Welcome to Portugal - Scouting Edition

 

If you haven't figured it out already, we are moving to Portugal, so we just returned from that lovely country last week on our scouting trip. We were in Country for 2 weeks.  6 days in Porto, a day trip to Braga, 2 days in Coimbra, 2 days in Caldas da Rainha and then travel back to Porto for our flight home.

METHODOLOGY

We did a ton of research regarding locations we would like, where other Expats have settled, where there were services - like grocery, pharmacy, doctors, hospital, laundry, etc - as well as proximity of things to do and transportation. We do not intend to have a car, so the neighborhood and our chore sites must be walkable or public transportation available. We had several spreadsheets of neighborhoods and available stock of rentals and every day we walked one if not two of the neighborhoods we thought might interest us. We used Map My Ride to keep track of where we walked which had the added benefit of keeping track of where we had been that day with a side bonus of data - how long, how many steps, how far and how much elevation change. If you think we knew what we were doing, the image above shows our wandering around the metro station in Lisbon, trying to find the correct train line (which somehow became a visual metaphor for some of the days). The time and miles are indicative of the whole day.

WEATHER

It's Portugal's rainy season so the weather that was forecasted was 50-60F, cloudy and/or rainy every day. We were fortunate enough to dodge most of the rain. The wind sits around 5mph and can gust up to 40mph for a while. The humidity was around 80-90% so a little humid because of the rain. JR and I run at different temps so here's what we looked like most days:

 

I was mostly fine with just the tshirt and Jeans or hiking pants. If I had zip off pants, I might have taken the pant legs off most days. I brought 2 short sleeve and 2 sweaters and wished I had 4 short sleeves. JR had about 3 layers on any given day. PS this picture is from Coimbra walking what was the wall of the old city; super cool. 

PORTO

We stayed at a lovely VRBO in a neighborhood that had a grocery store, laundry and coffee shops within 1 block.  It also had a sex worker 'store' a few doors down. The ladiez were polite and mostly ignored us once they realized neither of us were customer material. They were nicer and quieter than most of the neighbors I've had in my lifetime.

Porto is comprised of many different neighborhoods, all of which have some elevation change. This sample is from walking from the Douro River to Bolhão Market, about 25 minutes.

 

In practice, this is what that looks like:

or this:

but times 10 in length.

There are some areas in Porto that are fairly level for a few blocks. 

So, in data, it looks like this: 16,000 - 22,000 steps per day, 5 - 10 miles per day over 6-8 hours per day for 6 days straight. 

Fortunately for us, the areas we liked were in the more flat terrain.

We farmed our network and found several sets of Expats willing to meet and discuss their wisdom along with seeing the neighborhood through their eyes. Our first victims, err, I mean couple were Francesco and Marta. They are cousins of friends we met in Italian language class. Francesco was born in Italy and Marta in Spain. They met in the UK and have lived in other European cities. It was fantastic to have guides that had such a wide frame of reference and not just an American viewpoint. Here we are pre-lunch at the Palácio de Cristal overlooking the Douro River.

Next up: Braga