After discovering my interest in surfing before the pandemic and the possibility to work location-independently through my job as a developer, I decided to move to Portugal for some time and see what it’s like to be location-independent and what Portugal has to offer besides surfing and port wine.
Travel plan:
As I wanted to test what it’s like to work location independent I didn’t want to be somewhere else every week, so I decided to stay in only two places for the next 6 months:
• Sagres, a small village known for its good surf conditions.
• Lisbon, the tech-savvy and beautiful capital of Portugal
Start in Faro
Landing in Faro, we first explored the city and found that there wasn’t much to explore, but we didn’t get discouraged and tried Francesinha, a Portuguese sandwich overloaded with meat, cheese and beer sauce (once and never again).
Enthusiastic start in Sagres
After a couple of days we went on to Sagres, here I wanted to learn to surf and concentrate fully on myself, but the long term Airbnb made a mess of the calculation, the accommodation was dirty, smelled strongly of fish and looked only remotely like the pictures, I tried for hours in vain to reach the host before I contacted Airbnb support and after sending a video of the accommodation I got my money back, there was never an answer from the host. There we were in a village at the most southwestern point of Europe with no accommodation just before the last bus left and with the next work meeting waiting for us, luckily we got the last bus to Lagos and found a nice small airbnb which was the exact opposite! What a relief.
Lagos, a positive surprise:
As the start into the Portugal adventure unfortunately didn’t go as planned the mood was a bit down, however this changed over the next few days due to the surprisingly beautiful city of Lagos, as we drove through Lagos on the way to Sagres the city had on me more the appearance of another tourist stronghold but in fact the city has a beautiful old town and excellent fish and seafood.
On to the Algarve coast
As there were no suitable long-term Airbnbs in Lagos, we continued to Rogil on the Algarve coast near Aljezur. There we found a small house close to the most beautiful beach I have ever seen in my life and it was mostly empty! Unfortunately, we underestimated the remoteness of this place and thought that with the bicycles available in the Airbnb we would be fine, but no, you should definitely have a car! Luckily I got in touch with a local young mother who had friends working as surf instructors in Odeceixe and made the contact. The guys from the surf school in Odeceixe saved my life and picked me up and brought me back to the Airbnb after every session, what cool dudes! Odeceixe itself is a super nice little village with a beautiful beach and the guys from the surf school made living in the area a dream, after the session eating at the bistro next to the beach and having a few beers and enjoying life what more could you want?
On to Lisbon:
I hoped for a lot from Lisbon and everything was exceeded by far! We had a nice little flat in Ajuda, a still very Portuguese part of town which I learned to love, 20 minutes to LX Factory, 1 hour by bus to Costa da Caparica beach and 20 minutes walk to Belem. The first thing we had to do was get a public transport card, which is a bit of a hassle as you have to take 2 days off work to make the appointments for the card, but you are rewarded with a monthly card for 40 euros which you can just top up every month at the ticket machine and which takes you virtually everywhere in and around Lisbon, including to the beach and Sintra!
In Lisbon, the surfing continued, but you can just use Urban Sports Club (how cool is that?) and go surfing every day (4 times per surf school per month so you always have to change schools).
The summer months flew by with surfing and good food, I was really happy again for the first time since the pandemic! During these months we were able to experience the Sardinha Festival (unfortunately Covid intervened on the peak weekend) and I got to know the guys from Lisbon Crooks and wanted to have my first own surfboard made by them but unfortunately it didn’t work out time wise.
Back to Germany
when i went back to germany at the end of september it was really hard to say goodbye! During those months, Lisbon almost became my home and I couldn’t imagine coming back to cold Germany, even if the job demanded it.