come back to build a new home.
This was the town where I wound up shouting at some old British man to just leave me alone!
* If you’re landing here for the first time, this is the 7th of several posts describing my first visit to Portugal to decide whether I’d want to move here. If you want to read this section in order, start here: Chegada a Lisboa para explorar And here’s the beginning of the whole story: Onde esta história começou
I’m very glad that I spent these 8 weeks traveling by train around Portugal, because it prepared me for life here. It turned out that rail workers were on strike on every other one of my travel days – including this journey. By this point, it was just normal.
Increase wages and pensions. Stop price increases. PCP is the Portuguese Communist Party.
Comboios de Portugal (CP) generally runs a certain minimal level of service. So I had to plan ahead better than I would otherwise need to, and the trains were maybe a little more crowded than usual, but I could get to where I needed to go.
I feel like being able to just roll with disruptions like this is an absolutely essential part of living here. The immigration process is messy, and has been since I started paying attention. And that has driven some people who moved here to decide to move elsewhere. But I’m sure I’ll come back around to that when I get to that point of my story…
The trouble with traveling by train was that the station is right near the central touristy part of town in these smaller towns. I don’t know whether that was by design – if they decided to put the station as close as possible to the popular destination – or if that area became touristy because of people looking for lodging and restaurants near the train station.
Either way, this was another sensory overload, with a side of too many encounters with super-entitled vacationers.
We rolled into town a little later than I hoped, because it was either that or way too early. The trains I had hoped to take were canceled by the strike. But I arrived in time to find my airbnb, get all checked in, and then make it down to the beach. There was a super moon that night. My basic iphone camera isn’t all that great for such photos, but it was cool to see in person.
But, then I walked back toward where I was staying, and stopped at one of the restaurants along the way for dinner. Of course it was in the touristy area. And of course I had Mocha along with me.
As I was sitting at a dining table in front of a restaurant, OBVIOUSLY there for dinner, some horrible person thought it would be cool to let her dog come get in Mocha’s space.
Mo was laying calmly right next to me, and this awful, entitled, inconsiderate woman thought it would be cool to interrupt my dinner for her dog’s entertainment.
And that was really the vibe in Lagos.
When I got out of the city center, it wasn’t so bad. But there were a lot of people on vacation who seemed to act like everyone else is just an NPC there to entertain them.
The beaches were absolutely gorgeous, which is of course a big part of what attracts crowds.
I arrived on 6 Apr, which is still the off-season, so they weren’t completely packed… Tho they weren’t entirely empty, either.
And it was pretty cool to walk around the old city walls. There’s also a castle in the city center that I walked through but didn’t take photos of.
The restaurants in the city center were fine, but I didn’t see anything to write home about. But I did find a couple of spots outside the city walls where the food was worth taking photos of!
Lulas grelhadas – grilled squid, with potatoes and salad
Arroz de marisco – seafood rice
The best day I had in Lagos was one when I didn’t have any meetings or anything (I was actually working remotely, not just on vacation!), and was able to just take off for a walk way south of the city. Looking at a map now, I don’t remember how far I made it. But the views were absolutely gorgeous.
We kept going after the boardwalk ended, blissfully walking along a trail through the scrub brush, mostly letting Mocha have fun running off leash because nobody was around.
And then, near the access point where I was planning to leave that area anyway to start heading back, I saw this sign:
Pine processionary caterpillars develop urticating hairs that cause allergies on the skin, in the eyes and in the respiratory tract of human beings, and can cause the same symptoms in animals.
The greatest risk of allergies occurs between January and April, when the caterpillars come down from the trees until they bury themselves in the ground.
😬
Thankfully, we got lucky! Because of that, I’m kind of glad I didn’t know about these until the very end of this adventure – I might not have had as much fun if I had known the risk!
There were some good parts of this stay, but it very much did not feel like the sort of place where I could stand to live.
I’m incredibly glad that I was able to bring Mocha with me on this trip. She does actually serve as a service dog – all that training wasn’t just so that I bring her in the cabin on the plane.
But she’s gorgeous, and it’s absolutely fucking exhausting to have that many random strangers coming up every day wanting to pet her.
At this point, it’s probably relevant that I’m autistic. I was formally diagnosed in my early 40s. I can mask well enough to have gotten by undetected until then, but I have a limited capacity for interactions with random strangers.
On my last morning in town, I finally reached my breaking point. I had checked out of the airbnb, walked down most of the way to the train station, and had a little time to kill.
