Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Portugal - Travel with Mark (Part 1 of 2)
In today's episode we are visiting Mark from Portugal. This is a 2 part interview. This first half covers Mark's back story and highlights of living Porto, Portugal .
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Hosts
Carol Springer: https://www.instagram.com/carol.work.life
Kristen: https://www.instagram.com/team_wake/
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Hi, welcome to our podcast when Next Travel with Kristen and Carol. I am Kristen and I am Carol, and we're two long-term friends with a passion for travel and adventure.
Speaker 2:Each episode, we interview people around the globe to help us decide where to go next. In today's episode, we are visiting with Mark from Portugal. We will hear about his love for travel and how he landed in Porto. This is the first of a two-part interview. This first half covers Mark's backstory and what it's like to live in Porto, Portugal. We really appreciate you joining us and we would love if you could support us by simply following, rating or reviewing our podcast in your favorite podcast app. Enjoy.
Speaker 1:So well, thank you so much. And I don't know, carol, if you want to do an intro.
Speaker 3:Yes, please tell me who's who. Who's Carol, who's Kristen?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is Carol, Hi Carol.
Speaker 1:I'm Kristen Revell. I know we spoke as well. I was excited. I know, carol. When we first talked about this podcast, portugal was her number one place and destination.
Speaker 3:Funny thing is I just got off of a lunch with a wine client, and what time is it there? Well, it's 5 15 PM. So it's a. It's it's 5 15 PM. I'm going to pour myself a glass right now.
Speaker 1:That's so cool and you heard that I'm sure. Awesome, so awesome.
Speaker 2:My iced coffee, your water sadly, cheers so healthy, healthy, so kind of. One of our visions for this podcast is, as we, you know, become empty nesters the next several years, even though I hear just when they turn 18 does not mean you're gonna be an empty nester. I've been hearing this. Oh, they keep coming back. But anyway, but we'll have more free time throughout the year. So I want to start living in what I call slow travel travel with intention and really get a feel for different places, and so I want to spend some time in Portugal, maybe two months at a time, a month at a time, even just three weeks. Costa Rica is on my list. I've never been to Asia, so I want to spend some time there.
Speaker 2:I love my work, and so I want to keep doing my work and maybe actually convert some of my normal Salesforce consulting work to travel, production, content and distribution work. You know, italy sounds really interesting. We did just interview someone from Madrid recently, and so we want to know, like, is it expensive to be there? You know, is it safe to be there? If you do spend some time, what are the must-dos? Like kind of want to go to where the 100-foot surf is. I can't remember the town that's in.
Speaker 3:Nazare.
Speaker 2:Nazare. Yeah, I saw the whole Netflix 100-foot wave special and so that, and they just really made me want to go to Portugal too saying how welcoming the people are. So those are like the little secrets we're looking to hear and learn about.
Speaker 3:The one thing you said that really piqued my attention was travel with intention. What a great phrase that is Travel with intention. I love that. No, I'm serious, because sometimes I get a phone call.
Speaker 3:I've got some family members who haven't traveled either at all or much in their life and one of my cousins told me that he's interested in going to Europe and he wants to visit France, spain, portugal, italy. And my first question was, of course, well, how long are you going to be traveling? And he said, oh, two weeks. I'm like, oh my God, okay, let me talk you down here. You're on top of the building, you're about to fall to your death. Two weeks is not enough time to see 17 countries.
Speaker 3:What's wrong with you and travel with intention? It's the opposite of that, and so, for me, I've always been interested in spending more time and getting deeper. I'd much rather find a little area where I could check out the neighborhood and feel it, versus to go see all the stops on the checklist. You know, it reminds me of the Griswolds on a European vacation, where they're having the conversation with the lovers in the restaurant saying, have you seen the Louvre yet? And I'm like, no, no, and you know what a waste. They haven't seen anything yet, you know. So for me, travel with intention was a really wonderful turn of phrase, and I think that's really great A gal that we were interviewed for, and that's her whole theme.
Speaker 1:She even does a summit based on traveling with intention, and I think that that really resonated with both of us as well, In my own experiences.
Speaker 3:I've been to a lot of countries. I think I have almost 70 countries.
Speaker 1:I've been around.
Speaker 3:So, for example, when I go to my favorite destination, one of my favorite destinations is Japan and I have not seen that much of Japan because I always get stuck in Tokyo. It's the most ridiculous thing. Here's the big capital city. You should go beyond that and I have gone beyond a little bit, but I get stuck in Tokyo because it's the most culturally rich and dense place and I get jammed up in there and I can't leave, because travel with intention. You can't just go see a temple and a this and that and then get out of there. You really have to soak it in. So even though I've been to Japan 13 times, I haven't really gone much further than Tokyo. So but let's get back to Portugal.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's launched yet, but we did a Japan yeah it is yeah, yeah. And and he's amazing he's actually a radio host for and he's from Oakland California and he went there and fell in love with it and ended up staying there and married. He's got kids now.
Speaker 3:I understand, so it's an incredible place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Portugal. So curious to start also just your story history, where you're from. You know you said you've traveled 70 countries. I'm curious about how you was it all just kind of throughout. Was it business, was it personal, was it you know? Did you take a year? How did that look? And then how did you end in Portugal?
