as many of you know well already we have been exploring portugal the last few months as a potential place to go home we visited for the first time last october upon the prompting of our older son nathan and after 10 days of hopping around the country we thought hey this place is pretty cool it's picturesque full of lovely people the food is pretty darn good and it's generally very affordable what happened next looking back was pretty crazy we put our house on the market a short time later sold it within a month and embarked on
our massive move out of the u.s simultaneously we started the d7 visa process for portugal which requires amongst the vast amount of paperwork securing the lease for at least one year i marvel now at our commitment to doing all this i mean i can understand selling your home and wanting to leave the country but what we did essentially is put all our eggs in one basket and assume portugal was it and that it held all the answers wow what a gamble but heck at the time we were excited and without giving it too much additional
thought we booked our tickets and headed straight to europe first we made a quick stop in paris to visit nathan and thoroughly loved spending a couple of weeks with him supporting him with his new apartment project in fact we so enjoyed our time there that we vowed to return and explore france a lot more not just because of him but because it's another incredible country with so much to offer there's actually a lot more to that that i can't share right now but which i promise will make it into future content at any rate by
mid-may we found ourselves finally settling into our new apartment in coimbra pretty incredible but also the beginning of a wild and crazy new chapter that went something like this [Music] first off i just want to say that there's a huge difference between traveling as a tourist and being a resident who has actually lived in a place for a while i know entirely obvious statement but somehow we create these fantasies when we first experience a place where we think yeah i could totally do this on an ongoing basis it's crazy these people know their food oh
my goodness like what i love these things that you just don't see in the states just pure contrast right now okay let's go get some vegetables it's time to eat healthy again we're eating out all the time i'm taken by the size of things the size the color wow it's only when we settle in that reality sets in it's the only way that we can truly experience a place and know what's going to work for us and what isn't so early on for us coimbra was for the most part new and exciting the food the
pretty views the super friendly people and anytime adverse conditions or situations would arise like something needing to be fixed or dealing with internet issues trying to solve this freaking internet problem cannot find the link to the street super frustrating needed red we were a bit more patient more accommodating that all began to change as time went on as things started to repeat both good and bad the new normal became more and more solidified and accordingly our patients began to wear thin around those things that weren't working out so well so hold on would you say
we're living large we're leaving thanks when the new normal has more cons than pros well that's when you start having a problem the pros have to outweigh the cons if you're going to love a place now of course coimbra was never meant to be permanent for us but a temporary spot from which we could scout other areas of the country however as with any place it left an impression on us and if i can put it a different way it was a real lesson in embracing discomfort the apartment in coimbra itself is spacious with a
lot of light in an amazing view it's in the old part of town which has a lot of history and beauty to it there are a few restaurants that we really love and an amazing ice cream place that opened up nearby that we became addicted to all that's fantastic i always like to highlight the fact that the surroundings of a place matter as much as the place itself you can be living in the loveliest home but if you're not happy with the area where it's sitting you'll always be somewhat disappointed which is exactly what happened
with us in portland in coimbra the noise was out of control at times it is a university town and so it has a very large student population it's not unusual for kids to be walking the streets in large groups at all hours chanting and making a great deal of noise noise levels reach a climax during graduation week where students go literally crazy celebrating the culmination of their studies we're talking audit control parting for seven straight nights large drunken crowds overtaking the streets concerts on several nights going until five or six in the morning and reverberating
throughout the town in a full-fledged parade to boot so what do we do we move to the area right before that happens making matters worse the french doors in our room would not seal tightly you see they came off the hinges the day we got there and never got fixed so not only that we cannot control the temperature during the night we also could not reduce the amount of noise it's two o'clock in the morning and the party keeps going [Applause] add to this that this is also a tourist town and we were entering the
