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Finding the Dream: Long held and, to date, unfulfilled ambitions to live abroad, fuelled our dreams for years. Holidays in Portugal and Spain added fuel to the fire and got us thinking about what might be possible come our retirement. We are ready for a new adventure, one that demonstrates that we can still have new adventures, one that leaves a physical and moral legacy for our children and grandchildren - you CAN do what you believe in! The following is our story, our diary if you like, of the hows, whys, whens and whats of living our dream. |
| Planning - using our knowledge: We have taken many holidays abroad - always to the sunshine. We have both spent time working away from home and both developed a bit of 'wanderlust' in our 'old(er) age'. Portugal is a BIG country! Whilst the majority would be able to name resorts on the Algarve and maybe a few around Lisbon, far fewer people would recognise place names north of Lisbon and Porto. Deciding where to look for our piece of paradise has been one of our hardest decisions but we had to start somewhere and a long Christmas and New Year break gave us the time to interrogate our trusty map of Portugal. We concluded that we might concentrate on the Coimbra region as we loved our visit there some years ago. We wanted to be within 1-2 hours driving distance of the coast, with local shops, bars, restaurants within reasonable walking distance. |
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Thinking Ahead - what we know: In some respects the 'thinking ahead' is made a bit easier because we know what we don't want i.e. a holiday home. We have had experience of the nuts and bolts of home ownership in Portugal, so we know that nothing happens quickly. We have done a fair bit of internet research around our favourite subject, so we've gleaned nuggets of information about retirement living abroad but we know that the best way to find out how this all works in practice is to talk to people who've done something similar. So we've Facebooked (old tech), You Tubed, Googled, emailed and now have a bit of a plan. We have also discovered that we already know a couple of people 'on the ground' as it were and have made arrangements to visit them on our next trip to Portugal. |
| Reasons to Dream - our love of Portugal: This started many years ago when we booked a villa in a small town on the outskirts of Lisbon. Further visits to Portugal found us in Pombal renting a house just outside the town and right next door to a bar/disco! Fast forward a couple of years and we had the opportunity to buy a property on the Algarve, in a little village called Carrapateira north of Vila do Bispo on the Western coast of the Algarve. So Portugal has been part of our DNA for a good while and I think we've always known that we would return at some point. |
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So Starts the Adventure: With much excitement, we booked our flights to Lisbon (flights to Porto are limited in the winter), booked hotels, parking, care hire, the necessary covid tests, downloaded bus and train timetables, arranged meetings with our lawyer, a realtor (estate agent in our world) with properties and land to view....and then it all stopped... we both tested positive for covid 48 hours before leaving. Aargh! We were completely gutted and spent the day cancelling everything and arranging refunds. Take Two: We've rebooked and will be arriving in Lisbon at the end of March. Watch this space for an update! Read our flip book (due end Feb) for more info. |