Speaker 3:OK, well, I guess I can give you the fast version. Also, we've been talking for 17 hours, but the fast version is right. After university, I ended up in South Korea as an English teacher because I studied philosophy in university. I didn't want to go into teaching, and if you don't go into teaching after a philosophy degree, there's not much else you're going to do. So I had to figure something else out, and I had met up with a friend of mine who had just gotten back from Japan, spending a year teaching English in Japan in our early 20s and then spending a year riding a motorcycle around India. So, having not yet traveled outside the United States except Cancun, which is more or less an extension of Miami, I didn't know anything about anything. So when my friend came back and started telling me stories about India on a motorcycle for a year and teaching English in Japan for a year, you can understand my jaw was on the floor and I had to do something like that. I sold my car, bought a backpack, ended up in South Korea and lived there for two and a half years, which was one of the most incredible experiences in my life. I learned a lot about myself and about the world. And then, after Korea, what did I do? I went back to Chicago, where I'm from. I was in Chicago for a number of years and that's where I started my career in photography.
Speaker 3:And then, after that, I started to really kind of feel weird about being in the United States, having been living in you know, living in Asia for so long. So after a few years of living in America, I decided to go back abroad and I coincidentally had two friends, one opening up a Mexican restaurant and an island in Thailand and another opening a PR agency in Bangkok, in Thailand. I said, well, what the hell, let me go to Thailand and see what these guys are up to. So I went to the little island and hung out with my friend in the Mexican restaurant and didn't do much else but drink margaritas and help him with the restaurant, which led me to moving to Bangkok, because I was only in my late 20s it's not time to retire yet and drink margaritas all day on an island. So I went to Bangkok and continued my career as a photographer. An island. So I went to Bangkok and continued my career as a photographer and then, after some years there I was in Bangkok for about three years I went to Argentina, which was supposed to be a long-term thing, but it ended up only being about six months. And then I was lured to Miami from a client and turned out to be very productive and I went to Miami and serviced this client and it was fantastic.
Speaker 3:I never thought I would live in Miami for any amount of time In Miami. We are getting to Portugal, by the way. In Miami I happened to meet a wonderful Portuguese woman. We fell in love. Her name is Barbara Bonfocchi, and we fell in love and got married and started a life together and bought a house and all these things I never thought in a million years I would do in Miami.
Speaker 3:But we bought a house and lived in the suburbs of Miami and had a child, and all the while that we were involved we were going to Portugal at least once a year to visit her family and spend time there, and Portugal is a wonderful place. So each time that we went to Portugal I would always inevitably be walking down the streets in a neighborhood with my wife saying why don't we live here? And she will. And so Barbara was involved in. Well, her career is exotic animal veterinarian. She is an exotic animal veterinarian. So she was certain that in Portugal she might not be able to find the clientele which you can find in Miami, because there's crazy people in Miami with monkeys and whatever else they have, so which, by the way, she had a lot of clientele in Miami, as you can expect. But after seven years of marriage I won and we moved to Portugal.
Speaker 2:What town did you move?
Speaker 3:to Porto. So right now I'm in my photography studio in Porto, in the city center, and we live right by the ocean, which is in a neighborhood called Foz, which is a really cool neighborhood right in the ocean. So we moved to Portugal in 2019, just a few months before the pandemic Good timing.
Speaker 1:And that brought us here Nice.
Speaker 3:Looking it on our map.
Speaker 1:So it looks like a canal kind of area.
Speaker 3:Not really. So Portugal Porto, by the way has a full oceanfront, so the entire Atlantic coast is along the coast there, and then there's a river that bisects the city, and the river is called the Douro, and the river goes all the way into Spain. So it's quite a long river, and so where we live is pretty close to the estuary where the river runs into the ocean, and that estuary the Portuguese word for estuary is foz. Foz simply means estuary or river going into an ocean.
Speaker 3:And so our neighborhood is called Foz because we live right there, right when the river goes into the ocean. We're a little bit further north, about 15 minutes walk from where the river and the ocean intersect and how do you spell fosh? F-o-z f-o-z.
Speaker 1:I see f-o-z.
Speaker 3:D-o-d-o-u-r-o fosh de doro, so that's the estuary of doro and doro is the name of the river okay, oh, this is really cool.
Speaker 1:And have you stayed there? So you've been there for two and a half years or three years we.
Speaker 3:So my, my mother-in-law lives if you see on your map a hood the crashto r-u-a is hua, and then do do and then crashto c-r-a-s-t-o who. The crashto is one of the streets that goes up from the ocean straight up the hill, and my mother-in-law lives in Jodhpur. So we live in Jodhpur, which is five minutes no, we're about a 10-minute walk from my mother-in-law. And then my mother, who's a Chicago native and she's 75 years old, moved here eight months ago, and so, mom God bless her. What a ballsy woman this is. She just decided to sell her house and say, screw it, I'm moving to Portugal, I want to be near my son and my grandkids, because she only has one son, and so she moved now a five minute walk from us. So she has a really cool little place to live, a little apartment really close to us, and so we have both of our mothers walking distance, which, when you have small children, is quite nice.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I can imagine, and also really exciting for my mom to imagine you're 75, you're getting old, right it's? You know? It's sort of like winding down and some people get like I don't know, set in their ways and tired and boring. My mom just moved from out of her comfort zone to a new country where she doesn't speak the language and just said, okay, I'm going to Portugal, and I have to say it's an invigorating, energizing thing for her. I think it's the best decision she's made because I feel that, as someone who is older, who is faced with the challenge of learning a language and assimilating into a new culture, that keeps you younger and moving faster throughout your older years, it's great.
