Portugal – Taran's Tales

SFTF Italia o Portogalla Pt 3 – Ten days with International Living

Taranstales

October 17, 2018

Tuk-tuks everywhere in Lisbon. Great way to save the masses from climbing too many hills. We took a group tour of Lisbon this way, but didn’t learn much about the city as our driver wasn’t very communicative!!

Nine days of sunshine gone by, five hotels experienced, rides taken in at least four different coaches, the knowledge of three local guides thoroughly tested, at least two house purchases initiated and one very tired but totally dedicated tour leader looking forward to a few days of well-earned R & R, all combined to mean that thirty-six willing participants could face the ominous black clouds showing up over the mountains above Mijas with complete indifference. For the next day we would all be rising from our sixth different bed, grabbing our tenth tour breakfast, making fond farewells to our several new-found friends and going our separate ways; the heavens could open and threatened lightning could crash, but our tour was ended and nothing could take from us the memories of new places explored and potential new home-sites discovered.

But what had the past ten days of “life according to International Living (IL)” really achieved? Were Celine and I actually a whole lot wiser about the benefits that might be gained by re-defining ourselves with new lives in either Portugal or Spain? Did the tour leave us with a useful impression about life in either of those two countries, or did it merely whet our appetites to learn more for ourselves?

Our fellow travellers had a wide variety of reasons for their presence in our midst. Some, like us, were seriously interested in the idea of starting a new life in a new country and had a definite penchant for the Old World so well represented by these particular two countries. Finding a surefire investment property inspired some to tag along, though without a clear interest in actually setting down new roots for themselves. And a few had very little experience of foreign travel and saw this tour as an opportunity to safely expand their horizons. With such a diverse audience it was always going to be difficult to satisfy all tastes!

A group with many different interests, tastes, and abilities. Quite a challenge for our tireless guide!

The meeting point for us all was Lisbon, the capital of Portugal and the type of city that does attract tourists but is primarily very much a place where people work and lead quite ordinary lives. For that latter reason it is a delightful place for one to walk around and to imagine oneself becoming part of the life of the city, and not an eternal tourist. Unfortunately for Celine and I, that was not the feeling we would get from much of the rest of the tour. It is of course the intent of our hosts to seduce their charges with the delights that are on offer in the regions they are promoting; for many who are visiting a country for the first time, it is the places where foreign tourists congregate that are the biggest draw. I suspect that is the reason International Living chose venues in Portugal’s Algarve region and Spain’s Costa del Sol as the main hubs for our delectation.

Our stay at a resort in Carvoeiro was lovely, but going into town for dinner quickly reminded us that this was “Little England”.

However, for me as an Englishman it was not very exciting to be visiting areas that are both rather uncharmingly known as “Little England” to the locals, and where English is spoken more commonly than either Portuguese or Spanish. Indeed Francesca, our Spanish guide in Costa del Sol, recounted a recent visit there to a dry-cleaners where they spoke no Spanish at all, and Celine and I were served in a cafe in Marbella by a lass from the East End of London who also spoke not a word of the local lingo! I find this to be a very sad reflection on the many, mainly English, ex-pats who are so obviously uninterested in the customs, culture and food of the country wherein they choose to live, and are unperturbed by the process of deculturisation that they are a party to. And why the obsession with golf courses, those large tracts of land set aside for the exclusive use of the minority that are a source of environmental pollution and water wastage?

We all had at least one thing in common, a desire to taste the local vintages! And a sample of the local cheeses also went down pretty well.

Yet in spite of these negative feelings, we both enjoyed many aspects of the tour. It was a novelty for us to be driven everywhere and have so few decisions to make; and our fellow travellers provided us with plenty of entertainment, both intentionally and unwittingly. Indeed the camaraderie was very appealing and we thoroughly enjoyed chatting with everyone, and learning why, or indeed if, they were contemplating a new life in the Old World. For us, life in Europe holds few surprises and returning there from America seems a fairly logical progression in our lives. It must be very different when you have grown up being told that your country is the centre of the universe, and discovering so much that is strange and rather threatening. Of course it is to help people overcome those misgivings that Il arranges tours such as these and I am sure that many of our group felt comforted by what they saw and were introduced to, however much I might like to disavow them of such feelings.

Ronda in Spain’s Malaga region was particularly beautiful, perched atop two rocky outcrops separated by a deep ravine.

