Moving to Portugal

Trying something new is never easy, but moving to another country? As scary as it is, it's also very exciting. And scary . . .

In February of 2024, we were going through a polar vortex. Having thought about moving back to Canada upon retirement, I started questioning whether we had to move back to Canada. It's cold there too. Colder actually. Then we thought about moving to the Netherlands where Brian's family is originally from. Brian was there in 2019 for work and he really enjoyed biking everywhere. But after some research, we found it gets pretty cold there too. Where should we go? I wanted somewhere that has mild winters. And so we started looking at Portugal.

I had a trip planned to Portugal and Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago. It seemed like a possibility. We did a bunch of research, settled on Portugal, and started looking at houses. Now most people plan scouting trips. Not us. We scouted on idealist.pt. We looked at hundreds of houses in different areas of Portugal. We knew we wanted something in keeping with Portuguese architecture, but they are either too pricey or to broken down. What we didn't want was to move and spend all our time renovating.

While doing research I came across ExpatsEverywhere on YouTube. It's a great channel with as much information as you could ever need when deciding to move to Portugal. One of her interviews was with Rafael, a mortgage broker. We contacted him and in the ensuing months we navigated the mountains of paperwork required when buying a property in Portugal. This process is not for the faint of heart.

I found a house in the Douro Valley that looked promising. On one of the days off from the Camino group, I took a train from Viana de Castello to Porto where I met up with our real estate agent Marianna and her husband Pedro. Two of the nicest people you'd ever meet. We made the hour drive to the house and spent almost two hours looking it over and admiring the scenery. You could see the beautiful Douro River from one of the balconies. I was smitten. But it didn't last for long . . .

It was apparent while viewing the house that the owner didn't want to sell. She was being forced to because of finances. From what I gather, her father had built the house, and being in the middle of a nasty divorce (her husband left her for her best friend) and short on funds, she needed to sell. We put in an offer and it was accepted. However, after weeks of back and forth, it was apparent that this purchase was not going to happen, so we walked away.

After my return from the Camino, life got crazy. We put the farm up for sale which meant cleaning, decluttering, repairing and lots of painting. Thank goodness for my good friend Bernie, who came to help me with the decluttering. After packing up what I wanted to keep and taking loads to the thrift shops, we were in good shape for viewings. A few short months later, the farm sold, we closed at the end of December and were facing homelessness. We had a plan though . . .

We own a commercial building in Beaver Dam and after closing my business at the end of December, we thought we'd have to move in and make the best of it. This is where it gets really interesting! The new owners of the farm asked if we wanted to stay in the house until the end of April/middle of May. Well, hell yes! They were going to New Mexico for the winter, so this worked out amazingly well for us.

And then we received an offer on the commercial building! You can't make this stuff up!

And then the animals. This has been the hardest, most heart-wrenching part of this whole decision to move to Portugal. In October I took Bijou (my umbrella cockatoo) to a bird sanctuary in Florida. My friend Bernie and I made the trip. It was relatively uneventful, but driving through the bigger cities was a nightmare. The Florida Exotic Bird Sanctuary is an amazing place. They are a no-kill, no-adopt sanctuary. Bijou will spend the rest of her days enjoying life outside in an aviary with other cockatoos, and a boyfriend!

We were very fortunate to have the donkeys, goats, ducks, Loki and Finnegan adopted by a wonderful family. They are being spoiled and well taken care of. I miss them terribly.

We also rehomed the shop cats, Luna and Reba. They went to a wonderful family who are enjoying them immensely. We feel so blessed to have such wonderful caretakers for our beloved animals.

And the last to go were the chickens. 11 in all. I miss watching their antics running around the farm, dusting themselves in the dirt and most of all, the farm fresh eggs!

We put an offer on a house in Portugal back in November, I think it was. It's an even better house in an amazing location, and best of all? Hardly any renovations needed, but you know me . . . and I can't wait to start on a swimming pool!

There are quite a few things coming up for closure, but more on that later. For now, we wait for our visa appointments in Houston in March, and then more waiting for approvals. And more paperwork. Lots more paperwork. Ugh . . .