Speaker 1:My parents travel all over the world. My mom, my stepmom's in Ireland right now for a month. And they were just. They were in Mexico and Mazatlan for they well, they do that every year but they just travel everywhere and they're in their late 70s, and that's my, that's my goal is to do the same.
Speaker 3:Well, absolutely and to slow down and to do it like well, well, I might not move, but not just traveling. But even if you don't move, but just take things slower and not try to go on a package tour or go on a cruise where you see 10 countries in two weeks, you know, maybe instead spend the summer, it's like, okay, we're going to this place in italy and we're going to spend summer there, and then next summer we go someplace else, and that, to me, is traveling with intention. That's really good stuff curious.
Speaker 1:Also just a quick note on your mom, like I mean, so she, it sounds like she probably was she in chicago, same place, um, uh, it sounds like she's. Um. I apologize if, uh, father, I don't know, but just for her no, they were.
Speaker 3:They were divorced when I was like two years old, so it was definitely mom on her own. But yeah, she, she, you know she always has been a traveler. She's been to several places in the world but never lived anywhere else. So, having you know to move here, clearly she could fall on us a little bit for some support. We're right here, we speak the language and we're here to help her, but it's definitely a challenging thing to move to a new place. So kudos to her.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. And then when you so, you've been there. How long now in.
Speaker 3:Portugal. So we moved here at the end of 2019. My wife and son moved here in August of 2019. I came like two months later. I was still working in Miami, kind of finishing up and tying up loose ends and selling our house and doing other things, and I came a couple of months later. So I'm in like September. They came in like early August or something like that.
Speaker 1:And did you speak the language and speaking with your, your wife, or Well?
Speaker 3:my wife speaks fluent English and like almost as good as a native, so that's the language we speak in the house. Barbara speaks Portuguese with our son 80% of the time and because I'm well, we've been married 10 years, so because of that I've been around it and exposed to it that I'm slowly picking up and you know, I speak a little Portuguese, but it is a little basic. Like you know, month by month it gets better and better. You know this year is better than last year, so uh, so I I think of um love.
Speaker 2:Actually, have you seen that movie? It's like my favorite is a hugh grant.
Speaker 3:I haven't seen you grant. Yeah, I know the name. I know the name, but I haven't seen it yeah.
Speaker 2:And so what is this about these all these different love stories? And one of them this guy found his wife cheating. He goes to go off in the country to do his writing and then he has this Portuguese lady come. They both don't understand each other ever and they end up falling in love. And he proposes to um total. Like spoiler alert, he proposes her. To the end he learns this really broken Portuguese. And like it's so cute, Like I want to cohabitate together with you. It's so cute. And then she took English class. They're both like taking you know, foreign language, but now we just do a lingo.
Speaker 3:I wish my wife didn't speak. If my wife didn't speak English, I would be fantastic in Portuguese right now, but that's not the case. English I would be fantastic in Portuguese right now, but that's not the case. Barbara has very little patience for my Portuguese, but you know it's, it's coming along.
Speaker 2:That's what I always kind of think. We're kind of at a disadvantage a little bit with English. I mean it's nice that we can communicate, because most countries that we talk to interview people they usually say there's a good amount of English and then you never know if like you're if? Are you insulting? Insulting them, if you, you know, because they want to practice their English and you want to practice.
Speaker 3:I don't believe you're insulting them at all. I think it is a double edged sword, because English is now, in this day and age, english is absolutely, without you know, unapologetically the global language. So it's the universal language. There's nothing else that can compete with it. For the universal language, it is what it is. We got lucky in that sense, but we're also unlucky in the sense we don't speak any other languages. I mean, you speak to someone in, uh, in germany or france or portugal, and they just happen to speak two or three other languages, and that's normal. You know, maybe we speak some spanish, if we're lucky. Or you know one other language, but not like europeans, a sense it's. It's a blessing and a curse.
Speaker 2:I remember I was in France. I was like I wanted to practice the little French that I knew, and the lady at the crate place just like, so irritated she's like just what do you want?
Speaker 3:I have the exact same experience. I was in a. I was in a wine bar train station my first time in France. I studied French in high school. I was so excited I speak English. I'm like, oh, come on, Tell me what kind of one you want.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great, well, I was looking also at the map and just looking where Porto is, because when I do the Portugal map and it says Lisbon and then I see that Porto, you're kind of at the top part.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're north you're kind of uh at the top part, uh, yeah, we're north, yeah, and so I'm gonna see curious the weather and also just portugal in general. How much have you traveled and experienced being there, um, also with your, your child, I think, still pretty young, I believe um, well, we have one child who is, uh, almost six, and we have one child who is almost six weeks.
Speaker 3:So we got a young, young, young one, which don't get me started on that. That's not so easy. This is a five and a half year old. It's awesome. Six week old. Six week old, sorry, but he's starting to come around.
