The High and Lows of Moving to Another Country #Portugal

My name is Sandi McKenna, and this is Unforgettable Conversations. The podcast that is your roadmap to resilience, sharing, extraordinary stories from people, just like you and me who have weathered life's storms. You'll find inspiration and motivation in every episode. Have you ever thought of packing up everything and moving to another country? My guests today did just that. You'll learn. Why they did it, how they did it. And what you need to know if you want to move to another country. Now let's get this conversation started

Good morning to Sue and Diana, friends of mine from when I used to travel all the time. That's actually how we met .And when most of us stopped traveling during the pandemic, because there was no traveling, they literally up and moved across the pond. I wanna hear the story because I don't know the story. I know that you were planning it and I know that you ended up going to Portugal, but I don't know how that conversation began between the two of you, like who started it and why did you think moving to Portugal in the middle of a pandemic was a good idea. And you've got cats together. You have a family. So how did all of that come about? What did your families think?

That's a lot of questions, Sandy

Start at the beginning.

First of all, when did we start thinking about the potential of moving, out of the country that started a long time ago. We had always talked about the possibility of moving somewhere in Europe because, like you, we love to travel and we thought living on the other side of the world would really afford us to have possibilities of traveling to a lot of places, a lot easier and a lot more affordably, honestly. And so that was something that was always in the back of our mind. I think what held us back for as long as it did was me, because I lived in Chicago, my entire life traveled all over the world, but I never lived anywhere else, so, after a series of coincidences and I guess being in the right place at the right time and all of those things, someone approached us and asked us if we wanted to sell our house, in Chicago. It's like something we thought about, of course, but we weren't thinking about it that day, when all that started to happen, we were kind of like, okay, that's great. We could sell our house, but where are we gonna go? You know? So then that's when I started panicking, like, oh my gosh, we're gonna move outta Chicago. And so we said, let's take a small step first. And so we started doing a lot of exploration, in the U.S. As to where we could live the, you know, our first step, you know, away, you know, from Chicago.

So not too far from her relatives.

Right. It's like somewhere that would be still close enough, that we could visit easily. And so we narrowed down to a couple places, that were in the Midwest and ultimately chose Madison, Wisconsin, because it was two hours away, from Chicago, easy, to get back and forth. So that was our first foree to that baby step. Before we actually moved, to Wisconsin, I had been on a press trip to, the center of Portugal. And it was really odd because, we landed in Lisbon and then we drove, less than an hour to get to a really small medieval town, a walled city that's called OBD. And you know how it is when you travel, you've got a little bit of jet lag, a little bit. Tired, but you're a little excited, you're in, somewhere are new. And as soon as I got out of the car and started walking around there, I said, oh my gosh, you know, this is a really, really special place. And it's wonderful. Some of the other folks went back and took a rest at the hotel. And I said, no, I have to start exploring now. And I walked all around the town. I had my first, Batist the little custard tar that everyone loves here so much. And I said, oh my gosh, the people here are lovely. The food here is lovely. Sometimes when you travel a place and you automatically feel like you're home, that was the instant feel. So I got on my phone and called Diana, who was still in Chicago and said, I think I could live here.

I'm always ready with a suitcase. I've lived a few more places than Sue and, I have always wanted to live in Europe. And so, uh, we were just, I think ultimately destined, it was a matter of when and how, yeah. And after she had the revelation, I guess, That, she could live in Portugal. I jumped on it and we had a couple of other trips here after that drove the country from top to bottom, said, yep, this is the place for us. And then of course the pandemic hit, which slowed everything down. It's a long process. There's a lot of paperwork. There's a lot of coordination. There are a lot of things you do. As you mentioned, we have two cats and honestly, some of the most anxiety provoking parts of moving were getting the cats ready and all of their paperwork because they have a much more. Tight timeframe on certain things that are only good for 10 days, then you have to be able to fly them during certain, seasons when the weather isn't neither too hot, nor too cold, yada yada. So we kind of put it off for a while and it does take, considerable time to get the through the process.

