Our Cottage and Backyard Eden

So far, the start of our sabbatical time has been pure decompression. Over the past few months (and especially the final week ahead of the trip), we have been building up to our departure last Sunday – things to do, people to see, etc. And, after nearly a full day of travel and subsequent crash, we find ourselves just taking some slower time this week to catch up with sleep and adjust to this new lifestyle. For example, most of us slept about 14 hours that first night!

We are now slowly exploring and adjusting to our surroundings in Tabuado, Portugal, a smaller town near Porto. We prefer the smaller towns because they are less touristy and more authentic. However, this does provide more unique challenges in terms of speaking the local language (Portuguese) and getting around without a vehicle, but we are okay with this!

Our Portuguese home is a little cottage, and we can both picture some bygone fairy tale characters living here in centuries past! Of course, there are some modernizations here such as toilets and Wi-Fi, but suspending reality, it doesn’t feel like a stretch!

Other neighbourhood observations include plentiful fruit trees with fruits such as grapes (wine), kiwis, lemons, limes, plums, peaches, oranges, etc. Compared to Canada, it feels very odd to have free, plentiful fruit just outside your door!

Right now, everything just feels surreal – that we are finally here, that we are really doing this. Right now, this feels mostly like a vacation, yet it isn’t. Micheka coined it best when she described this as a “lifestyle”. I don’t really know what this means yet, but we will explore it until we return back home to Canada in 2024.

In the meantime, we’ll leave you with the girls giving a tour of our amazing backyard, which we have found ourselves spending much of our time in thus far. It feels relaxing, and just what we need for a decompression week!