Speaker 3:But, anyway, to answer your question. Let's see, we have traveled extensively through Portugal. But you have to kind of measure that statement, because traveling extensively in a country, well you know that's also pretty relative right to your own experience. Any country, any space has so many places to see and things to do. So we've done quite a few, but still I mean I've only been here for a few years so I haven't seen that much. But the north of Portugal and the south of Portugal are quite different. So I'm in Porto. Porto has a climate very similar to the Bay Area. So it doesn't freeze in the winter. It's cloudy and gray and rainy in the winter. The summers are not excruciatingly hot. Actually, to me this is like the perfect climate. I don't freeze my ass off in winter and I don't sweat so much in the summer, and in the summer at night it's like 70 or 69 degrees at night. So even if it's like 85 in the day, it's 69 at night. It couldn't be better.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's fantastic. Our house does not have air conditioning and our house is new construction we just bought, we're the first people to live there and there's no air conditioning in the house. It's unbelievable. So, and by American standards that's weird. So, but but you know, if the hottest days of summer dropped down to 70 degrees at night, you really don't need it.
Speaker 3:You know, the Northern part of Portugal is quite different than the Southern part. The Southern part in the Lisbon area, the region called Alentejo. So if you look at your map, you'll see Alentejo is the area that's in the southern part of Portugal but takes up almost the entire interior, from the Spanish border to the Atlantic coast, from, like Lisbon, south to the very bottom. The very bottom coast is called Algarve. It's another state, or distrito, but Alentejo is the biggest one by far. It's the biggest state. I believe they call them distrito.
Speaker 3:So Alentejo to me is like Central Coast, california. So Alentejo is full of pale straw, colored grassy hills, oak trees, hot, dry climates. You're in California, kristen, you know exactly what I'm talking about. South of where you are, though, you're in the Bay Area. Go a little bit south, you got Alentejo, monterey, like it, monterey, or even, a little further south, salinas, just north of LA, that whole area with those rolling hills of yellow grass and oak trees, that's Alentejo. And Alentejo is also the wine producing, or one of the major wine producing areas by volume anyway. By the way, quick preface, I only know a little bit. I might make some mistakes here.
Speaker 1:You're on the right podcast, by the way.
Speaker 3:All right Good good, good, good, good. So yeah, alentejo is really fantastic. It's very agricultural, it's kind of like Portugal's Tuscany it's a bunch of small towns, bunch of rolling hills, bunch of wine producing areas. Alentejo is fantastic. That's the opposite climate to Porto. Porto is a little bit humid and a little bit cool, and Alentejo gets really hot in the summer and it's quite dry. So as you go further south, once you go to the southern coast which is called Algarve the Algarve oh, by the way, check this out, this is kind of cool linguistically Algarve, alentejo they start with Al, that's Moorish, that's Muslim. So the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by the Moors, who knows when, hundreds of years ago, and the Moors were Muslims and just like, if you look at some of the place names in the Middle East now, with Al this, al this, al Shabaab, Al this. Don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3:So Algarve, we spell it a-l-g-a-r-v-e, but it's similar to uh, linguistically moorish or middle eastern style influences in the in the language. So, um, this goes back to this 15th, 16th, 17th century, I don't know. Algarve on the southern coast is the hottest, driest region in Portugal. It's also one of the most desirable vacation spots in Europe and a lot of people from England and the northern parts of Europe will come down to Algarve because it's always warm, it's always dry, it's a great beach community. There's great beaches there, and so people who live in scandinavia and in the uk who have rained and cold want to go down there. So the southern part of portugal warm, hot, dry. Northern part of portugal damp. You know bay area style weather, which I prefer. I prefer the damp bay there yeah, I mean, that's what I like to go to.
Speaker 3:I like to go to algarve for a week or two, but I prefer to live up north.
Speaker 1:When I say Algarve A-L-G-A-R, it puts me in the middle of. Portugal.
Speaker 3:A-L-G-A-R-V-E V. There we go, Algarve.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 3:Alentejo, A-L-E-N-T-E-J-O Maybe. Maybe I missed the letter.
Speaker 1:But it's Alentejo Interesting and it's not like, oh wow, it's beautiful, it's amazing, it's amazing.
Speaker 3:Ok, so the bottom of the country of Algarve, it's the whole thing, from the left to the right, from the Atlantic coast, all of it in Spanish border, is Algarve. Then you go one section up and you have Alentejo, but it's a big section up is it's the biggest province or state in Portugal. Then around Lisbon, which is right on the border of Tejo, lisbon is also a city and a region. So that's there Then.
Speaker 3:I'm not super knowledgeable about the other states and distritos as you go further north, but there's different names of different states. You might see on your map Santarém and Coimbra and Aveiro, and then, as you go north, you eventually get to Porto. Now, porto is the name of the city, but it's also the name of the state. So the population of Porto as a city is quite small. I want to say it's only a few hundred thousand people in Porto. The Porto metropolitan area is bigger because there's more cities than just Porto. You have Villanova de Gaia, which is on the other side of the river, and you have Montesinos, which is just north of Porto, and all together they might have, I don't know, half a million or a little bit more, and then Porto as a state has maybe a million or two people total, but that's also including countryside and so on and so on.
Speaker 1:So that's the geography lesson and you know it's at faro. I hear faro because there was someone else that we talked to.
Speaker 3:That is spain, I think, or something that said right, faro, that was a faro is in algarve, so faro is on the southern coast in algarve and actually I've been there there's a great little island, which here's a cool thing for your visitors to listen to or to check out. I shouldn't even say this because it's kind of a secret. There's an island called Ilha de Farol. So Ilha means island, de is of and farol means lighthouse. So there's Ilha de Farol is off the coast of Farol and it's really special because there aren't any cars on the island.