On the positive side, by no means every place we visited was tainted with the smell of fish and chips, lager louts and menus in English only. Some of the small towns, particularly Ronda and, to a certain extent, Evora and Tavira, appeared positively “liveable” and made more than a few of us open our eyes to the possibilities they might offer to us prospective ex-pats. The visit to the wine cellar of Jose Maria da Fosca, one of the oldest wineries in Portugal, introduced us to the fascinating ancient art of oenology, whilst confirming my belief that muscatel was rather too sweet even for my sugar-loving taste buds. We saw some beautiful countryside with rocky mountain backdrops, we stood on a clifftop at the most westerly point of mainland Europe and we visited the first bullring to be built in Spain.

The first bullring to be built in Spain is in the beautiful hilltop city of Ronda. Some three hundred feet in diameter it is also one of the largest, and has covered seating for nearly three thousand spectators.

We enjoyed a brief stay in Sevilla and on our last couple of days were pleasantly surprised by the elegance of Malaga, enough for me to mentally disenfranchise it from ‘orrible anglicised Costa del Sol.

The handsome port city of Malaga that seems to have survived the tourist onslaught without losing its soul.

Luckily Celine and I had spent a few days on our own in Portugal before we joined the IL tour and this provided us with a much better idea of what that country might have to offer. [See previous post “Italia e Portogallo 2018 Pt 2 – Lisboa no rio Tejo”] Continue reading SFTF Italia o Portogalla Pt 3 – Ten days with International Living

Italia e Portogallo 2018 Pt 2 – Lisboa no rio Tejo

Taranstales
October 7, 2018

Sitting on a luxury bus with thirty five or more potential American expats is a novel experience for this Brit, an inveterate loner, a traveller who takes masochistic enjoyment in spending hours organising his own trips abroad, scathingly pooh-poohing the concept of organised group travel. Yet there we were, our immediate future in the capable hands of the experts from International Living, heading south towards the Portuguese varsity town of Evora.
About two weeks ago we rose early and followed the sun west from Rome to land in Lisbon – Lisboa to the locals – the capital city of that great seafaring nation, Portugal, and the only European capital to directly face the New World far away across the Atlantic Ocean. Rather belittlingly sometimes referred to as “The Pond” that great expanse of sea presented a daunting vision to seafarers in the Middle Ages and taming it took tremendous courage on the part of seafarers such as Vasco de Gama and Christopher Columbus, encouraged by such visionaries as Henry the Navigator; and to celebrate their exploits,the city of Lisbon commissioned the massive monument, Padrao dos Descobrimentos, on the north bank of the Tagus.

Having organised ourselves for a couple of months exploring Italy, Celine and I learned about this group tour which slotted nicely into our dates, and we promptly decided, somewhat illogically, to back-track to Lisbon and take the opportunity to get a taste of Portugal, the other country that we believed should also be on our list of prospective root re-planting locales.

Rome had proven itself a great place to unwind and recover from our jet-lag; thus Lisbon became the starting point for this trip’s exploring, as we had six days there before joining the tour. We used AirBnB once again, this time to find a sixth floor “apartment with ocean views” in Costa da Caparica, a seaside suburb of Lisbon on the south side of the river Tagus, the aforementioned rio Tejo. The absentee owner is a much travelled town-planning architect, so we were met by his father who showed us around, explained how the roller shutters worked, showed us how to switch power between washing machine and dishwasher, indicated the hatch for the garbage chute beside the lift shaft and then left us to our own devices.

Lisbon is a city built on a series of steep hills, seven in number like Rome supposedly, but there seemed to be many more; you couldn’t go anywhere, except along the river’s edge, without climbing at least one hill. The public transport system in the city comprises a mix of a metro, buses, trams, both ancient and modern, and ferries across the Tagus. So our best route into the city was a ten minute drive from our apartment to catch the ferry from Trafaria to Belem, a suburb a couple of miles west of the city centre, and thence by bus or tram to our destination. A ticket costing a mere €1.75 enabled one to travel on any combination of the modes of transport for, I believe, an hour and a half. However, tickets usually had to be obtained before boarding at the start of the journey and it wasn’t always easy to find the appropriate place to do so. Most people used rechargeable VIVA cards to register as they boarded the bus, tram or ferry at the start of their journey. As well as simply charging the card with a cash value, it was also possible to charge it with a 24hr, go-anywhere pass but the places to do this were even scarcer and we spent quite a lot of time looking, oftentimes unsuccessfully, for the appropriate newsstand or better still a Metro station.