And as Sandy, as you mentioned, we were in the pandemic, right. You know, at the time, so that also put time constraints on certain things we needed to get done, in terms of trying to get to official places that weren't open or getting somebody to sign something, all these types of things.

Eventually we got all our stuff together and, once we began, the official process actually went rather smoothly for us. So we were fortunate. We got our visas within a month. we had been told to wait two months, sometimes longer and so on, but we had ours within a month, which was surprising. We had to actually do a little planning for. Getting out, a little bit sooner than we had planned, but not as soon as we wanted if that makes sense.

In looking back at, it was all, so a little bit of a panic, cuz it was now it was like, I. Okay. Now we have to actually figure out how do we get rid of the stuff that we have in Wisconsin? What are we gonna take with us or ship and how are we gonna get this all done? And, uh, really a lot less time than we thought we had at that time. Although that changed, you know, as the pandemic went on.

One of the first steps is you have to come to the immigration office and have an appointment. Where they go through all your paperwork. And then if everything goes well, you sign something and they take a picture of you and you get your residency card. Well, our appointment with that office was on Friday of the week that we flew in on Tuesday. A lot of people have many, many months between those two things. We had four or five days.

There are things that you need to finish when you get here. You have a bank account, but you need to get the ATM card. You need to get the phone all, kind of logistical things that happen. And plus you're moving into a new place and all those things to have to say, okay, now, you know, we make sure you get all these things done to get to this appointment. And frankly, we thought about moving the appointment and going later, because again, the pandemic was happening. And everything was locked down pretty tight here. We could still come in cuz we have the visa, you know, but we went back and forth and everyone said, If you have an appointment, with immigration, whatever you do do not change it. Cuz we don't, you don't know when it's gonna get rescheduled, you know?

They just kind of closed off appointments. We were fortunate that we got one,

so it's like, okay, we're going. The timing was right for the cats. The timing was right for us. Diana and I both made like lists upon lists, what had to get done and what you know, date and how are we going to physically do this work?

How do you physically do it? How do you decide what to bring? You had an well established life in the United States, how do you say, well, we'll leave this behind or we can bring this, or what do you bring that?

That's a great question. And I think people that are considering something like this need to spend a lot of time thinking about that. The one step we had ahead is we'd already downsized from our house in Chicago. We had a 4,000 square foot house in Chicago. When we moved to Madison, we had a 1,515 square 1500 square foot apartment. Yeah. So that was one huge step towards that, for sure. But we still had a heck of a lot of stuff, you know, and stuff in storage, you know? I think that in hindsight, we can say we did an okay job, in deciding what to bring and why not to bring. There are some things that we didn't bring that were now regretting we should have, we should have brought, and there are,

challenge is that when we were talking and, kind of going through the idea, we talked to a lot of people who had moved or people who were also contemplating it, and there seem to be two philosophies come with a bunch of suitcases and nothing else, or pack everything you own into giant. Cargo containers and ship them. And for people like us, I think there's somewhere in the middle. That's the right spot.. We came out a little bit, light. One of the lessons that we learned is that when you have your shipping stuff, they're actually shipping it by volume, not by weight. And I think if we had really understood that concept, there are a lot of things that we didn't bring. Cuz we thought, oh, well who needs this little thing? Or. For example, a lot of kitchen stuff. Oh, we can always buy kitchen stuff when we're there. Well, yes you can. But a it's expensive and B you already have it. So why would you go out and buy it again? It would cost less ultimately to have shipped my whole kitchen than it did to buy almost everything all over again. Certain things like electronics, unless they're dual voltage, it isn't worth it to bring them because the wear and tear and, having to you use a step converter it's just not worth it. So I bought another mixer, a stand mixer here, for example. but a lot of other things I think we just were kind of like, we don't need it. And we didn't think through what we had done in our life, in the prestep. That wasn't really our life. That was a holding life. So in our, our Chicago world, we entertained extensively. I like to cook. Sue loves to entertain. We have people over all the time. We had three sets of China. We had crystal, we had silverware, you know, all that. When we moved to Madison, all that stuff either went to the family or got put in boxes because we were in a small space, we didn't really entertain much. And because I think mentally, we were also a little bit in a holding pattern. We just didn't use it and the pandemic and all those things. And so we're like when we're deciding what to bring and whatnot, oh, we don't need all this China. Why are we gonna ship this all the way to Portugal and let it sit in our closets there? Well, the fact of the matter is since we've moved to Portugal, I don't think either one of us anticipated, we are entertaining more than we ever did, even in Chicago. we have made a tremendous number of really great friends. And as we expand our language skills into Portuguese, we'll meet more. Portuguese people, and, create more friendships. So that was a miss for us. We should have brought some of that stuff with us as it is. No one really cares what you're, eating on. the mentality here is much more, people centric and not so thing centric because most people live very modestly here.