So I stopped to order something at one of the restaurants near the train station.
I was completely over being in this town, and just wanted to be left alone until I could get out of there.
But of course, some old British man decided he wanted to pet my dog.
And I tried to politely tell him no, she is a service dog and is working right now.
Did he respect that? Nope! In hind sight, he was old, maybe he genuinely didn’t hear me, and I needed to raise my voice. Maybe he just didn’t take me seriously, and I needed to make a scene.
Either way, I wound up shouting at him loudly enough to make a scene to just leave us alone!
Like, the waiter came over afterwards to make sure I was ok because it was a scene.
But my gods, how many times am I supposed to put up with random strangers bothering us every gods damned day?
I didn’t get this dog because I want random strangers approaching me all the time. I got this dog because I wanted a dog who doesn’t shed all over my house. My last dog was a collie / german shepherd mix who created dust puppies all over the house if I didn’t vacuum at least once a week. So I got a standard poodle because she’s smart and doesn’t shed.
But so many random strangers don’t give a fuck about me and think they’re entitled to interact with my dog.
Get your own damned dog!
Grumble grouch grumble!
I don’t hate every interaction with someone who wants to pet my dog. Some people are actually respectful, particularly in regular neighborhoods, not tourist traps.
But the number of those interactions in Lagos was just completely fucking overwhelming, and I was so fucking glad to get out of there.
Today I feel like taking a break from the linear story telling to write about beans 😂
When I decided to move to Portugal, I knew my diet would change. I expected to be eating more fresh seafood.
I did not expect to find myself eating so many beans!
It’s not like I never ate beans in the US. I enjoy a good red beans & rice or black beans & rice, but it wasn’t a regular thing.
Feijão means bean. My translation app says beans (plural) translates to feijões, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen that used on a menu or label. From what I can tell, feijão seems to be like rice, in that it refers to the thing in general.
Feijoada is a bean stew, and there are several varieties that show up on “plates of the day” lists at restaurants regularly.
My favorite is feijoada de choco, which is white beans with little cubes of cuttlefish. Recipes vary, but it usually includes slices of carrot, some sausage for flavoring, tomato pulp, and seasonings. Sometimes you get a whole, unpeeled shrimp or two on top.
Feijoada á transmontana is another popular one, but I haven’t had the nerve to try it yet. That’s a bean stew with a variety of meats – sausages and various bits that my white suburban Midwest US childhood did not prepare me to find appetizing, like pig ears and feet! And I have to admit that I don’t really enjoy most of the Portuguese sausages I’ve had slices of in different dishes, so I’ve passed on this feijoada so far.
Then we have the feijoada Brasileiro. No qualifier means that it’s black beans and meat, including bits like pig ears. But feijoada Brasileiro vegana is also pretty popular and yummy!
And then there are the soups.
Soup is apparently an important part of getting your veggies here in Portugal, and it’s not uncommon for them to include beans.
As I’ve settled in here, I’ve been getting more comfortable with cooking. I used to completely hate cooking.
But fresh ingredients are just so readily accessible here! When I decide I want to cook something, I either walk like 4 minutes to the municipal market, 5 minutes to the produce shop down the block, or 6 minutes to my choice of two grocery stores (Pingo Doce or Continente).
In Atlanta, getting groceries meant driving somewhere. I lived in a gentrifying (not gentrified) part of town. The two closest grocery stores treated everyone who walks in like a suspected criminal and never had more than 1-2 registers open, no matter how long the lines got.
(To be fair to Kroger, one of those locations had to shut down for a while a few years ago because someone stole their electrical wiring for the copper. And while I was looking for that news story, I found out that someone shot and robbed an armored truck driver in front of that same store just a couple of months ago! So crime is a legit concern in the area. But I still think that adding more staffing is a better response to regular shoplifting than all the nonsense that Kroger has chosen instead.)
And it was about a 10 minute drive to either of those options.
So I’d usually make the 15-20 min drive to the nearest Publix instead.
Now I can get to the market, get what I need, and get back home in less time than it used to take to just get TO the grocery store!
And, on top of that, either EU or Portuguese food policy is just different. I’m assuming it’s that they don’t subsidize hyper-processed foods the way the US does, but I can buy a kilo of fresh tomatoes at the market for less than I can buy a can of diced tomatoes at the grocery store.
As I’ve leaned into cooking at home more, and cooking more from scratch, I’ve finally learned to cook beans from dried.