The beautiful chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist In Igreja de Sao Roque

In spite of the occasional transport related frustration we managed to visit lots of churches, including Lisbon Cathedral, halfway up the hill behind Alfama, the oldest district of the city, and Igreja de Sao Roque wherein one finds the beautiful chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist, its walls and pillars covered in lapis lazuli, alabaster and malachite. As recommended by many travel sites, we decided to take a trip on the ancient #28 tram which rattles its way through many of the smaller streets of the Bairro Alta and Alfama districts. This line terminates near another large religious edifice, the Basilica da Estrela, so one morning we walked up the hill in that general direction. Near the summit we were accosted by a typically helpful Portuguese gentleman who asked if we needed any assistance. We chatted for a few minutes and learnt about one or two towns further north that he reckoned were the sort of places we would well appreciate, and were also told that the Algarve was probably not what we were looking for – a prophecy that would turn out to be very accurate!

The #28 tram squeezing it’s way through the narrow streets of old Lisbon

As well as the couple of days we enjoyed tramping the streets of old Lisbon, admiring the many wonderful tiled buildings, experiencing an evening of Fado music (www.clube-de-fado.com), and being somewhat dismayed by the local cuisine, we made good use of our rental car to drive out into the countryside. Our first foray took us 150 km north-east of Lisbon to the Knights Templar stronghold in the small city of Tomar, and the Convento de Christo which it subsequently became after the Jesuits took power in the region. As well as giving us a good insight into early Jesuit teaching, and the life of the two hundred or more Jesuit monks who lived there, the town itself, situated between the castle/monastery and a pretty river, was also a very likeable place from what we gleaned after our short walk around; but as we have learnt so often in the past, it is easy to be seduced by initial impressions, especially when those revolve round the touristic old town centres.

Qunita da Regaleira, otherwise known as “The Palace of Monteiro the Millionaire”

Another day, after crossing the Ponte de 25 Abril, the splendid 1.5km long suspension bridge across the Tagus, we headed west towards Parque Natural de Sintra-Cascais, where several palaces and pseudo-palaces that contribute to the area’s World Heritage status are to be found. I plugged Castelo dos Mouros into Google maps optimistically thinking that we might start the day by climbing the couple of hundred stairs to reach this 10th century Moorish stronghold. What we didn’t plan for was the long slow line of one-way traffic through the surrounding forest, the distinct lack of available parking and, indeed, any signpost indicating when we were in the right place to commence our hike. Eventually we found ourselves on the outskirts of the town of Sintra, and realising we were very close to Quinta da Regaleira, found a handy place to park, and walked back a couple of hundred yards to the entrance. This pseudo-palace has a long and varied history of ownership, but is now sometimes referred to as “The Palace of Monteiro the Millionaire” after the best known former owner, Antonio Augusto Carvalho Monteiro. Monteiro was a man of many interests and ideologies and he decided to build a bewildering palace and estate that would reflect and showcase much of this eclectic collection of beliefs. The four hectare estate is a lovely place to wander through and forget all the troubles of the world among caves, grottoes, waterfalls and a multitude of footpaths going hither and thither. The house also comprises some delightful architecture and together with the garden, the whole place is truly the work of an extraordinary visionary mind, that of Luigi Manini, the architect who so ably interpreted Monteiro’s ideas.
With plenty of energy still in our travel-hardened limbs we then walked the three kilometres, mostly uphill, to Monserrate Palace, another dreamlike building, this time in the Moorish style, that sits above a more conventional garden full of waterfalls, fishponds and beautiful plants and trees from all over the world. It was a horticultural delight that satisfied all one’s senses, smell, visual and tactile, and even aural as there was also plenty of birdlife in the trees. A very interesting video was being screened in one of the rooms, of an interview with an elderly gentleman who, as a child, lived in the palace during the late 30’s and early 40’s, his father having managed the property for Francis Cooke, who owned the palace between the wars. We finished that very worthwhile day by walking back into Sintra where we rewarded ourselves with Tapas and low-alcohol beers, before driving back to the rather more mundane architecture of Costa da Caparica, south of the river Tagus.
Then the day arrived for us to return our rental car and join the tour that prompted this little detour to the Iberian Peninsular. In some ways it felt like we were losing our freedom but we would very soon realise the advantages of handing over to someone else all responsibilities for our wellbeing!

ITALIA o PORTOGALLO?

The excitement is starting to build, the basic itinerary is all planned, flights have been booked, some places to stay have been found; but still we aren’t sure we are going to see what we want.

