I take a walk every morning; get my 5,000 steps in first thing. I usually turn right when I head out the door and walk as far as Praia do Barril. Once or twice a week I turn left, and walk towards Tavira. Technically, I have walked to the city line of Tavira several times,…
Finding private health insurance for expats in Portugal is literally as easy as walking into your bank. One of the benefits of moving overseas is that healthcare itself is much more affordable. Private insurance is too. First off, in order to qualify for a D7 residency visa, you need to have a year of health…
If you are going to move to another country, please understand that at first, every day is a navigation. It’s a new world and things work differently. Some better, some worse, almost all are different. There’s a phrase in product development called Least Viable Product (LVP). It’s when a new product is released with very…
Moving to Portugal as an older, single woman is a thing! Several times a month a woman will ask in an Expat group if there are any older women who have moved to Portugal solo. They are met with responses from dozens of women who have made the jump and are encouraging and supportive. I…
It is said that life is a series of trade-offs and I understand that very well. Prior to the pandemic, I was already, shall we say, a tad overweight. Then I gained the COVID 19, and my clothes were uncomfortably tight. Fortunately, we were all living in sweatpants for a year. But now that we’re…
I feel like I am stating the obvious—of course you need income as an expat, yet so many people are sold on the idea of cheap living in foreign countries that they don’t have a realistic idea of how much income they will need. Yes, for US citizens, it is usually cheaper to live in…
One of the hardest pieces of my day is resisting the urge to run downstairs to the bakery and get something delicious. I am trying to lose the weight I gained during COVID lockdown (and pre-lockdown, to be honest) and the bakery is not helping. It sits there, like a spider in a web, just…
I have spent many hours this week just watching the water. I’m watching the boats and the cars, the “self-walking” dogs and the people, too, of course. But mostly I watch the water. The tide doesn’t roll in here on the Ria Formosa. (Sorry, Otis.) It creeps in, it seeps in. It subtly edges into…
Moving to Santa Luzia is my fourth move in five months and it should be my final move for at least a year, maybe longer. To qualify for Portugal’s D7 residency visa, I had to have six months of accommodations lined up. At the time I applied, you could have AirBnB reservations or even long…
“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” Chinese Proverb I found this gem while researching another Chinese proverb for a book I am working on. And it resonated with me because it laid out how I have felt (for the most part) since I moved to Portugal. I am…