I know, that’s something a lot of people grow up doing, and I’m in my mid 40s just figuring that out! In my defense, I was raised by a single dad who didn’t know much more than how to grill meat and cook an omelet when he got custody of us, and who worked manual labor jobs, so didn’t have the energy to learn much.
I’ve had to figure out everything I know about cooking on my own, and didn’t have much incentive to learn to cook beans from dried until now.
There are at least three stalls at the market that specialize in dried goods, including several types of beans I had never heard of before!
Here we have butter beans, several varieties of white beans, catarino beans, red beans, black eyed peas, chickpeas, and canary beans! I’ve never even heard of canary beans before! I was really disappointed to learn that they lose that vibrant yellow color by the time they’re cooked.
There’s some overlap on the shot here. This view adds black beans, red and green lentils, fava beans, Congo beans, stone beans, feijão papo rola (no idea what that translates to), and beautiful beans (feijão lindo)!
And a closer view of the feijão papo rola and feijão lindo:
I’m not surprised by the fact that there are so many varieties of beans beyond what I’ve ever seen in grocery stores, but I had to learn how to cook them so I could try the new varieties!
So for the past few weeks, I’ve gotten into a habit of making a big pot of some sort of bean soup about once a week, and having that for dinner all week. This week it’s feijão lindo with cubes of sweet potato and couve (not sure if it’s kale, collards, or some other leaf that looks similar!).
This is just one of many small things that have surprised me since moving here!
This was where I felt my first pangs of something like homesickness. Except that it wasn’t for the US.
* If you’re landing here for the first time, this is the 6th of several posts describing my first visit to Portugal to decide whether I’d want to move here. If you want to read this section in order, start here: Chegada a Lisboa para explorar And here’s the beginning of the whole story: Onde esta história começou
Before I visited Portugal, I expected to fall in love with the Algarve, the southern coast. Looking at just the areas near beaches, that’s the hottest part of the country. Sure, you get hotter temperatures in some inland areas in the summer, but those areas also get colder in the winter and lack beaches!
I chose Tavira as a destination because a neighbor in Atlanta had spent time there and just loved it.
The train ride went smoothly, with no strike! We transferred to a regional train in Faro. Mocha handled it better this time and hopped onto the train on her own.
But, then, in what seems like a bad omen for the week, getting from the train station to the airbnb was way more difficult than it needed to be. The host sent coordinates that were supposed to take me to the rear entrance instead of the front door, because that side was closer to the train station.
Except he sent the wrong coordinates.
And I was tired and hungry and needed to pee, and now I’m lost! Wah!
I eventually made it to the house, and it was fine.
And then I went out looking for dinner, and wound up just… wishing I could go somewhere else.
The vibe was overwhelmingly “tourist trap”.
Now, I know that some people love that vibe. Tourists flock to places that have that vibe and that vibe develops because businesses provide the experience that tourists want. And if that’s the vibe you love, then I’m happy for you to enjoy it.
But that feels like sensory overwhelm and the walls closing in on me all at once.
I don’t like when waiters start talking to me to convince me to eat there because I looked like I might be pausing to read their menu.
I don’t like crowded spaces.
I didn’t go to Portugal to be surrounded by Americans and Brits.
And that’s when I started feeling something similar to homesickness, except that I wanted to go back to Setúbal.
So that was a big sign for me!
One of the reasons I planned this trip for a whole 8 weeks was because I think that’s the longest I’ve ever spent outside of the US before this.
In high school, I spent a summer as an exchange student in Naha, Okinawa. That was 30 years ago, so I don’t remember for sure, but I think that was only a 6 week program. I do remember that culture shock started kicking in around 4 weeks into the program.
And then, in grad school, I enrolled in an in-country language training program in Indonesia. Before becoming a librarian, my plan was to become a cultural anthropologist, studying the indigenous religious practices of the Iban, a small ethnic group in northwestern Borneo. So I spent the summer of 2006 in Madison, Wisconsin at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI), and then enrolled in COTIM – Consortium for the Teaching of Indonesian and Malay – in the summer of 2008. That was in Salatiga, in Central Java, Indonesia.
The COTIM program was structured with 4 weeks of intensive language classes, one week for independent projects, and then 4 more weeks of classes. I planned to travel to Pontianak to meet some people that my PhD advisor was providing an introduction to.
