movingtoportugal

Having friends come to visit us here in Portugal is fantastic, especially at this time of year when every day is blazing hot and we are starting to forget what clouds are like, let alone rain.

What isn’t so fantastic is when they have to go home. When people share our new home with us it makes the place full of life, especially as these people are on holiday and bring that happy-holidays vibe with them. When they leave, the house feels oddly empty for a couple of days – and it never helps that there is the inevitable pile of work to catch up on – it tends to go on the back-burner in favour of far more important things – long lunches, swimming and exploring different beaches.

My wife and I have always been very sentimental and are not good at dealing with that “last day of holiday” feeling. We didn’t realise when we moved here was that we would experience that sad feeling second-hand when each of our guests leave!

We are approaching another concentrated period of visits over the next

Sunset Boat Back From Isla de Tavira

couple of months (only two days, in fact, until the next arrival,) so perhaps by the end of September we may have a slightly different take on this!

The guest who has just left is interested in a possible move abroad in the future, so we obviously did all we could to sell the lifestyle to her. We have asked her to produce a guest post telling readers of this blog of her experiences in Portugal so expect to see that soon.

Summer is well and truly here now, and not a day goes by without a minor panic about how big our next electricity bill will be with the air conditioning on all the time. The Algarve is like a completely different place to even just two weeks ago – every major coastal town is like a party-zone every night of the week. It is quite exciting at the moment to see the contrast but I’m sure it won’t be long before we want all the tourists to go home and give us back our little piece of paradise.

Until then though, we are loving our first Portuguese summer, having an apartment that smells of sun cream and even the constant dry and stingy skin from all the time we are spending in the sea. It’s all rather good.

England's green and pleasant land

I have been a bit slack of late when it comes to keeping this blog up to date. Those reading from England will know that the weather here has been really rather special the last couple of weeks, and after three back-to-back bad summers before now it is about time!

So, blogging has taken a low priority, below barbeques, pimms, cider and getting in far too late every evening. England is a contrary so-and-so – spending years winding you up with shocking weather and grumpy people  - pushing you right to the point where you arrange to leave and go to Portugal, then at the eleventh hour becoming a lovely sunny place where strangers smile! Still, there’s no way it will be permanent and the fact the good weather has had such a positive impact on my state of mind affirms our decision to move to where the sunshine is.

Now, after a month of sunshine, we find ourselves with only FOUR months to go until move day which is pretty daunting, but having said that, we do seem to be making progress – our work situations are getting to the point of being finalised and there are finally spaces appearing on shelves where our Ebay and car-boot efforts are starting to make visible progress. The build up of savings is starting to slow down at times – it seems a lot easier to build funds up when there aren’t so many opportunities for al-fresco dining in London!

The next thing we have to do is book some flights over to Portugal to arrange our fiscal numbers and then the next milestone is being able to “go public” with our news to my clients. I have been itching to do for several months but business reasons have prevented me from doing so. I am a very direct and honest kind of person and dislike feeling duplicitous, so I am really looking forward to everyone knowing, even if it does mean telling the same story to dozens of people. Perhaps I should just print the blog URL on some cards and hand them out?