Tell me about the city that you chose and why you chose it.

Right now we're living in a city that's called which is about, um, 10 minute drive from KKE, which is, about 30 minutes, 40 minutes from Lisbon. We are right off what they call the, Le Deke cash. KKE which is the train that runs along the sea, from Lisbon all the way to the end of which is KKE. When we first moved here, we actually lived in KKE, for six months. back when we moved here, the visa requirements you had to sign the six month lease, as part of that commitment, now the rules have changed, you know, and you have to have a year lease, as part of the visa process. So we lived in that apartment for six months and honestly, the place that we're in now is probably like five minute drive, from where we were before, we're just a little bit closer to Lisbon. we chose this area cause we wanted to be close to Lisbon. We didn't want to be in the heart of Lisman. That was not something that either one of us was interested in. In terms of being in a very busy, urban, city.

and we love, the ocean. We walk down the hill in 15 minutes and we're on the, beautiful Atlantic sea coast. There's a walkway that actually goes a pedestrian area called the, uh, par. That goes all the way from Lisbon to KKE. If you wanted to it's about 20 kilometers, you could walk literally the whole thing. We haven't done that, but we have walked extensively along the side, in the train, as she said goes right along the coast. So it's really quite beautiful. And for beach people the temperature here is very temperate. We originally moved to KKA. Because we got some advice that, your first few months are gonna be spent doing administrative stuff. So don't make it hard on yourself. You may eventually want to, move somewhere into the country and get a farm or whatever, all that romantic, idea people have about moving to Portugal. But practically speaking your first several months are gonna be spent going in and out of the city, whichever city, because you don't necessarily know where you're gonna get assigned. Who's gonna be your person for this appointment or that appointment. the idea was to be somewhere very convenient, close to the train or transportation All of that administrative stuff, didn't become an additional burden, simply getting to it timely and doing it. that's how we ended up in KKE really. and then looking around, we needed a little bit more space. It was a very tiny apartment. It was great area, great neighborhood. But we just, needed some more space. So we found this spot in Monte stri, which is still probably a, a temporary spot for us, but it's much more comfortable. And now we are, able to sort of start living our life. And, and then also continue to look for where might we want to. Put ourselves permanently.

How do you fund a trip? It's not even a trip, a lifestyle like this, a complete life change. Can you still work? Are you retired? What, what does life look like for you now?

Well, I'd say we are. Semiretired

I guess we're working, but not as hard as we used to

we still work. And obviously we still have some Travelist, that we work through. I still am teaching, diana still does some consulting. We're remote workers, that way, we're not digital nomads, so that's not our gig, I mean, we want to live here.

