How Did This All Get Started?

The early hints of this idea started soon after the presidential election in 2016. I would frequently say that if Trump was re-elected, we would have to move to Costa Rica. While that was not a joke, it was also not completely real. We never took any serious action about it. OK, when something particularly crazy or odious took place, I would look at online real estate ads for Costa Rica. But that's as far as it went. Fast forward to 2020: our travel plans were canceled by the pandemic and our concern that we would miss out on our prime travel window. increased.

Late in the summer, we were discussing how it was clear that no matter who won the 2020 election, the serious problems facing our country would not miraculously disappear. Crazy fringe nutcases would still be walking among us. I mentioned that I had been reading about how favorable Portugal is to expats. Both of us immediately saw how exciting it would be to have a home base in Europe from which to travel on a regular basis. Things have just taken off from there.

The original plan was to visit Portugal once as the current travel ban was lifted. We would then decide where to live, come back home, and put the plans in motion. However, our enthusiasm got the best of us. We do not want to wait. Who knows when Americans will be allowed to travel to Europe? We did lots on research, spending time online, and watching You Tube videos. We have also been extremely fortunate to join a terrific Facebook group -- Americans & FriendsPT. There is a lot to learn and this group has been an invaluable resource. We also joined a membership website, Expacity, which offers a variety of webinars specific to expat life in Portugal.

We both want to make it clear that while the political and government cluster business here in the US might have gotten us started thinking about moving, our overwhelming motivation now is the adventure of living in a new culture and the opportunity to travel extensively.

We are now in the process of preparing our visa applications. We have an appointment to submit them in Washington, DC on October 26 (or 26 October as they say in Portugal). More on that process in another post.