Trip 1 - The 2017 Vacation

We decided to visit Lisbon and Faro for part of a vacation to Portugal and Spain a couple of years ago, to scope it out. It was lovely! Nice small city feel. And, English was not a problem. First world services, good roads, food, services. And everything - except cars and gasoline - is cheaper. Waaaay cheaper than the Bay Area.

We even met with a local lawyer to learn about owning property and the Golden Visa Program. Funny story. The lawyer got serious for a moment and said, "Just so you know, you do have up to a 2500Euro per year property tax to think about". We burst out laughing.

We also visited Lagos, a major tourist destination in the Western Algarve. It is nice, too, and maybe even livlier.

Retiring to The Algarve became a plan "A". We decided to keep an eye on things - prices, property values. Faro, Lagos and/or Carvoeiro. Villamoura was far too planned a development for our taste. Sort of reminded me of Foster City.

We did a lot of research about a lot of things. Thank heaven for the internet! It make things so easy. There is rightmove.co.uk which specializes in ex-pats evenrelocation to Portugal. I found a vlog on YouTube about a couple who've moved there (Portugal Diaries). So far, there are no red flags.

We thoroughly like Faro. Nice people, good food, shops, the airport.

You see we're looking for a home base, but not having kids, and maybe jobs, we want to travel. Experience living in Europe. Travel is big on our agenda.

We want to have people come and visit. We'll have plenty of room and maybe that rental for guests to stay in. Stacey can go visit her mom in Northern England.

So like I said, we aren't fleeing the US. We're just enabling doing what we want.

If not now, when?

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