busiest season so at times we'd be flanked by student mayhem on one side and tourist activity on the other did i mention we had a restaurant on that other side a really good one at that but a bit of an inconvenience as a resident right next door i know i sound old but you know what i am when you're in your 50s you just don't care about noise anymore that was something i cared about when i was in a rock band not now not anymore and yeah sometimes i like to get loud and you might
say obnoxious especially when i drink a little too much so i do recognize that when you're in the action it's great the problem is when you're not in the action and don't give a damn for it i mentioned apartment issues earlier and there were many things were either not functional when we got the keys or would easily break on us and getting someone over to fix anything was like pulling teeth we had several people come over repeatedly to assess problems only to return each time a week later to fix one thing while meantime two new
things would surface that would require further assessment waiting another week and so on in a seemingly endless loop take all these conditions to name a few and except for a few positives coimbra became far from an ideal place to settle into long term so okay realistically we knew we weren't going to end up living in coimbra and in spite of that bad taste in our mouth we kept our focus and embarked on exploring other parts of the country as originally planned the first order of business was to head north and explore spots 20 to 30
minutes outside of porto our preferred geographical area we looked at a number of homes always assessing against a few key desired factors was it a well-designed and comfortable home was there good access to grocery stores and local parks and everything one needs for everyday living was it near the coast or at least not too far from it were there enough good local restaurants to enjoy without the need to go into portland all the time bottom line did it truly feel like home overall we only really clicked with a beautiful property in villa du conte but
i was not thrilled with a town something energetically about the immediate area did not jive for me to this day though cecilia would literally lift that home up if she could and plop it somewhere in an ideal location that's how much she fell in love with it so less than a month later off we were in the opposite direction to visit sintra and its surrounding areas based on a feeling my wife got to look there again but once again something was always off either the design of the place itself what is this place or the
location with respect to access to things or property prices or some combination of those ulgaeda in particular caught our attention an absolutely gorgeous area that was beyond our price range and it felt isolated as well lots of lovely towns nearby but the main action seemed to be farther south in kaiskais which was overflowing with tourism a complete turn off we are not easy to please i'll be the first one to say it and so after a run in the south we left the area thinking are we not doing this right are we not looking in
the right places does portugal ultimately not have what we want i mean wherever we went there was this internal nagging feeling of things not clicking of not belonging hard to explain but it all harked back to portland where we felt like fish out of water in so many ways so as we prefer to do these days we went back to square one and just to trust that feeling that inner voice telling us not to settle and to keep exploring we realized after a certain amount of struggle that this is all about exploring after all looking
for answers until we find what fits what we want accepting in the mix that things will be messy at times and that there will be many challenges along the way if we were to settle in any way that would defeat the whole purpose of leaving the us on this quest to redefine our lives to design our future the way we want it to be and it's so important to remember too that the search itself has so much value it keeps you alive and engaged discovering things as you go through connected experiences if you allow those
to happen the way i like to word it it's about the journey as much as the destination each place has something you need to offer and i'm learning to immerse myself in each location so i can walk away with a whole variety of memories that will stay with me for a long time in the process i get to spend time with my honey thankful that i have such an incredible life partner and sharing special moments together as we search for that ideal place to make a new nest in the undeniable fact is that we will
resettle someday and establish a new boring the challenge then will be to find ways to shake things up and keep life exciting as our day to head back to the u.s to process our visas fast approached we had more questions than answers where should we explore when we return to portugal where will we actually end up is there a spot that will fulfill enough of our requirements for us to settle in and live there long term the future was clear as mud so what's going on josh i didn't mask at the mall because nobody does
then i thought it was allergies and then a cold and then it became this nasty fatiguing thing it's obvio we tested i tested positive and now my throat besides the fatigue it's the throne hurts oh my god swallowing as hell so we're trapped in this gorgeous apartment we can't get down can't go anywhere we cannot explore we're having trouble with tech connection of amazon and getting a phone and internet [Music] to get the visa going yeah their site is a living hell so yeah few complaints but not too bad but i wouldn't have it any
other way give me a big smile big big big smile you
