Portugal – One of the hottest words in the early retirement community these days. Many bloggers and news outlets have placed Portugal at the very top of their list of destinations for retirees looking to cut the cost of living or just looking to find a nice place with beautiful weather to live in.
Since we ourselves have mentioned Portugal in a post about geographical arbitrage and how to retire abroad for often times much less than you can in North America, we decided we needed to make a trip and back up our thoughts on this expat haven.
First Impressions
First and foremost, any place where you can order an espresso for $0.50 is a place that I can get behind. While you could be paying close to north American prices for an americano or other variation of coffee near the center of Lisbon, we were able to find great cafes to get our caffeine fixes from for very very cheap – and they were all fantastic.
One thing to be aware of though, is that you will not be drinking your traditional large filter coffee double-doubles in Portugal, instead you’ll get something more closely sized to a shot glass. At first this was kind of annoying but after the first few days we really started to enjoy our espressos and cappuccinos.
Another initial “shock” we got was just how much granite, marble and general stone work there was. This was both a pro and a con for us as while it looks amazing in the well kept areas there is also a bit of a worn and rough feel to certain areas of town where the large stone buildings have been aged and have not had any form of preservation done to them.
Some of these areas had the feeling of being rough, or unsafe initially to us especially coming from parts of the world where we just don’t see a lot of rundown, old buildings with a lot of graffiti etc. but what we came to find after spending some time in all areas of town is that everything was about as safe as could be expected in any city – we never had any run-ins or unwanted attention at any point throughout our two week stay which included plenty of wandering around town well into the night hours.
The pricing on general day to day expenses were also really quite cheap, if I had to put a number on it I would say you’re looking at easily 30-40% savings on basic groceries like bread, milk, meats, fruits etc. as compared to what we pay in Alberta, Canada.
And in what’s become perhaps my favourite meal in our time there we were also able to order a bread basket complete with cheese, oil, olives and 3 glasses of wine for what amounted to $9.00 CAD – Unreal.
Not only that but beer and wine found in the grocery stores are incredibly affordable – to the tune of $5 CAD for 12 pack of beer or a bottle of wine for anywhere from $2 to $10 CAD. All of this made us quite happy.
The final “wow” for us in terms of first impressions was just how tropical the coast was. We had expected some sun and the odd sandy beach but seeing the long sandy beaches, palm trees and the sheer number of desirable beach locations still surprised us.
We only ventured roughly an hour out of Lisbon to the West and South so we can’t speak to the whole of Portugal, but we did see enough to know that there are no shortage of locations if you’re looking to find a place to live or travel to where you can lie in the sun all day.
What we’d do differently.
The main “con” we found was a self inflicted one. Prior to going overseas we really should have put more emphasis on learning Portuguese, but we had read and heard that there was plenty of English and that we’d be able to get by.
While this was true and we were able to make due with speaking English only, there were some issues communicating with a couple of our taxi drivers and some of the more out of the way cafes and restaurants where at least knowing more of the basics like your coffee order would have come in handy.
In the future, we will definitely work to up our language skills before venturing back over.
The other thing we might do differently is book in to another city like Porto and get to see more of the country. We loved Lisbon and were very happy to stay there but when you’re assessing a country to see how liveable it is for you or for others it would have been better for us to see more of the country and not just a small segment of the coast.
Our Takeaways
Both Mrs. FIC and I loved our trip to Portugal, and we also had a friend from Canada stop in to visit us and join us for several days along the way.
When I asked at the end of our stay what the thoughts were on their willingness to potentially living in Portugal I was met with two resounding “Absolutely” ‘s. The main reasons cited were that the weather was great, the beaches were more than you could hope for and the laid back lifestyle and friendliness of the locals exceeded expectations. – And my own opinion is pretty well in line with them.
We would highly recommend Lisbon specifically as a holiday destination to our readers and have confidence there is something for everyone there to enjoy.
If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below or contact us on our Instagram page @FindependenceCanada
We look forward to hearing from you!
FIC.