It has been a while since I last posted. Well, we’ve been a little busy. Some years ago we started building a home in a lovely area about 45 minutes south of Lisbon, Portugal. And it has been quite the ordeal, providing us with an array of experiences, some good and some, well, some we’re still trying to work through.
I’ll be writing here about this journey which has proven to both humorous at times, (although it wasn’t always so at the moment), as well as educative– we’ve learned a lot along the way. I think that’s partly what’s saved us–seeing what we were undertaking as more of a journey rather than an end-point. Finally receiving the home when it was finished (is it really ever finished?) was just as important as what we learned and experienced along the way..
I have to say it’s also a healthier way of looking at the situation. Haven’t we all experienced this, when we finally do reach our intended destination, literally or figuratively, the excitement can be short-lived? I’m here, I’ve done it, now what? But when we look back, at the planning involved, hadn’t the journey itself–which probably involved weeks or months of invested time and energy–actually delivered a more positive, long-term experience?
For us, at least initially, the end-game was to have a place to get away from the city and be closer to the beach and ocean. It was never, however, intended that we’d be giving up our city life. We had concerns over just how much time we’d actually be using it. Would we really want to be there in the winter months when it was cold, rainy, and no one else around?
We knew from the outset that we were going to at least enjoy the first stage (planning) but had reservations about the second stage (building). The first stage involved the layout of the home, working with the architect, identifying what it was we wanted to incorporate to match our lifestyle. We’d refurnished and renovated a number of properties but they’d all been apartments or condominiums. This was a first project of building a home together from the ground up.
The second stage we knew from past experience could be very challenging. It nearly always is. Add to that we were building in a new country, with a new language and new rules. We’d been down this road enough to know it is never an easy ride.
The third stage was actually taking possession of the home, moving in. Would we like it? Would it feel like “home”? Would we like the community?
I titled this post “Lifestyle Changes” as that’s what this home-building and moving-in experience has been for us, rather transformative. When we began transitioning from Mexico to Europe some twelve years ago, first to Nice and then Lisbon, our homes were more like bases where we dropped in for a few weeks but then were off exploring other parts of Europe. The desired destination was always away from the home.
After moving into our new house, however, we quickly began to appreciate that the destination was no longer somewhere else but right in front of us. That we were quite content to just be where we were and any exploration would be limited to perhaps the next village rather than the next country or continent. That’s all sounding rather zen, but in some ways it is. We’d done a fair amount of traveling and now we were quite happy to just stay in one spot for an indefinite period of time. The search for something “else”, at least for now, was on hold.
We were quite happy in Lisbon, fully involved in the program mentioned above, of using it as a base station for further travel… until Covid came along. Travel became possible and we found ourselves spending long periods of time in our apartment, slowly realizing just how small it was. Or perhaps it shrank on us.
We had a lot of time on our hands and much of that was taken up discussing and researching where we’d be traveling to once the bans were lifted. But one discussion that kept coming up was how much we’d enjoyed our lifestyle in Puerto Vallarta when we had a home in the city while also a place at the beach about an hour north. While in the city we’d work 3-4 days but then we’d head north and play with a little remote working thrown in. We had a condominium right by the ocean (the waves would actually lap up against the pool’s retaining wall – you couldn’t get any closer to the water), and we took full advantage of it, enjoying a myriad of water sports. After a few days of that we were ready for the city again. And so went our schedule for some fifteen years.
During Covid this became the predominant discussion – how could we get that lifestyle back? We began scourging maps of Portugal looking for a place where we could be back by the ocean. And we quickly discovered it’s not so easy to find as Portugal is very protective of its coastline – you just can’t build anything in right front of the sea. There’s a setback regulation that ensures the waterfront remains public property.
And then we discovered a saltwater lagoon about 45 minutes south of Lisbon. We wouldn’t be right next to the ocean, but at least we could be close to it, see it and hear it. And so began our search for a property in Lagoa de Albufeira.
The name is a mouthful. “Lagoa” means lake or lagoon in Portuguese, while “Albufeira” comes from Arabic, from the time of the Moors, and it also means lagoon. Which is rather redundant – Lagoon of the Lagoon? It seems most Lisboans felt it was a little much as well (and the fact that there was a “Lagoa” and an “Albufeira” further south in the Algarve made it more confusing), so many refer to it just as “Laguna” – another Portuguese word for lagoon. And to keep it short, I’ll stick to Laguna here as well.
Rather than a lengthy description of the area, I’ve attached a video that provides a pretty good idea of what Laguna is like. As you can see from the photo below it’s very much a saltwater or brackish lagoon with sandy beaches that hugs up next to the coast. This coastline stretches for 30 kilometers, Portugal’s longest beach, all the way to Caparica. To the right is a pine forest that follows the coast, creating a natural barrier between residential areas and the beach. We actually enjoy the forest as much as the lagoon and the ocean. Watch the video and you’ll see why.
I’ve touched on a number of topics here which I plan to elaborate on in future posts. Perhaps the lessons we learned on our journey will prove helpful, or at least interesting, for others with similar ambitions.