Speaker 3:It's not a small island, it's a good size island. There's zero cars, you can take a ferry to get there and all of the residential dwellings on the island have been frozen some years ago. What that means is no one can buy or sell any of the residential properties and no one's allowed to rent them out. So any residential property or house on Ile de Ferrol has to be passed down to your them out. So any residential property or house on Ilha do Farol has to be passed down to your own family, cannot be sold and you're allowed legally to rent any of them.
Speaker 3:However, some people do find a way to circumvent that. So Ilha do Farol is a way of getting out of the tourist horde area of Algarve, which, by the way, is the most touristy part of Portugal and for that reason it's not my favorite part at all. Like you're going to see drunk British people drinking bottles of rum and this package tour garbage. I don't like that. But Ilha do Paral is a special little spot, so but good luck getting there. Good luck getting there. It's not that easy.
Speaker 1:And can you even go there because it's like you can you?
Speaker 3:can? You can take a ferry. You can take a ferry from the mainland in faro or near faro, faro, faro and, uh. You could take a ferry to ilha deferral for the day but you don't have any place to stay. So, basically, you're going there to have lunch and spend the day on the beach and be in a little island with no cars and then get the ferry at the end of the day. Or if you circumvent the law and find a way to rent something, which you can, if you're creative, uh, then you can get a place to stay, but I was only there because we have some friends whose parents have a house there and we stay with them.
Speaker 1:It was fantastic wow, how do you spell it?
Speaker 3:I put I l, I uh farol is F-A-R-O-L, which means Farol is lighthouse, and Ilja is I-L-H-A, which means island, ilja, i-l-h-a, so Ilja de Farol, if you zoom into Farol and you look for the island.
Speaker 1:It's just up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you have to go and also, by the way, if you have a boat, it's a great place for boating. A lot of people have boats, sailboats and stuff will hang around in that area and just dock their boats and, just you know, spend some time there. It's a beautiful spot. Oh, and then just look just south of it southwest I don't know, but just look around there there's an island called Ilha Deserta, which means like desert island, and it's next to Ilha de ferrol and ila desert has nothing on it. It's a wildlife preserve, except it has a restaurant and the restaurant is absolutely spectacular and the restaurant has its own electrical power plants of full, a huge solar array like a huge I'm not talking like on top of your roof, I'm talking a massive solar station and they get and then they have this own plumbing thing. They basically are like super green energy, super self-sustaining, and it's a gorgeous gourmet restaurant on this desert Island and it's really worth checking out.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool. What are some of the customs Like? What do people do in Portugal? I know you've been to the U? S. How does it differ from the folks here? You know how is that?
Speaker 3:well, I guess the first thing that comes to mind is people are way more relaxed and chilled out. I mean, I think it really. If you're an american and you move to a place like portugal, it's quite apparent how uptight we are and we don't feel that we're uptight, but we are. And when you, when you come to a place like portugal, it's like everything is more calm. Just take it slower. I had lunch today with a client and I sat at the restaurant for two and a half hours. Now, that's a little crazy, but that was a lunch with a client and we had lunch for half hours. I don't know how that happens. Not every lunch is two and a half hours but a couple of things. One, everybody in Portugal, everybody gets a month of vacation. I don't care if you're a teller at a bank or an intern at whatever company. You're getting a month of vacation paid. That's like Sweden.
Speaker 1:Everyone takes the month of July off. Do everyone take?
Speaker 2:it? Is it one month that?
Speaker 1:everything shuts down in Portugal.
Speaker 3:A certain month, august, this is the month that things shut down. Now, obviously the stores don't close, you know, although some do, you know the department stores don't close and the shopping malls don't close, but some, like you know, a little corner store might close and they'll say ferries, which means vacations or holidays and we're closed this month, something like that. It's normal. So the fact that people get a month of holiday is an important thing to understand the culture. Lunches are a big deal, so lunch is a big meal. If you work in an office or you go to take a lunch break, you don't take a 20-minute lunch break and grab a sandwich. You sit down and even if you don't go to a fancy restaurant that's fine you still get a lunch break, a real lunch break, a minimum of an hour. So that's not normal, like if you work at Best Buy. You probably don't get an hour lunch. So I think that that's right there, a cultural difference and people respect their timing and enjoyment of the day. I think family here is also a little bit more tight than America. I think my experience in America was you move out of the family house as quickly as possible and you see your family, but not as often, and here you stay at the family house longer and you see them more frequently. So that's also a difference.
Speaker 3:Those are the two biggest things that come to mind. Wine is consumed in almost every meal. Portugal is the second highest consumption of wine per whatever in the world. So the first is France and second is Portugal. Third one is like Italy, but way less Basically, every lunch, every meal, there's wine on the table. That's just a normal thing. It's like a glass of water. There's also a glass of wine. So that's a cultural thing as well.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. I was going to go back to the family. I was curious what does when you say more family time. I know you know people have like Sunday night dinners with their families or something, but it sounds like it's a lot more than that. I was curious what that, what it entailed.