There are different visas. So there are a lot of ways if somebody wanted to move to another country, Portugal has a variety of, different visas. Some are for, people who can show that they have a stream of income or enough savings to live off of without burdening the system. Some have, work visas. There are student visas, there are business visas. There are visas where if you make a certain amount of investment in a variety of ways, so there's a lot of different options and each country has its own set of. Visas and you kind of have to look and see which one you qualify for or which one appeals to you. Some of them have certain limitations, and so on, but every person that looks at it needs to consider their own individual circumstances and then determine, whether or not, they qualify first of all. And then if that's on the terms that they want, for example, we actually thought at one point about moving to Canada, they have a completely different system it's point based. And there are certain things they really, really like and certain things they don't really like, being older is not one of the things they like. They're looking for young, entrepreneurs and tech workers. so people who, are in a different stage of life, might find a lot more, appeal in moving to Canada for us the categories that were available, Portugal, aside from this being the place we wanted to go, suited us. We right away saw the category that we fit in. and so there wasn't a lot of decision making about that. It was more getting all of the administrative stuff done and the logistics and.

I would say that moving out of the country no differently than moving somewhere else in the country that you're living in, right, takes a lot of research. It takes a lot of planning and taking a hard look at your budget. Especially folks that are older. Looking at your retirement, looking at pensions, whatever it is that you have in your portfolio. What do you have to live on? And what's gonna be coming down the road, in terms of social security or whatever else, people will have, and then looking of course at all your expenses, healthcare, insurance, rent, food. All, all those things that we do, no matter where we live, we have to look at those things. Oh my gosh, there's been 1,000,001 articles written as of late on, moving to Portugal, it seems it can be coming up high on a lot of people's, um, radar right now. I think anyone who's contemplating, this kind of move, we say this all the time and everything we write is you need to read everyone's stuff, right? Absolutely. But you need to do your own research, your own research because there's 1,000,001 Facebook groups out there that will have 1,000,001 people that have opinions and experiences. Strong opinions and they're right. You're wrong, whatever. Honestly, you need to make the calls. You need to come. you need to come and visit and live here, stay for a few weeks, drive around places. See what it's like, what does it cost to buy groceries? Don't come here for a vacation and think that it's gonna be like that all the time, because it's like if you decided to move from Florida to New York city, you wouldn't just say, oh, I love going to New York city. I love going to Broadway plays. I love going to the, park and all these things. If you live there, your life wouldn't be like

that. It's also a big and diverse country, even though it's a small country. The north is completely different. The area around Porto say or Baraga is completely like another world from either Lisbon or down in the south. And the Algarve, there are weather considerations. There's also because of all the hubbub, there's a lot of misinformation about the cost of living here. Yes. And it's sort of a moving target, but people have been, believing. Of late that it's somehow you can transport your life in the United States. Exactly. As you want it with all the good things that you can afford in the United States, and you can have them all here and that's absolutely not true. There are some things that are more affordable. There are some things like rent or buying a house that are absolutely not I think people who Think they're gonna come here and suddenly it's Shangrila are gonna be disappointed, because it's like anywhere else in the world, there are wonderful things about it. And there are other things that are challenging and you have to know what your trade offs are. And I think the only way to figure that out. Really is to do it yourself from a standpoint of who said as of a scouting trip and to see what is really going on, because there's a lot of misinformation, there's a lot of marketing. There are a lot of people selling services, we can help you move and it'll cost you nothing. And then you see what nothing buys here. And it's the same thing. Nothing buys everywhere else, nothing I think that people do themselves a disservice when they don't do their homework and they come in with. You know, sort of, rose colored glasses. Because there are a lot of people who move here like that and they don't stay. No, and I can't think of anything worse than going through the emotional trauma of up heaving, your life and all that entails the coming here and being disappointed and then having to go back and do it all over again. I can't imagine. You know, in our book it's really worth doing a bit of planning. Look at things realistically, understand what the trade offs are and see if it works for you. For us, it works beautifully.