A week or two into the program, my PhD advisor died. It wasn’t a surprise – he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer the previous fall. But he had become like a second father figure, and it hit me harder than I expected it to.
I made it through the first 4 weeks, and then went home instead of going to do my project.
So I have no idea how I would have adjusted under normal conditions, but I know I went home at around the same time that I started feeling the culture shock in my previous stay outside of the US.
I arrived in Tavira right around the 6 week mark – so I was doing better than I ever had before!
After the first day or two, I did start exploring further afield and found some beautiful spots.
The old castle is still close to the center of town, not so far out, but I guess we went at not-peak times!
Castelo de Tavira at twilightDescription in multiple languagesThe view from the Castelo de Tavira
There wasn’t much going on, other than some fishing boats docking, on the other side of the river from the main touristy area. I let Mocha run a little bit over there, and caught some great sunset views.
And a little way up river, we found a nice park to walk in, and some trails where Mo could run off leash more freely. But, they had this feature that I’ve never seen anywhere else!
This shows up on google as Parque Rodoviário – it’s several intersecting “roadways” with at least one roundabout, with each lane about as wide as a standard bike lane!
This was a rare empty shot, because I don’t think it’s cool to take photos of other people’s kids. But most of the times that I walked by, it was full of kids on bikes, roller skates, and I think even some skate boards, all just looping around, following the rules of the road 😂
I did also really enjoy the bright flowers climbing all over the houses.
But, I didn’t fall in love with Tavira.
I did, however, get a laugh out of this BDSM Jesus poster for an easter service 😂 I think it was actually for a religious service, but that image looks like an ad for a kinky gay bar to me!
* If you’re landing here for the first time, this is the 5th of several posts describing my first visit to Portugal to decide whether I’d want to move here. If you want to read this section in order, start here: Chegada a Lisboa para explorar And here’s the beginning of the whole story: Onde esta história começou
The trip to Setúbal (which is pronounced more like Stúbl) went pretty smoothly, and it wasn’t long before I fell in love!
I booked a small apartment in the historic district, which is very cute with a lot of pedestrians-only streets and narrow travessas. Once I got to that area, I was stopping to check the map on my phone practically every 2 minutes, because it felt kind of like a maze!
One of the more open areas
That cat stalked Mocha for a good block after we passed its window perch!
The host met me at the door, which was super convenient for him because he lives right next door. That worked out because he was entirely respectful and very friendly, and was more present as a host than at any of my other stays on this trip. He reminded me of what airbnb used to be about – actually meeting people and sharing experiences.
Our conversations were challenging (in a good way!) and relied heavily on google translate. He’s from Belgium, so fluent in French, and I think knew some Spanish, but was just learning Portuguese, while I only spoke English, plus the tiny bits of Spanish that I remember from high school. I was very proud of myself when I was able to produce a couple of super-basic sentences here and there that he could actually understand!
Setúbal is a decent sized city, about an hour by train from Lisboa. Compared to São Martinho do Porto, it felt like it has every amenity I would need on any sort of regular basis.
This is the part of town that I spent the vast majority of my time exploring.
There are a lot more residential areas and parks to north and east of this section, but most of the times when I headed out to go more than 15 minutes in any given direction, it was toward the Parque Urbano de Albarquel to walk along the sandy beach.
The best part was further to the southwest. As far as I could tell, the end of that slanted wall from the beach up to the sidewalk was the end of the official parque.
But when the tide is out, you can keep on walking.
I never got my timing right to check it, but I think that at low tide, you can walk all the way to Praia de Albarquel, at the bottom left of the map above. This seems to be the first place to go underwater as the tide rolls back in! If you zoom in closely enough, you can see a group of people on the trail on the other side of the water – they started wading across in what I thought was really cold water!
And this beach is a big part of why I fell in love.
It was about a 30-40 minute walk from where I was staying to the end of the beach, so I didn’t make it there every day. Most days, though, I made time to go sit by the waterfront in Jardim Engenheiro LuÃs da Fonseca, which was just like a 6 minute walk from the apartment.
I loved how many other people seemed to be doing the same thing I was – just going to sit by the water and watch the sun set.
I have a truly ridiculous number of photos of dramatic clouds and sunsets taken from this park 😂
Writing this post is making me want to get back to the water!
Another thing I loved in Setúbal was the Mercado do Livramento. After the municipal market in São Martinho do Porto, this seemed HUGE! I didn’t take any photos or videos, but you can find some great photos shared on the google maps page if you want to get a sense of it.