Speaker 3:Well, I feel like I don't know it's still new for me because I still have young children and I'm still learning and I only have England here for a few years but I feel that I see my in-laws, and now my mother as well, more frequently than I did in America. I think in America, for some reason, there's this feeling in America of leaving the nest and making your own way, and in Portugal I feel it's probably similar in other countries in Europe as well. I feel there's less of that. There's more of a connection to your family and less of getting away from it. I don't know if I'm articulating that perfectly, but like, for example, my mother-in-law can just come over on her bicycle and knock on the door and grab my son and go for a quick bike ride. It's also spontaneous. So I mean obviously part of that is the fact that we live near each other, but I think that there's more to it than that. I think there's more to the culture of staying connected to the older people in your family.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I was curious also about so when people do move off, get married, have houses curious in terms of the cost of how much it is to buy a house or rent there versus here in the US and what that looks like too.
Speaker 3:I think, significantly less cost of living but also earnings are significantly less. So I'm a photographer. I had a career in the United States for 20 years and then I moved here. I had to pretty much slash my fees in half to compete here and at first I kind ofo on the ocean to deep suburbs of you know Houston. It's a whole different thing. But if you compare apples to apples, if you compare, like you know, the deeper suburbs away from the ocean compared to living on the coast, I feel that you're going to see the same sliding scale pricing. You're going to see the same sliding scale of pricing. I feel that in general you're going to see a lower cost for real estate here than you are in other places. But that's a blanket statement and real estate's a fluctuating market so it's difficult to pin that down. But for example, in Chicago there's a neighborhood called Lincoln Park and Lincoln Park's right on the lake of Lake Michigan and if you've got a condo right on the lake in Lake Michigan it's certainly going to be more expensive than a condo right on the ocean here in Portugal. However, like I said, that's a sliding scale Cost of living besides real estate.
Speaker 3:I feel that meat and fish are maybe even less than half the price. I was just talking to my cousin, we were having a conversation about barbecue and we're talking about different meats. So, like you know, filet mignon if you want to buy a nice filet of beef or filet mignon steaks in Whole Foods in California, you're going to pay 30 bucks a pound. As about the price, right? Well, here I just bought a whole filet of beef and I think I paid something like $14 a pound equivalent. So that's about half of what it costs in America. Fish here is again about half the price. I can buy fresh fish caught out of the ocean for 50% of what the prices are in America, but then again, like I said, the earnings here are less. So it's, you know, it's. There's some similarities there.
Speaker 2:Also, one thing we've been seeing in the Bay Area and in Colorado is like this is May 2022. The housing market is going crazy, booming, and part of it we're wondering is that now people now realize they can live anywhere, and Boulder is one of of, you know, in denver is a hot destination, as is, you know, the bay area and hawaii. Like that's going up and it must be going down somewhere. I don't know, but people must be leaving. Something. Have you seen like post-covid, like do you mean track? Like the cost of housing, and if it's going up in?
Speaker 3:I have. I haven't. I haven't because we bought our place when we moved here and since I'm not in the market to buy anything else, I haven't really paid much attention, although I have peripherally seen prices rising. But I've also heard that prices are kind of plateauing at this point. I think it's happening everywhere. I think even in America the housing market has been a little bit ridiculous for the past two years and I think it's on a process of tapering off a little bit.
Speaker 3:But this is not my, not my area of expertise by any means. I feel that in Portugal, if, if you're interested in living in Portugal and you don't want prime real estate cause prime real estate anywhere in the world is expensive, let's face it. If you want to live oceanfront, it doesn't matter if you're in Malibu or you're in Porto paying for that and relatively it's going to be expensive. So if you don't need to be in Malibu and you don't mind being in a little more inland or something like that, there's great deals to be had. So in Portugal and Porto away from the ocean, there's great deals to be had. So in Portugal and Porto away from the ocean, certainly you can find great deals Overall, excluding the premium areas.
Speaker 2:the real estate here is much more affordable. Yeah, I think what I've read and done some research for 1,600, in Porto, inland a little bit, maybe a couple of miles from the beach, you can get a two bedroom, two bath.
Speaker 3:My mom. My mom is paying 1400 euros per month. She has a two bedroom, two bath duplex, two blocks from the ocean, furnished, and it's nice. It's renovated, it's nice. She has, you know, 12 foot ceilings. It's a nice place, and so that's rent. Rentals are definitely more affordable than buying. So there you go. I mean, those places are available. $1,400 for what she has is a little expensive in the local market, for the rental market, for the local citizens, but it's certainly very affordable for someone with, like, an American income or retirement income.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ok, yeah, that's what I was thinking, nice.
Speaker 1:What about the typical foods? Are there certain foods that are dishes, or your favorite foods that you like over there, or your families? What does that look like?
Speaker 3:The food is great here. It's see, where do I go with food? Ok, so to start with food, I'm a food person. I love, I do all the cooking in my house and I adore food.
Speaker 3:The world's best cuisines in my opinion, top three are probably Italian, french and Thai. And you know, you go to those places and you're celebrating what the world has to offer. You go to those places and you're celebrating what the world has to offer. Indians up there, japanese is up there.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't put Portuguese food in the top three or four, but Portuguese food is fantastic. It's just not like the most celebrated food. That said, it has a Mediterranean overall feel. It is fresh. Logistics here are fantastic. So whereas you go in America and you live in Miami, you think you're right next to the Caribbean Sea. You're going to get all this great fresh fish. You don't. You get mechanized logistics, you get stuff that's been frozen and sent to Pittsburgh and then it comes back down to Miami and it's ridiculous. But in Portugal you get fish that was caught off the coast and it hasn't been frozen yet and, boom, it's in the restaurants and that is really special. So the quality of seafood is fantastic.