Once you moved and once you got there, what surprised you more than anything? What had you expected? And. Really wasn't what you

expected. I would say the first, the very first thing that surprised me and that literally within the first couple of days was how many people we met. Other expats and other immigrants, who were, wonderful people, honestly. Some of 'em I consider like family already. You's so we've been here a year. Right. And that was a big surprise to me because I figured we'd meet people when we're friendly enough. Right. I think we're kind of fun. I didn't think we'd have trouble meeting people, but then we would find close friends that fast, you know, was that kind of was amazing, to me, and on the kind of more challenging side, the language, is not a particularly easy language to learn. And to add to the challenge of learning the language is that there are a lot of people that speak English. And so that makes it more difficult. Cuz as soon as you start to try to speak Portuguese to them, they are like, okay, nevermind. I speak English. Don't worry. They're like, no, don't do that. Speak Portuguese to me, so we do a lot of that because the Portuguese are extremely hospitable. They're extremely nice. They don't ever offend anyone, and they wanna make you feel at home. And even though they speak perfect English, they'll say, I'm so sorry. My English is not very good, just like that. You know? And you're like, your English is excellent. My Portuguese is bad and they always apologize and say, I'm so sorry. I don't speak better English. And we, and I always say, Please. Don't apologize for that. I apologize to you that I'm still struggling to learn, your language we're in your country. We will learn your language. That's how it should be. I was, I was happy you speak English because it helps me dramatically. through the course of my day, but I think for me, that's been a challenge that we still, are learning the language. We're really good at food. We like grocery stores and restaurants. that's where our strengths lie.

I think for me, the biggest positive surprise was really. Same kind of thing, but the Portuguese people, they are so warm and so friendly and so laid back and so welcoming, that it really takes the edge off your nervousness about moving to a new place and thinking that, oh, are people gonna, just look at me and say, I hate you. You're not from here. They're not like that at all. They're very warm and. Very, cheery people. If that's, I don't mean that to sound sort of condescending. They don't let themselves get bogged down. This is of course a generalization, but the people that we've met, don't let themselves get bogged down by the details that wear us down so much, that can have a negative side too, because stuff takes a long time to get done and everyone takes lunch. The restaurants are not open all day. The shops, nothing is open all day for the most part. They open up at nine or 10 in the morning. And when it's lunchtime at one o'clock everybody's closed. And so you can't get stuff done until, two o'clock. If it's a restaurant, usually they close at three and they don't open again until seven or seven 30. And you have to just adjust to, there are certain times of the day that you don't get stuff done. On the challenging side for me, I would say, the amount of housing here that is apartments and condominiums. Especially in, of course, all the areas you wanna live, which is somewhere along the coast, for me anyway, is overwhelming. It's almost impossible to see a house, I grew up in Southern California where pretty much everybody had a house, small house, big house, whatever was a house with a backyard and all it, it kind of doesn't exist here. You have to either go somewhere rural or you have to go to other parts of the country. But almost everything along the coastal areas for a good couple of miles is really, gonna be apartments, condominiums. And so that's one of those things you have to adjust your expectations and say, well, am I willing to trade off being a little bit further away from the, ocean in order to have a backyard, or something that, I can call my own if you will, in terms of space, or am I more interested in being around, the area that I wanna be in and knowing that I'm gonna hear my neighbor's radio or that when they have a party and the one thing I think we both were surprised at is that for some reason, people had told us that the Portuguese were quiet and unassuming people. And so we always laugh about that because they are not. They are loud. They are vibrant. They are, very expressive. And in fact, we saw a t-shirt that said, I'm not yelling I'm Portuguese, and we didn't know that. And so all of a sudden we come and we find these people and they're gesturing just like Italians or Greeks. It's a very, vivacious, country and culture. And I think we were both kind of blown away and we laugh and we go, oh, there's more of those quiet and unassuming Portuguese as we hear them laughing or blasting their music or whatever. So you just have to go, well, you know, that was a misconception

and it's interesting cuz they will come and like if you show interest anything, they will come and talk to you. Of course they start usually talking in Portuguese and and they will start to speak the English if they can. Honestly, most people here do speak English with the exception of probably old much older people, because most people have had to learn it in school. So they have some English that they can communicate with you with.

