Lisbon: A Working Vacation

Ola. Though we’ve only been here a few days, it’s been busy. Today is a down day. It’s raining and cold. It rained so hard last night, it woke us up. Thunder sounds different in the city. It kinda echoes in all the nooks and crannies of the high-rises. One of the joys of traveling without a lot of plans is days like today can be ‘stay home and be cozy’ days. We’ll have to make a grocery-store run at some point because I’m making dinner for our hosts tonight… fall-off-the-bone ribs and potatoes.

Antonio just woke up. He must be late for work because he’s rushing around. Now he’s slurping down a shot of espresso, then grabbing his lunch bag, pulling on a big down jacket, and now he’s got his umbrella in hand and heading out the door. Here comes Martinho. He’s on time I think. He actually managed a bowl of cereal and a cup of espresso before he dashed out the door. Now we have the house to ourselves. Phew… I’m tired just watching them.

Our flight on Monday/Tuesday was uneventful. Just the usual tiny meal, but this time we had a great flight attendant who made me feel special by pouring me two glasses of wine. That’s nice because they are small glasses and I had another nine hours of flight-time. We binged movies and ate food from home (turkey, cheese, and ham roll-ups I’d made and then frozen for this purpose) for the rest of the flight. Ten hours is a long time.

That first night here was an insane mixture of too warm, too cold, too noisy, back pain and fitful sleep. I woke up refreshed after ten hours of effort. We made a late breakfast and headed down to find our attorney’s office. It required a pit-stop for a cappuccino and people watching in Saldanha. This is one of our favorite neighborhoods.

Our purpose on this journey was to determine where we wanted to move. I’d chosen four beach towns to visit. Then Portugal changed their tax laws. So instead of cancelling the whole trip, I made an appointment with an international law attorney to clarify the recent changes. Many countries have what’s called a double-taxation treaty. This basically means if you earned money and paid taxes on that money in your country, then you don’t have to pay income taxes again in the country with the treaty. The USA and Portugal had one of those treaties. Now they don’t.

To be clear; we are looking at the D7 Retirement Visa, not the Golden Visa. Our attorney, Catia Baptista, met with us for an hour to discuss the new paradigm. She brought an international tax law attorney to help the discussion, Laura Borges. The result is we will have to pay an extra tax on our passive income. Once by the USA and again by Portugal (up to 28%). This won’t work for us because it would eat up too much of our income. It’s both tragic and freeing because the D7 has a lot of rules regarding how much time we have to spend here. There is a way to circumvent the changes that occurred this year in 2024, but it’s sketchy at best. God’s not a big fan of sketchy, so we’ll pass on that. Amazingly, this first appointment was at no charge! Can you imagine that?

So, we’re on vacation for three months. That works for me. I still love this country, though it looks like we won’t be calling it home. Today was a crazy mix of chores. We woke up late because we were up late chatting with our hosts. Yesterday we’d gone into Millennium Bank to set up a Portuguese account (really it’s a European account). The bank-guy told us to come back today, so we did. Forty-five minutes later he told us to come back again—he’d call us. We went back home and did laundry, took showers, and ate breakfast, then he called. Embracing the concept of multi-tasking, we took our wet laundry to the bank. Three more hours later we walked out with new debit cards and the wet laundry. Off to the laundromat to dry the clothes and have a cappuccino.

Being exhausted, we decided to get on the metro in the pouring-down rain and go to the river. There’s a restaurant there that we love called Capricciosa. It was a perfect place to share a calzone and have a glass of wine while discussing what the future will hold for us. I got a text from Antonio wishing me a happy Woman’s Day and telling me that they were making dinner for us tonight and they’d invited a friend.

We rushed home and exited the metro onto a street full of people marching for everything having to do with women… everything! There were even people marching with a Palestine flag—not sure what that country has to do with women’s rights? Now we’re warm in our cozy little apartment with the smells of dinner being prepared. Antonio just said, “Maybe we have something for your women’s day, just maybe?” Now I’m excited. (They made me a fancy dinner and gave me pretty scarf)

Last night we made dinner for them and they opened a very nice bottle of wine, so I went shopping between breakfast and the bank and bought a nice bottle of wine for tonight… I think it was a nice bottle.

Anyway, I will sign off for now. Tomorrow we leave for Nazare on a super cheap bus called Flixbus. I’m hoping it’s not too good to be true.