Earlier this year Celine and I returned from a road-trip vacation in Australia, telling everyone including ourselves, that we were going to Italy in the autumn. The world may well be our oyster but we are fairly sure now that the pearl we seek therein is somewhere close to the Mediterranean. You see we love Europe and all things European, and Italy always seems to be the country that has a stronger pull on us than everywhere else in the Old World. We have already spent altogether the best part of a year, scouting out France, the Basque Country, a wee bit of Liguria in northern Italy and a fairly unspoilt old fishing village on the Costa Brava in north Spain. We have even made a few visits back to the lands of our forefathers in Poland and England, but nowadays neither has the magic force needed to make us pick up sticks, pack our bags and build a new nest. What is lacking in one place, we find by the bucketful in others, and what we love about another place lacks that which we found in the first place. Dangerously for us we can be very impulsive; consequently we very nearly made three or four extremely rash, instant, house-buying decisions, but luckily our nerves got the better of us and our money still sits, safely we hope, in the vaults of England’s ancient high-street banks.

So we made the decision to satisfy that inner longing that both of us have for La Bella Italia, did some fairly basic research, and decided to make our base camp in an area of the country, the region of Abruzzo, of which neither of us has any prior experience but which seemed to have great potential for various reasons. But all the time, nagging thoughts rattled around in the back of my mind, that perhaps Portugal should also be given due consideration before we allowed ourselves to fall in love with yet one more location, which may or may not be as ideal as it seems at that moment. And that is where good fortune started to provide us with the bare bones of an itinerary that may, perhaps, put nagging thoughts to bed forever and give us good cause to pursue just one road along which to find our new home, well for a while at least!

For several years now I have been an avid though occasionally cynical reader of the outpourings of a couple of organisations that specialise in giving advice to wannabe emigrants such as my wife and me. The cynicism arises as much as anything the result of the constant flow of copy aimed at my wallet more than my heart. Nevertheless, I have continued to read much of this material in the belief that basically both companies care for the well-being of their readers and the aspirations of those readers to find better lives for themselves; the constant barrage of letters and articles advertising this or that new publication, conference or special membership, I trust to be simply the means by which these hopefully philanthropic publishers can continue to thrive. Thus our, or rather initially my, choice of Abruzzo had been influenced not inconsiderably by their enthusiastic writings. Celine and I began to delve more deeply into the offerings of this Italian province that we understood as being, in effect, the poorer man’s Tuscany, the undiscovered part of Italy that was every bit as beautiful as its neighbour to the west, and more affordable to the average person trying to make the best of their meagre pension. Taking our research beyond the aforementioned outpourings, we began watching videos on YouTube and, worryingly, realising that the poverty of the region might be more depressing than we were willing to live with. But the charms of the Italy that we had both been seduced by in the past continued to sway our thoughts and then, lo and behold, we read that one of the two organisations was arranging a conference to be held in Abruzzo during the time we were due to be over there. This seemed an ideal chance to both glean loads of useful information about everything to do with a new life in Italy, and to put to the test my sometimes waning faith in the organisers.

At last our travel plans had a focal point and we could get on with the nitty-gritty of planning in more detail. We booked our flights between Los Angeles and Rome and suddenly we were past the point of no return. But there is always a fly in the ointment and this time the fly was Portugal, for no sooner had we fixated our thoughts on Italy than we received details of a ten-day tour being promoted by “the other organisation” to give people like us a taste of the delights of living in Portugal and Spain; and the dates fitted in ideally with our eastbound flight to Rome. Of course we soon discovered that the cost of changing our flight to make our first European landfall in Lisbon was astronomical, and we chose instead to back-track from Rome to Lisbon, allowing ourselves to first of all luxuriate in the former city for three days. So now we have the best of both worlds before us. We will have a chance to experience to varying degrees, the two remaining countries on our search list, Portugal and Italy. We will get to compare the abilities of the two organisations whose publications have been so instrumental in keeping alive our desires to find a better place to live, and with luck we will return to sunny, overcrowded Southern California at year’s end with an even clearer idea of what the future holds for us.

Now all that we have to do is to reserve a few more accommodations, rent a car suitable for the vagaries of Italian driving and the narrow streets of the many hilltop towns we expect to visit in Italy, add a few basic phrases of Portuguese to our linguistic “skills”, and enjoy yet another stage in our search for the future. But who knows what we’ll be thinking by the time we get home again!