We moved to Lisbon a month ago, & so far, living here is a lot like slow travel – only slower, with a few more things to figure out!
- Kimberly OLeary
- 19 hours ago
- 8 min read
A little over a month ago, we moved to Lisbon, Portugal, after traveling full-time around the world for four years. So far, it feels like the best aspects of both slow travel and settling in one place. Of course, there are some aspects that are a bit overwhelming, but then we remind ourselves it's only been a month!
We’ve spent the last month primarily focused on two things: setting up a household, and getting to know our neighborhood. Setting up a household is something we haven’t really done for a very long time. When we married in 1984, each of us had some furniture and household items we brought into our relationship. We acquired things over the years, and moved a lot, so by the end of our house-owning days, we kind of had a mish-mash of things. When we moved our stuff into storage in 2022, we tried to keep only those things we really, really liked and/or things with sentimental value. When we downsized our storage unit in 2024, we gave away most of our remaining furniture, kitchen items, and other things. We still kept a very few pieces of furniture, and most household items were personal to us (wall pictures, my mother’s old china, things we bought on our travels, and things like that). Plus, Paul still has a lot of tools that he acquired over decades.
When we moved here a month ago, we limited what we brought to 10 bags/boxes that we checked as luggage. This includes most of our clothes, personal items, a few kitchen items, and our technology.
We had pre-ordered a few items to make the first weeks bearable – 2 card table folding chairs, a “sofa-bed” that sits on the floor, two end tables, a blanket, and a small desk. When we arrived, the house was pretty empty. We had a lot of help from our friends at Portugal the Place to get our house ready. Alexandra met us at the front door with the keys! Thanks for Pedro & Tiago as well.
One of the items in the "overwhelming" category was having no place to sit, eat or sleep. Although we literally went bed shopping the day after we arrived in Lisbon, we didn’t get the mattress for 8 days and the base and headboard for another two weeks after that. We realized fairly early on that the two chairs were super-uncomfortable. We bought a sofa a few days in, but it was not due to arrive for two weeks. We bought some comfy chairs, but again, one would arrive in 2 weeks, the other in 2 months. We ordered desks, monitors, and a dining room table and chairs. But, a month in, we have the bed, the dining room set, the sofa, some chairs, and the desks and monitors.
Other "overwhelming" features: in Portugal, when you rent a house, it is not common to get light fixtures. So we had to buy light fixtures. Paul is installing them one day at a time. We did have some lights, so it was not completely dark, but Paul wanted to replace all the bulbs with LED, and make the fixtures match. Paul figured out the trash & recycling schedule. I've been cleaning the small front yard & back patio a little at a time, but we haven't yet bought soil or plants. I tried my hand at pruning an orange tree. We brought some glasses and kitchen ware, but we didn’t have silverware, pots and pans, kitchen towels or oven mitts. We bought bathroom towels, hooks, toothbrush holders and bathmats. It is just beginning now to feel like we actually live here.
Although it has been a lot more work than we anticipated just to get us to a point of feeling like we have the essentials, it has been nice to actually buy coordinated items that look nice together. We’re 67 and 68 years old, and we understand our esthetic better now than when we first set up shop in our 20’s.
Things on our "to-do" list. Learn Portuguese. We're both doing Duolingo, but want to enroll in a course when we have some more time. Figure out driver's license exchange. Try to understand NIF refunds. Figure out what we will need for our AIMA (immigration) appointments in September. Getting more things over here. We are permitted to ship items within a year of our arrival without paying duty in customs. So we’re planning a return trip in October to arrange to have things sent – our few pieces of furniture we kept, including a large wood work bench and stained wood wine rack made by Paul, a Grandmother clock we bought in the early days of our marriage, and an entrance table and mirror. We’ll probably ship some of Paul’s tools and old radios; some of our wall art, and some other sentimental items. We don’t want as much “stuff” as we had before we started travel, but a bit more than we have now.
The other thing we’ve been doing is exploring the neighborhood. We live in a part of Lisbon called Penha de França, and the neighborhood dates back to 1598, when the Convent of Penha de França was built. A lot of the area was destroyed by floods in the 1755 earthquake (a major event in the history of Lisbon). There is a huge cemetery – the Cemitério do Alto de São João - close by, which was commissioned in 1833 following a cholera epidemic. It remains the largest cemetery in Lisbon. Here is a painting
showing the Penha de Franca in 1857, including a drawing of the old convent on the hill. Today, about 28,000 people live in this neighborhood.