They also love to eat. Oh boy. Yeah. Anybody who has been to Spain and understands the tapa style of eating the little plates with little things. Portuguese have something called Petcos, which is supposed to be their equivalent of the small snacks and everything. Their small snack is like a beef sandwich or a pork sandwich or a giant empanada. They'll eat a meal of those, but when you have a meal in a, particularly in a restaurant, that's a Toska, which is a kind of a small home style restaurant, usually run by a family, you'll get a plate of food that's huge. First of all, it'll have most of the time it'll have something grilled, grilled meat or grilled fish, and they don't really want you to have to choose between your carbohydrates. So instead of serving rice or French fries, you'll get both or potatoes or potatoes and vegetable and salad and, and, and, and every meal, without fail, they will ask you, what are you having for dessert? And then rounding out with the coffee. You are glad for the Hills because it's a very hilly country and you walk a lot here because otherwise, you would just roll up and down the Hills after a few months, the amount of food and the quality of the food is very good too.

Yeah. And the meals are very long and very laid back it's there's no rush. And, as it is in most European countries, no restaurant will ever ask you to leave. You can stay there for hours on end and often we do, they do cuz they're with family. Family's very important here in the Portuguese culture. And so they will go out with the kids without the kids and spend hours eating and bringing more food and bringing more foods. We have a friend now that we go out with quite a bit and she's like, now we have to have this and now we have to have that. It's like, now we're gonna go back to my house and we're gonna eat more. I'm like, oh Lord.

If you have an invitation from someone Portuguese to spend time with them at a meal, Or at their house or whatever, you can't really plan anything else that day don't think, oh, I'm gonna do this. And then I'll go back to work because inevitably something will come up and we have one time, we just were meeting some friends of a friend and we went out to a restaurant. We had a very long leisurely meal and then it was like, okay, now you come back to my. And we had to look at each other, like, okay, there goes the rest of the day. they're they just, they're very sociable. And there's, a really nice, inclusiveness in the culture yeah. Where they're really, enjoying your company and, they don't want the party to end. Doesn't even matter if it's just two of you or three of you, or, could be 20 of you, then it happens either way.

I also appreciate, they are typically. Again, don't wanna generalize, but I will say typically they're very honest people and very straightforward people. They will tell you how it is, and they will tell you, if you're doing something wrong, you know, it's like, or this is how we do it or not in a negative way, but in a way to help you, that I find extremely refreshing. And I like that because I would much rather have somebody, especially when we're here trying to assimilate to a new culture. Tell me, if, if there's something that, cause I certainly don't ever wanna. Offend anyone here. Our goal is to really is to assimilate and to live here, long term. We want to have more Portuguese friends, we want to be part of their celebrations, and we've done that, through the course of the year going and learning about. Different traditions that they have here. Obviously we have our own, that we still bring with. We did the American Thanksgiving here but then we also do, the Portuguese, celebrations It's interesting to try to meld these two, cultures together a little bit.

I just would say it's also important for us as particularly as Americans moving here to understand that the Portuguese have a completely different economic structure. And so even what we would consider to be middle class person, in the United States is essentially a wealthy person compared to the average Portuguese. They are the lowest paid in the European union. People here are struggling, with, Managing to pay rent. many people have multiple families in one home or multiple generations, in homes. if we wanna go out and blow some money on a dinner, we have to be very conscientious that, we don't. Sort of throw that in, in the mix with our Portuguese friends, because a, they can't afford to do it. If they were to do something and spend, a large amount of money on one meal, that means that they would forego an awful lot in their daily lives. And we don't do that very much, but everybody has their own yard stick and we know people from all strata and so we try to be conscientious about never putting anyone, of particularly our Portuguese friends in the position of feeling like they can't participate or they can't do something. It's really important to remember how privileged we are to be in this country, because for many Portuguese they're struggling and we have to recognize that and do our best to help and support the economy and to do things that we can. but to not create a larger rift, if you will, between what people live like on a daily basis here who are born here, and people who are like us privileged to come here and to be able to, adopt this as our new home.