Speaker 3:The other thing about food here in Portugal, in Portugal particularly so. Portugal only has about 10 million people, and 10 million people is nothing. Because you have so few people, your food logistics is much easier. Nothing, because you have so few people, your food logistics is much easier. So, for example, I can go to the corner store which we call Merceria. I can go to the Merceria in my neighborhood, and the Merceria is getting all their produce from the farms within 20 miles, and so they're getting food like picked late, like the tomatoes are picked when they're red, not green, and so they're getting food like picked late, like the tomatoes are picked when they're red, not green, and so those things go to the merceria and then you buy this like fresh produce.
Speaker 3:I went to my merceria the other day and I asked the guy in Portuguese, in my basic Portuguese. I'm like why does your fruit and vegetables taste so much better than when I go to the supermarket? And he goes like this exasperated look. He's like when you go to the supermarket. And he goes like this exasperated look. He's like when you go to the supermarket, they're getting their oranges from morocco. They're getting their tomatoes from wherever they can get the cheapest. He's like I'm getting my tomatoes from 20 miles away and I'm getting my oranges from algarve. I don't go outside the country. That's why everything tastes better and they're cheaper too. So the mercerias are either cheaper or the same price but better quality.
Speaker 3:So the food here I feel produce in general is better. I think it's picked later. I think the quality is much, much better. Meat and fish Fish for sure is more fresh. I guess the same applies to meat. I feel that the food here is a better source. Now the selection is less. So if you go to the supermarket and you compare a good supermarket in the Bay Area let's just say you go to Whole Foods in the Bay Area you have a lot of selection. When it comes to green vegetables, here you might not have as much Like. You don't see the French haricots verts, the nice green beans from France, that style and style. You don't see those as often and there's just different things you can't get here. But the stuff you can get is usually fresher and picked, more ripe, which I prefer do they do desserts they're a cake or something special.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, oh yeah, they're, they're dessert people here. So, um, oh yeah, oh yeah, they're, they're dessert people here. So, um, usually in america my experience was we didn't have dessert with every meal, but in portugal, almost every meal you have dessert. It's like it's a major part, even if it's just fresh fruit. You're having something sweet at the end of the meal and, uh, so there's lots of cakes and pastries, and the famous cake, the famous pastry here is called pastel de nata, which is like a little kind of puff pastry, like layered flaky dough with some custard in the middle. That's a great thing to have with a coffee. Coffee is served with almost every single meal. So everybody who has lunch at a restaurant has an espresso after lunch. That's a normal thing. Almost everybody who has dinner will have a decaf espresso after dinner. So it's a little different than America. We have those to a certain degree in America, but here it's clockwork. You will have an espresso after lunch without asking. They'd be looking at you funny if you didn't.
Speaker 2:Okay, and we interviewed a lady that was living in Italy and she said like to ask for a cappuccino after dinner is like sinful. Is that the same?
Speaker 3:That would be weird. Well, cappuccino is a very Italian thing, so I mean, it's breakfast, it's not after dinner. Exactly, yeah, cappuccino is very Italian and here most people drink just espresso, or they have this thing called a pingo, which is an espresso with a little dollop of milk inside, but it's not a cappuccino, it's just like literally a thimble of milk inside of your espresso.
Speaker 1:What are the nature kind of outdoor things that people do or visit or go to? I know it sounds like surf is also a big one, true. Yeah, so in.
Speaker 3:Porto there's an area of surfing you know it's not Hawaii style surfing, but it's surfing nonetheless. There's a beach area called Matuzinush, which is just north of Porto. So if you look on the map and you find Porto and you find Foz. If you go a little bit further north you're going to see Matuzinush, and Matuzinush has some pretty good waves and people are out there surfing on a regular basis. New York has some pretty good waves and people are out there surfing on a regular basis.
Speaker 3:The national park system in America is really amazing and commendable. It took me leaving to realize that we're special and lucky to have what we have. I mean with John Muir helped to create, with Yosemite, and I think it was Peter Roosevelt at the time to create the national park system. I think it was Theodore Roosevelt at the time to create the national park system, that system that they created with 50 some of the national parks, and the amount of space and the way they're developed is unbelievable. I mean, this is world leading. And so Portugal does not have anything like that. I think and I could be wrong here.
Speaker 3:Portugal has one national park, but it's called Parc Naturel or National de Jerez and Jerez it's in the north of the country. It has lots of hiking trails and waterfalls and that kind of stuff. But it's a weird place, pleasant mix of residential and village and park. So if you go to like you know, if you go to one of the national parks in America, typically there's no residential land in there. Some of there's, a couple like I think Death Valley has some residential land and Acadia in Maine has some residential land. In Juraish in Portugal it's a bunch of small towns and villages but the park encompasses all of them, which is really special because you can go and stay at a great little B&B and be in the park and do a short drive and be in a waterfall and hike and stuff like that. So that's a good outdoorsy activity. Within the city of Porto there's an area called Parque de Cidade, which park, city park, basically it's like it's like New York central park. So Parque de Cidade is one of the uh, the bigger urban parks in Europe and, uh, biggest in Portugal and one of the bigger ones in Europe is beautiful Uh, it's walking distance from my house, in fact and there's lots of green spaces in Portugal. So people get out and you know, do some bike riding along the ocean and you know, check out the parks and picnic and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:One more thing In Miami weirdest thing about Miami blows my mind All of the beachfront in Miami is only beachfront. There's no restaurants. There are no restaurants or no cafes, no, nothing. You walk over some little dune and then you're on the beach. It's a big beach and there's nothing but beach, which is fine. It's kind of untouched. It is what it is In Portugal on the beaches. It's completely lined with little cafes and bars and restaurants, which is perfect because you have the expanse of the beach, the restaurants don't encroach on your land at all, and right behind you is a great cafe or a great restaurant.
