I Want to Live Here…

Jeff the Itinerant Aquarius.

I guess my problem is that I’m an Aquarius.

All the professional stargazers who write about this kinda stuff always note that Aquarians are peripatetic. I don’t really follow astrology, but I will say that peripatetic is a pretty accurate representation of my daily, inner turmoil.

And that turmoil started having a little party inside my soul during a recent drive through northern Portugal.

I spent a week touring Porto, the beach communities of Esposende and Praia de Âncora, a Lilliputian riverside city I love called Caminha, and down into the university town of Braga. Not a day passed when I didn’t send my wife, Yulia, something like eleventy bajillion text messages all stating some version of the same message: I WANT TO LIVE HERE!

I say that about a lot places. I know that. Probably a character flaw. Maybe it’s the “Aquarians are peripatetic” thing. I don’t know.

Yulia knows I want to move to Scotland, Ireland, parts of France, northern Italy, the Netherlands, some rural part of Sweden, Montenegro, and a beach town in Uruguay. Mainly, she just goes along with my childlike delusions, humoring me, sometimes shaking her head knowingly and offering up one of those “mmm hmms” that means “you’re an idiot.” Then, after a few minutes of humoring me, she carries on with whatever she was up to before another one of my “let’s move!” delusions invaded her day.

She knows that I’ll likely want to move to wherever my next trip takes me as well.

But this is the life when you’re married to El Jefe the Aquarius.

Now to be fair, I know I can’t make most of those moves. No way to get residency in Scotland without a Scottish company hiring me. Ireland I could probably swing if I convinced International Living’s publisher to have the magazine hire me locally, but then again Ireland is proper pricey!

The others all have their issues as well.

And frankly, Portugal still makes the most sense for our family because we have access to a European Union passport after just five years (we’re both chasing that), and we’re grandfathered into the original Non-Habitual Resident (NHR) tax scheme, which means our local tax rates are 0% because of how my offshore-based income is structured.

But that doesn’t mean we have to remain in Lisbon, where we currently live.

I’ve driven all over this petite country in the 18 months we’ve lived here. The only two regions I’ve missed are the far southeastern coast near the Spanish border, and the far northeastern mountains, also near the Spanish border. But I’ve seen the rest of the country and I can offer a few assessments:

1. Lisbon is nice, but it’s crowded. And more expensive than the mainstream press lets on.

2. The Algarve is nice, if you like a deserty, Southern California vibe. But it’s crowded in the summer.

3. The eastern wine regions are a mirror in many ways of Sonoma and Napa, but they are a couple of hours away from the amenities of a city.

4. Porto, Braga, and the northwestern coast are phenomenal. But you have to like a cooler, wetter climate, something like an amalgam of San Francisco, Seattle, and Asheville, North Carolina.

You’ll be reading more about the north in an upcoming IL cover story, which is why I was traveling through the region in early December. I’m not going to give away that story here.

Instead, this dispatch is more of a lesson-to-learn missive if you’re thinking about moving overseas in 2025: See as much of the country as you can before deciding where you want to settle.

Sometimes it’s easy to know where you want to live. When I moved to the Czech Republic in 2018, I knew without question that I wanted to live in Prague, a city I’d visited before and which I think is one of the most picturesque and proper European cities. It’s Old World Europe meets Collapsed Soviet Bloc in the best possible way, and that combo really appealed to me.

Our move to Portugal has been very different.

I like Lisbon. Parts are lovely.

But it doesn’t feel “home” the same swaddling way that Prague did.

However… northern Portugal gives me a sense of that. I felt much more comfortable in Porto and Braga than I’ve ever felt in Lisbon. Maybe it’s that both cities are much smaller—Braga, a university town and Portugal’s #3 metro area, is less than a tenth the size of Lisbon.

Maybe it’s the environment. The hills, mountains, forests, rivers—they all put me at ease. I feel much more content in those surroundings.

I should say, though, that this dispatch isn’t really about me. It’s about doing it right when you move abroad.

Like I’ve said, we’ve lived in Portugal for 18 months now, and we’re really just now getting to know the country. And in that process, we’re learning what we do and don’t like. Though Yulia knows I have a peripatetic soul, she also feels what I feel at times about Lisbon and about wanting a quieter, less hectic, less expensive life.

Which is why we’re heading back to Porto and Braga… She’s never seen either city and I want to gauge how she feels about each. We still have nine months on our apartment lease, so we’re not going anywhere immediately. But if Porto and Braga strike her as they struck me, then just maybe I can persuade her to trade our life in Lisbon for a life in northern Portugal.

After that, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to southern Ireland… or Montenegro… or Sweden… or…