Currently, our exploration has centered around the places we need to frequent in our daily life. We’ll get to the parish church on the hilltop and the cemetery eventually, but for now, this is what the neighborhood feels like.
Our little street is full of semi-detached houses. The walls are concrete and stone. The stone is beautiful – crafted from lovely pieces, and no two are alike. Like the other houses on our street, we have a second-floor balcony (first floor if you are European), so I can see folks enter and exit their homes and walk by daily. Our neighbors appear to be a range of ages – from very old to very young and everything in between. Houses have stone, marble, tile or concrete walls in front and small front yards. Our house and our neighbor next door have back patios as well (I can’t see the other back yards). It's our own Uma Casa Portuguesa!
The sidewalk in front is made from the famous Portuguese calçadas, as is our patio. In fact, all of the sidewalks in the neighborhood are calçada. We don't have the fancy calçada
pictures you see in the squares and historic centers, but the Portuguese calcadas give the city a true identity everywhere.
We have an orange tree and a papaya tree in the front, both beginning to show signs of fruit. Our neighbor has a lemon tree, and he recently offered us a bag of lemons (which we gratefully accepted!)
The house has electric shutters which let in light on sunny days and keep in heat at night. When we first arrived, it was pretty chilly in the house, especially at night or on rainy days. There is no central heat, so we had to buy a couple of heaters. How quickly we felt like we were freezing when it was in the 50's F! But now it is in the 70's F most days, and extremely sunny and the house feels pretty warm all of time, even at night.
About a five-minute walk from our house is a local square, the Praça Paiva Couceiro . The square is frequented by groups of all ages, and also groups of older men, who seem to play cards and watch other older men play cards. There is a playground for young children and a cafe with a variety of offerings, and outdoor tables and chairs. Only recently, I've begun to see a few older women sitting together - just visiting, it seems.
From the square to the nearest Metro subway stop (Arroios) is about a 15-minute walk, or about 650 meters (.4 mile). On this street, you see a lot of traditional buildings with typical Portuguese azuelos (tilework). There, we pass 4 chain-type supermercados (groceries), several smaller groceries, a half-dozen small dry goods (home goods) stores, at least another half dozen cafes and another half dozen larger restaurants, plus another half dozen fruiteiras (markets that sell fruits and vegetables), tabacs and paper shops. Yesterday, all the fruit vendors had strawberries, and I inhaled that aroma all the way up and down the street. In addition, there are numerous barber shops, 1 hair salon, several clothing stores, 2 pharmacies, an optical shop, a medical clinic, and other assorted shops. I keep telling Paul he should get a Lisbon Hair Style at the Barbearia for 4 Euros 50 cents! I’ve really never lived anywhere with more small shops in such a concentrated area. There are more groceries, cafes, restaurants, fruiterias, barber shops, banks, and other shops on the other three sides of the square, and radiating in each direction. From our house, there is another major Metro stop about a 20-minute walk (Alameda), and a third stop (Anjos) about 15-minutes away (but all uphill). Many buses stop at our square, but we haven’t figured out buses yet. Plus, it feels good to walk.
We've also had a lot of good food. We've eaten at local restaurants for a lot of the traditional Portuguese food like Bacalhau à Brás, pica pau, sardines, pastel de nata, and fresh sangria. Because of the hectic nature of our home project, we've had a lot of other food delivered by Ubereats, including Nepalese, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, pizza, burgers, and pho. And somewhere in there, we've actually manage to cook some meals. Some of the restaurants are better than others, but there is such a variety. We won't need to worry about running out of new places to eat!
This part of our first month experience – getting to know our neighborhood – feels just like the slow travel we’ve been doing for 4 years. Except, it is even slower. Meaning, we know we have lots of time to do sightseeing and find great restaurants and such, so we’re even more relaxed. Being in this great city feels just as adventurous as any place we’ve been, but we have all the time we need – health withstanding – to explore it. We have done some sightseeing – we visited the Parcque de Nacoes (Park of Nations), the former site of the 1998 World Expo. There, we walked along the estuary, ate great seafood, and shopped at the Vasco de Gama mall. It was an easy trip by Metro. We’ve gone down to the heart of the city – Commercial Square, and walked our old areas where we lived in 2022. We've been to the Pombal Square to take care of some banking tasks, and walked down the Avenue de Liberdade. But we find ourselves stopping and sipping a coffee at a sidewalk cafe more frequently. And, that feels really good.
Bottom line: one month in, although we've got a lot on our plates, we’re feeling like we made the right choice!