Now, does tourism play a big part in the economy there?

Absolutely. Absolutely. They were devastated by the pandemic. It's a belief somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20% of the GDP. I think there is a welcoming spirit here that really defines the culture as a very hospitable place for, tourism, because, they need it to thrive.

Now if somebody like me was going to come to Portugal on a vacation, just say two weeks, what would you suggest?

Well, first of all, you'd probably have to make your vacation longer. yeah, right. We would suggest two weeks is short. Yeah. Two weeks is a good amount of time to get a good taste of Portugal. I would say for sure, you need to start in Lisbon. Because that's the big, city here. We have this affinity for the coast along here, so we would definitely suggest, taking the train, down Thena and coming to Kash, going to Centra. And visiting all the castles in palaces and Centra. Like Diana mentioned earlier, there's such a diverse, area, in Portugal from the tops to the bottom. So if wanna go to the south and experience, warmer weather and everything they have to offer, and then of course, up in Porto, is wine country.

Portugal is for wine lovers, for sure. But I think some of this depends on what you're interested in and what you like. There are rural areas that are spectacular. There are historical areas. For example in the Allen there's a town called Evera, which has a, a Roman temple that looks like it's fake because it's so well preserved. So if you like history, there are a lot of Roman ruins all over Portugal. There's an area where there's a dinosaur remains. There are areas that are focused, for example, in, in the Doro region, which is, the terraced areas that they grow the grapes in are spectacular to look at, and there's a river that runs through. It goes all the way to Spain. You could take a cruise on the douro river. There's actually a part of Portugal that gets snow. If you go to the mountains, it's called Sarah Della there's only one national park in Portugal, but there are reserve areas with tons of nature. There are tons of birds. If you're a bird watcher, or if you like nature, there are just many, many things. And so it would kind of depend on what interests you, the train system is wonderful, so you can get around a lot of places, but you would have to pick and choose in two weeks what you wanted to see and where you wanted to go. So I would tell someone to do their research first, as Sue said, Lisbon is probably a must, but for me, growing up in California, I look at Portugal like California. But the size of Indiana but the north is very much like San Francisco it's cooler, it's greener because of the temperatures and so on. It's very creative. And, the middle is where they grow a ton of stuff. Where we are in the Lisbon area is kind of like, Los Angeles. We would be in what would be the equivalent of Malibu or the beaches out there. And if you go further south it's like Palm Springs or San Diego, very, very warm, lots of citrus and, particularly, people like the beaches there. It's got a very large, British expat, community, because of the weather. I think when people come from cold and foggy, rainy, and they're like, where's the hottest place you can go in Portugal and that'd be down south. Yeah. So.

Then, and then let's not forget there's also the islands, you know? Yeah, gosh. Yeah, for sure. Which are absolutely stunning, you know, Madeira and the Azures are, uh, that's another trip, honestly. Yeah. You could probably do another week in, just in those two spots alone. So. I think that's probably you inspire me that I need to do some itineraries, right? yeah,

absolutely. Well, we had a great experience. We, my dad, who's 90 years old, came to visit with my stepmom. Who's 80. We planned a trip to take them and they have limited mobility and, Portugal is notoriously hilly and all of the sidewalks are actually little tile. And so you're walking on tile, so it's very uneven and all of this. And we planned an itinerary and we covered a lot of territory for a couple of folks who can't, get around all that much or, easily. And they saw a lot. Of course there were things that we passed on, but, they were here for 10 days and I think they were probably exhausted by the time they left, but we also built in some time for them to rest and. Around where we live. There are some interesting historical things, the, hotel, that's right near us called the Plazio, um, in the surreal is the home of, ,James Bond. It's where Ian Fleming and the allies, stayed during the war and their spies. And so everybody was, talking and he befriended. triples agent there named, Duco pop Popoff and he became the sort of model for James Bond. And the casino at the time was the largest in Europe. And so casino Royal was the direct result, his, book of his time and experience there. And he created James Bond. In that place. And so they have a bar in the hotel nicknamed the spy bar where you can go and have a, what they call a double oh seven martini, which is the recipe that's explained in the book. And it's actually a unique martini. It uses gin and vodka and, Lule as the vermouth and it's quite fun. They have a lot of memorabilia on the walls of all the royalty and all of the celebrities and diplomats that stayed there during that time. And it's really in a sleepy little town like ours. There's still a ton of history to be seen.