Speaker 3:If you look on your map and look for, look at Lapa Lapa, l-a-p-a, l-a-p-a in Porto. It's one of my favorite little places and Lapa Lapa is this beautiful, little, tiny, simple restaurant right on the beach. The beach is right in front of it. Great wine, great food, awesome menu, and that's one of dozens. And so you have this experience of. I can go on the beach in my bathing suit and lay out in suntan, or I could walk down the hill and go to Lapa Lapa and have dinner and not even sunbathe but still enjoy the beach, and I feel that that is a really valuable use of the space.
Speaker 1:That sounds amazing.
Speaker 3:Exactly, you have to be, you have to, you have to be on the sand. I think it's a way of enjoying the sand. You know it's, it's not only for sunbathing, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was in San Diego two weeks ago and stayed in Pacific beach and it was still these months and it was stalling for months and it was surfed and that was great. Do people transportation wise, is it easy to get around without a car, Do you? Is it bikes? How do people get around mostly?
Speaker 3:Well, porto in general is a really compact city. It's like a tiny big city. So the other day I was walking down the street in my neighborhood and I saw one of my clients driving down a small street and he just, like you know, beat the horn and like put his arm out the window and asked me to say hello and so on. And it's so funny, living in a big city in America, that almost never happens, at least to me, and it happens here like regularly, like I bought a car when I first moved here and like a couple of weeks later I saw the car sales and walking down my street. And you know so, when you bump into people, you know. I mean Porto itself only has a population of a few hundred thousand.
Speaker 2:So it's a small city.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a small city and you just bump into people, you know which is really cool and you just bump into people, you know which is really cool. But transportation-wise, sure you can bike it's not Amsterdam where everyone bikes everywhere. But I feel also a lot of things are walking distance. So my studio is in the city center. I just had lunch with a client of mine and I walked there. It was probably a 15, 20-minute walk, but I think 20-minute walk took me like right in the heart of the, really the heart of downtown, and I never thought twice about it. So it was no problem.
Speaker 3:It doesn't get super hot here. If you're in LA, it gets pretty warm in the summer in LA, so you might not want to walk to walk. Or if you're in other parts of America where it gets really hot, like Miami, you really can't walk more than you know half mile without sweating through your clothes and being really uncomfortable. You know so. But he, but here you can move. In my neighborhood. Porto is quite compact and so in my neighborhood I feel like it's compact in the sense that Manhattan is compact. I can walk from my my, the front of my house, to a pharmacy, a corner store that's like a fruit market, probably four or five restaurants and a dry cleaner and probably some other resources I can't think of at the moment all within five minutes walking. So in Miami that wasn't heard of. Where I lived in the burbs, miami, I couldn't walk anywhere, like literally nowhere. I had to drive anywhere I wanted to go. So I I really love the fact that it's compact. You can move around without a car.
Speaker 3:My mother moved here and she didn't get a car. So she had a car obviously her whole life, and in chicago and she did decided it was undecided when she moved here if she would get a car or not and once she moved here she decided she didn't need one. So as much as she needs one to go a little further or to go to some place where she has to carry more stuff, she can either rely on me or just take an Uber. But really she could walk to the local wine shop, the local corner store for the fruits and vegetables, even the supermarket she could walk to with a little wheeled cart. So public transportation system is very good. Buses are really really prevalent. Um subway system is a little limited, but it's good.
Speaker 3:It's there to go from um, uh, porto, which would be a major city because porto is the second city right. Lisbon is the first city, porto is the second to go from the major cities to any of the secondary cities or even tertiary cities. Trains are readily available and trains are obviously a very good way of traveling. I mean, it's just comfortable and fast. So if you want to go to Lisbon from Porto, you can go in just a couple of hours two and a half, three hours on one of the faster trains. And if you want to go from Porto to one of the other cities in the north, like some of the notable cities in the north are Braga, guimarães. Those are probably two that I would recommend. Braga and Guimarães are both interesting cities and you can get to either one of those by train within one hour.
Speaker 2:How do you spell Guimarães?
Speaker 3:you said Guimarães, G-U-I-M-A-R-E-S, something like that.
Speaker 2:Okay, let Google try to help me out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just look north of Porto by about an hour, you'll see it.
Speaker 2:Okay, I think I found it. That wraps up part one of our interview with Mark. Join us next time where we talk about expat life, where digital nomads gather food of Portugal and hidden gems outside of Porto. If you enjoy our podcast, can you please take a second and do a quick follow of the show and rate us in your podcast app, and, if you have a minute, we would really appreciate a review. Following and rating is the best way to support us. If you are on Instagram, let's connect. You can find us at where next podcast. Thanks for listening.
