How to Choose Where to Live in Portugal
A city by the sea
This picture is from the map I used on my very first trip to Portugal back in 2012. We didn’t stop in Cascais on our way from Sintra to Lisbon. In fact, I have no idea why I took the photo at all, but it kind of feels like manifest destiny, no?
I don’t remember much about driving through except zooming past a packed beach as we raced to Lisbon trying to drop our rental car off by 9am. Not the most formal introduction.
When we first started talking about really doing this—really how to move to Portugal—our idea was to apply for the Portugal Golden visa and buy a Golden Visa property to turn into a bed and breakfast. In a classic me being me move, I immediately got online and started searching for bed and breakfasts for sale in Portugal. Within 10 minutes I had found the perfect place. The list price was $1.25 million, and we were only about $1.2 million shy. While I knew that property was a pipe dream, I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering to what if…
What if we lived across the river from a tiny village? What if our kids went to the local school and spoke Portuguese, and we had an organic garden and fruit trees, and raised goats and made goat cheese, and chickens and alpacas, and a boat to take our guests on the river? What if we could have all that, wouldn’t it be amazing??? Let me tell you, this pandemic has had me thinking some crazy-ass thoughts, y’all.
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Start a Bed & Breakfast in Portugal?
So, instead of fixating on that property, I decided to use it as a springboard of motivation. I bought books, read stories, and joined Facebook groups all dedicated to the bed and breakfast life. I learned about thread counts and booking systems and occupancy rates, etc. And then we looked at our timeframe.
Long story short, because Dustin’s current job would go through the end of Summer, and because we wanted Mia to finish her Kindergarten year in NYC, our goal would be to depart for Portugal at the end of July. That would only give us about a month to find a property and get Mia enrolled in school. At this point, we didn’t know that international schools fill up quickly and enrollment starts in March/April.
The condensed timeline plus the added stress of starting a business before we could really acclimate and get settled started to feel very overwhelming, so after lots and lots of talking it through and playing out different scenarios, we decided to pivot. We would make the move and just live there for six months to a year before diving into any kind of business activity. This would give us time to get our bearings, immerse ourselves in the Portuguese culture, research and scout locations and properties, and learn about the real estate landscape. Oh, and decide if we really liked living in Portugal, pretty important, don’t you think?
All this to say that with our new plan in mind, our driving factor in choosing where to live would be where we wanted to put Mia in school. As I mentioned in the Selecting a School post, you can either choose a location and then find a school or find a school and let that dictate your location. And since we wanted Mia in an international school, we were bound to the locations that offer those options.
Lisbon, Portugal
As much as we love Lisbon, living in NYC for over 10 years, and wanting to slow down the day-to-day rat race, we were intent on not living in a large city. And having visited Porto once before, I knew how beautiful it was, but the weather there was a bit colder in the Winter and that simply would not do!
So, we focused on the Lisbon-adjacent areas and The Algarve where there are several international schools to choose from. At one point, my curiosity for the beach-riddled Algarve with its plethora of amazing surf spots had me thinking that was our spot, but the 3-4 hour drive to Lisbon all but ensured that we wouldn’t be able to visit as often as we planned.
What was left was the beautiful coastal area west of Lisbon, sometimes referred to as the Portuguese Riviera, which includes a slew of picturesque villages and towns.
Cascais, Portugal
Cascais is the most popular and cosmopolitan with Estoril, Carcavelos, Oeiras, and others stretching from the western tip all the way back to Lisbon. As far as we’ve been told, it’s hard to go wrong with any of these choices along what is known as the Cascais line (due to the train that runs along the coastline). And since they all run into each other and are minutes away by car, living in any of these towns would make schools in the area more than accessible.
Personally, having walked our kids to school/daycare 5-10 minutes from our Brooklyn apartment, I can’t imagine commuting more than 15-20 minutes by car to schlep the kids back and forth. And since the two schools we’re most interested in are in Cascais, I imagine we’ll find accommodations as close to there as our budget and housing sensibilities will allow.
We’re looking forward to exploring a new town/neighborhood. One of Dustin’s favorite things to do when we visit or move to a new place is to walk around and call out all the stores/restaurants/bars/amenities available to us. I don’t even know if he knows he’s doing it. “Oh look, there’s a grocery store.” 😆 But it’s cute and just shows how exciting it can be to discover a new home.
Our housing search will commence over the next 6-8 weeks, so check back for more about that! And don’t miss these resources to help make your move abroad easier.
Want to know more about what it’s like to live in Cascais?
If you’re interested in an in-depth look at Cascais, join Live and Invest Overseas to snag a copy of the November edition of their Portugal Letter digital magazine in which the feature I wrote breaks down everything you need to know about life in Cascais.
Move to Portugal