I did take several photos of the stuff I bought there, that now look pretty unimpressive 😂
So this is a loaf of fresh bread, olives, dates, a tomato, broccoli, strawberries, a jar of piri piri (hot sauce), and a pastry that I now recognize as a bolo de berlim. Then, I didn’t know the name but thought it looked yummy! (And it was!)
Again, in hindsight, this seems like a strange thing to be so excited about that I had to take photos 😂
But I had never been to a farmer’s market in the US that was anywhere near this big, with this quality and range of products, and at a price that’s comparable to or lower than grocery store prices. I know it’s a matter of scale and policies in the US, but I associate farmer’s markets with paying twice as much for the same food. It’s often higher quality, but that’s still a barrier.
(And this isn’t “ooh, Portugal is so cheap”, which is offensive. This is a not-yet-well-informed policy critique! I don’t know why the prices for produce in Portuguese markets is comparable to grocery store prices, but I love it. But that’s a whole side rant!)
There’s also a ton of public art all around town.
That statue is the choco, or cuttlefish, which seems to be one of their mascots. One of the dishes that Setúbal is known for is choco frito. They cut the meat of the cuttlefish into strips, bread them, fry them, and dip them in mayonnaise. The choco itself doesn’t have a particularly strong flavor, and it’s protein-dense and low fat, at least until you fry it!
The other mascot of the town is the dolphin, or golfinho.
Setúbal is located on an estuary, where the Sado River meets the Atlantic Ocean. And there’s a pod of golfinhos that live there. I heard all about it, but did not go out on the boat tour to see them.
And statues weren’t the only type of public art in town. One drizzly evening, I heard something, and went out to see where the sound was coming from.
A group of older men were huddled together under some umbrellas at one of the restaurants nearby, singing about the spring.
As a side note, I surprised myself when I played this while picking which photos and videos to include here – I actually understand what they’re singing! At the time, I probably would have recognized “primavera” if I had been able to distinguish it as a word. But my brain wasn’t registering that much at that time.
I was originally scheduled to spend a week and two days in Setúbal, but I talked to the host, and the apartment was available for another week.
So I extended my stay! I was there from 13 to 29 March, so just a little over 2 weeks.
Setúbal was the first place I felt like I could love living in. To be fair, Coimbra got kind of short changed by me coming down with covid, and I didn’t give Porto a fair chance. But I really did fall in love with Setúbal.
The airbnb host was fabulous, and if you ever plan to visit Setúbal, I’ll happily share his info! He invited me out to join him and a friend who speaks English for dinner at a place with great choco frito one evening.
And when he had a day available, he invited me to take a trip out to the Farol do Cabo Espichel, driving through the Parque Natural da Arrábida. Along the way, we stopped (A) at the ruins of a fort, and (B) a scenic viewpoint near Convento de Nossa Senhora da Arrábida.
As usual, the views were absolutely stunning. This video is from the first stop, at the 7ª Bataria de costa, the abandoned fort.
In the ruins of a fort, with the Troia peninsula in the background
I don’t know the real name of this big ass gun
Parque Natural da Arrábida
Looking to the west
Selfie!
Convento de Nossa Senhora da Arrábida
Looking east, toward the Troia peninsula
Informational sign
Clouds over Cascais, from the grounds around the Santuario de Nossa Senhora do Cabo Espichel
Santuario de Nossa Senhora do Cabo Espichel
Lighthouse, and if you look closely, you can see another small builing to the right, near the edge of the cliff
Roiling sea at the bottom of those cliffs
Farol do Cabo Espichel
Looking north to the Santuario de Nossa Senhora do Cabo Espichel, with Cascais on the horizon
Abandoned Posto de Observação
Wildflowers on the hillside
Posto de Observação, covered in graffiti
Selfie taken from inside the abandoned building
The weather was starting to warm up, and we would be heading south from here, so I found a groomer to take Mocha to while we were there. She did a fabulous job!
At this point, I feel like I’m rambling, even though I have so many more photos I could include! I don’t really want to end this post – it’s bringing back all of the feelings from that time that I don’t really have words for. It just felt right, like I could be really happy here, and those feelings hit as hard as they did because I hadn’t felt that way in a while.
So I’ll wrap up with photos of displays along the wall at the southwest end of the Av. Luisa Todi. The text is in both Portuguese and English, so you can learn a little more about the local fish if you zoom in!
