About Me (Elise!) & Unpack Portugal

I'm Elise, a Canadian expat living in Cascais Portugal.

When my husband, Thomas, and I first moved to Cascais, we did so on a (calculated) whim.

Portugal had always been on our short-list of places we'd like to try living in, but before we took the leap, we decided that even if it didn't work out, it was worth a shot, and we could easily move to another country (France and Scottland being high up on our lists), if it didn't work out.

The short and long of it is - we dove in head first, rel-locating to Cascais, Portugal in 2018, and while we loved aspects of life in Portugal from the start, somehow the country, and more particularly this city, ended up growing on us to the point where I myself can no longer imagine living anywhere else.

In case you'd like to see my perspective as an expat living in Portugal, my thoughts on life in Portugal and if you're considering making the move yourself, all the things you should know beforehand, stick around.

And if you'd like a little backstory -

I'm a Canadian who was born and grew up in the city of Toronto. In case you know the GTA - I grew up in North York, went to university in Scarborough, and when it was finally time to have our own house, Thomas and I bought a bungalow in Scarborough.

But I never could stay put. There are so many things I love about Toronto - the multiculturalism, the trees and forests and nature, the food. Oh god are the restaurants good. But I just couldn't handle the winters, and I'd always wanted to try living abroad. Though my heart was set on going, I could be swayed on where.

Thomas and I met back when I was in university. He was living in the UK at the time, and so when we met online through friends of friends, he decided to hop on a plane to meet me in Toronto. A few short months after landing in Pearson International Airport, we'd tied the knot.

He knew I wanted to move away from Toronto - to try living someplace else - since he met me. And the shortlist typically included a small handful of countries he thought might be a good fit - England, Scottland, France, Portugal.

Portugal always made the list, but it wasn't his top choice, which was somewhere in the UK - either in England or Scottland. My heart was always set on France, but I took his word for his pick of the best fit, as he was born in France himself, lived in England for a good chunk of time, and all round just was much more travelled and knowledgeable about other countries, other cultures, and the beaurocracy that was quite literally unimaginable from my Canadian perspective.

So we hopped on a plane and made for Bournemouth, England - where is grandmother was living at the time. We figured we'd try it for a couple years, then move on to Scottland, but once we got to Bournemouth, we felt a pull to stay.

The desire to stay was met with a considerable amount of friction - from the enormous amount of difficulty - hoops we had to jump through - because as you know, computer often says no. To reiterate - I am a Canadian, we have British royalty plastered on our coins, and yet the amount of difficulty I had with the hoops we needed to jump through for immigration became untenable. It just didn't feel worth it to stay - especially after the Brexit vote.

So we went back to the drawing board, created a new shortlist, ranked the countries in order of most likely to fit, and Portugal came up first this time. That and, Scottland and France we decided we could try after Portugal, since they were less of a wild card and we knew better what we'd be dealing with in both cases.

Thomas did all the digging, did all the paperwork, planned our trip, chose a city (we thought Lisbon at first, but I'm not much of a city person). Off to the races I went looking for a house we could buy, and then when I found the perfect one (with two runner-ups), we felt the anxiety and anticipation build - it was going to be real. We were really moving.

We bought the house and boarded a plane with our house cat, Avery, who we'd brought from Canada to the UK a couple years prior, landed in Lisbon, grabbed an Uber to Cascais, and waited, holding the carrier with our cat in front of our new house for 2 hours for the key to our home.

Yes, the real estate agents knew we were coming, but this little part of our story is so Portugal in a nutshell - I'll explain why and how in future posts.

We had a rocky start to our move here, as we moved into a home with literally everything ripped out of it. I mean everything - no fridge. Yes that's common. It took us ages to get our ducks in a row, and in the meantime, the law firm we'd hired to help us out we quickly discovered was bad news. But again, I'll get into that in future posts.

After the rough start - getting settled became easier and easier the more we understood the culture and the more contacts and friends we made. The more of a network we had for ourself, the more people we had to trust, the more trustworthy people we were put into contact with through those people, and it spidered out.

Portugal's not really the type of country I'd want to move to if I didn't know a single soul. Now I know that. Before, I didn't realize this was the majority of the friction points we had at the start of our moving here.

There were times just after our move where I wondered if we'd made a terrible mistake, or if we would need to pack our bags and leave because I just couldn't make heads or tails of how to feel safe, secure, and do things in a manner that was effective here.

Portugal definitely didn't fit into my idea of how things work - it defied every box, and I had to create a new understanding of how this culture worked, and I'm not stranger to understanding culture.

But the Portuguese have a very unique way of life, of living, the beaurocracy is completely unlike any other I've seen before, but the frustration I had at the start eventually gave way to the most peace and security I have ever experienced in my life.

Once you get the system, once you have people, honestly, I cannot imagine a better place for me to live. I love it here.

But I wish I had a shortcut so I didn't have to go through that rough patch to start.

If I can, I'd like to prevent others from having such a rough start. Here's to hoping I can find a way to clear a new, easier path, so those behind me don't have such a hard time. Don't feel as lost and frustrated and confused and even scared as I did in my first few months.

Here's to hoping - if you do decide to move to Portugal - I manage to do at least a little bit to help you have an easy trip forward.