Well, that's amazing. I mean, I feel like booking a trip now.

good. Good. Does it sound? It sounds amazing. Yeah, it is a very special place. It stole my heart right away. And I hear this story from a lot of people that come here, you know, and it's honestly, it's the people, that really is the first thing, you know, that really strikes you as wow. These people are really friendly hospitable. Kind, you know, they will help you,

I have to tell a little story, because I've heard stories like this. And I was like, oh, that's so sweet. You know, but we had our own story. We had, some friends over and, somehow, the bathroom of we were drawing, it fell off of our balcony and went down to the balcony, the veranda of the person below us, whom we have never met. And I was, coming up one day, from being out and came to open my door. And there was this little older gentleman standing in front of the door with a bag and it had a little note pin to it. He said something in Portuguese, which I didn't understand, but he handed me the bag and he was smiling and, and I smiled. And then he, went in the elevator and disappeared and I'm like, okay. And then I looked at it and inside the bag was our little, bathroom rug and pinned to, it was this note, which I had to go and, and translate. And it said, hello. I am Antonio, whatever his name was. I live in the apartment below and I believe this might be yours and I wanted to bring it back to you. If it isn't yours, please bring it back to me. And I will try to find its home. Thank you. And then he wrote his name and I just thought, my goodness, you know how lovely that this person went out of his way, to try and find the owner. And if it wasn't us, he would've, gone to the next one. But he was right below us. So he figured the wind blew and. Oftentimes, you'll see stuff that it's very windy and Portugal people don't know that but we've heard stories about that. People who bring cakes over to someone who says they have a sweet tooth or help them take them literally by the hand to get them to the post office.

It was interesting cuz when that happened, it was near Christmas time. And so of course was making a lot of Christmas cookies and stuff and so. She made a little batch for our neighbor, to thank him, right. So we made a little package and things. We put it down there, on his door and, we were out somewhere. We came back and he had put a little note on our door and he has beautiful pen penmanship. I have to tell you, it's a real stationary with his name on, and I'm very fancy, and. Said, thank you very much and wished us, a happy holiday and everything, but it was very thoughtful. I didn't expect a response back, it's like, we're thanking you. You're done. It's like, no, no And now we need to thank you again they're very, kind that way, and we've been very blessed to have our experiences with the folks that we've met along the way and we'll continue, to meet along the way. Our goal is to add to the culture, and add to, the society here, not to live here and just, I don't even know what you would call it.

We wanna become fully., as immersed in Portuguese culture, as we can. And part of that means learning more about Portuguese culture and you do that through the people and through the history, we read a lot, and every time you go out and people say, well, I'm single. You guys are a couple it's totally different, but honestly we know a ton of single people of all ages who come here on their own. And within a very short period of time, they find their people. They find the community they're looking for. Sometimes you have to move around to find it, but it's here. I would have no qualms. I don't think about moving. As a single person, because it is that kind of a place where if people, have the opportunity to bring you in to their fold, they will.

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I'm so glad. And you know, you're very much like that culture yourselves, so I can see why it's very appealing to you and why you're very appealing to the folks that you've met.

Thank you, Sandy. That's very nice. That's very nice of what say yes.

Portugal sounds magical. I don't know about you, but. I'm thinking about at least a vacation. Until next time wishing you a wonderful week