We’re moving to Portugal!

Walk to a year-round market to choose fresh fish and vegetables. Cycle to a beach where the local people dry fish on racks. Sip port in a café while the sun sets behind a crenelated castle. We’re looking forward to these activities and more after we move to Portugal.

Yes, we’re moving to Portugal! We’ve been toying with the idea for two years and are finally making the dream a reality when we fly to Lisbon on July 3.

On to the next stage of our travel adventures!

How did we decide on Portugal? We wanted a place with direct flights to Canada so friends and family could come to visit and we could get home easily. We wanted no snow, a lower cost of living, good healthcare and a good Covid record.

We initially thought we’d like a tropical climate, but our time spent in Costa Rica and Panama cured us of that – wonderful for a beach vacation but too stickily humid for long-term living. It’s hard for me to muster the energy for outdoor pursuits when I’m wilting. We enjoyed what we saw of Argentina but it’s too far away.

Portugal, however, met all our criteria. Plus, we’d spent three months in Portugal in 2019, just after we retired to travel the world, and loved the friendly people, culture and lifestyle. We saw a lot of the country while cycling the Portuguese Camino. Fresh seafood, port and vinho verde, varied terrain including gorgeous beaches and mountains, castles and palaces, an interesting history, mild climate with no snow in winter (unless you’re on an eastern mountain top), and easy access to the rest of Europe.

Portugal also offers a long-stay visa aimed at retirees that makes it easy to live there for up to five years. Well, relatively easy. The Portuguese are known for their bureaucracy and red tape and we have already come to understand why.

The visa process involves much paperwork. And when I say ‘paperwork’ I mean actual paper, even though you start by uploading documents to their Portuguese E-Visa website. But, we’ve learned, no one apparently looks at the electronic versions. We each took a stack of papers half an inch high when we went to our in-person appointment at the Portuguese Embassy. We had to show:

• signed application form
• proof of income from outside Portugal (pensions and investment income)
• RCMP criminal record check in Canada
• permission to check for a criminal record in Portugal
• proof of accommodation in Portugal (a 12-month lease)
• Portuguese bank account
• Portuguese financial identification number
• copies of passport, birth certificate, marriage licence
• booked flight to Portugal
• travel medical insurance with a statement about including Covid coverage
• extra passport photos in European size (much smaller than Canada’s)
• a personal statement (in English and Portuguese) about why we want to move to Portugal  

Along the way, we’ve learned a few things:

• Simply uploading all our documents to the E-Visa site took three days of sporadic attempts, interspersed with phone calls and emails to the embassy for help to overcome the various error messages. It turns out that you don’t fill in box 31 after all; “NA” will do.
• The E-Visa site automatically schedules your hour-long in-person appointment at the Embassy – even on a day that’s a national holiday in Portugal. I learned this the hard way when I arrived for my appointment on June 16 – Corpus Christi Day. The Embassy was closed. I showed up again the next day to see what could be done. I was advised to come with Bill to his appointment on June 21. Finally, we got all our paperwork submitted.
• No one at the Portuguese Embassy can access the Portuguese E-Visa website, not even to cross out holidays as potential appointment days. No one we talked to seemed alarmed by this; they merely shrugged. “It’s administered in Portugal,” was the explanation.
• Canadian passport photos are too big for a Portuguese visa. We had to get them retaken into the European size of 45 mm high x 35 mm wide.

My theory is that the Portuguese test all visa applicants by subjecting them to the unclear process, frustrating E-Visa site, and conflicting instructions just to identify the hardiest souls. Only the intrepid and stubborn are admitted to their country. In that case, I’m a shoo-in. Bill may be too nice.

Living in a different country is much different from visiting as a tourist. We’ve already had a taste of that simply through renting our two-bedroom apartment. When Portuguese people rent an apartment, they usually take their major appliances with them, as well as all the light fixtures! We’ll have wires dangling from the ceiling when we first arrive, so we’ve packed flashlights to see us through until we can buy lights. We’ve already arranged for the on-demand hot water heater to be installed, but we’ll buy a fridge, oven, cooktop and washing machine once we get there. Ikea, here we come.

Our soon-to-be hometown of Alcobaça is an hour-and-15-minute drive north of the Lisbon Airport – convenient for picking up visitors. With a population of 15,000, Alcobaça is best known for its enormous monastery, established in 1153. Our apartment is a five-minute stroll away.

Mentally, we’re more than ready to resume our retirement plan to explore the world. It’s time to start feeling normal again, even as the world still grapples with Covid.

We took Portuguese lessons last winter with a tutor in Osoyoos, British Columbia. Thousands of Portuguese people immigrated to Canada in the 1950s, with many ending up in the Osoyoos area, working in orchards and vineyards. Our tutor, Tina, came as a teenager with her family in 1954 and has lived there ever since. She was proud of the progress we made. Now, the challenge is to put our words into everyday use. The pronunciation is tricky. Many words look the same as Spanish, but the pronunciation is quite different. The problem is that we know just enough Spanish to be confused.

We’ve packed our bikes in bike boxes, and our clothes, electronics, some kitchen items, wedding photos and a fresh new journal into two large duffel bags and two carry-on-sized bags – a lot more than we took when we explored Portugal in 2019. We have a direct flight from Montreal to Lisbon, so hopefully the airline will not lose our bags.

Estamos prontos para partir. Até logo!    

Above are some of our memories of Portugal from 2019.

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We will fly to Portugal on July 3, 2022. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.