Lisbon, Portugal: Reservations for Two

Upon my graduation from Willamette University in 2004, former beau, AJ, and I desperately wanted to travel; however, I had not yet made my millions with my Anthropology degree nor he with his Rhetoric and Media Studies degree.  How do you travel Europe without any money?  Teach English as a second language!  We worked for a few months, saved enough for two plane tickets plus some extra food and wine money and headed to Barcelona.  Living on a teacher’s salary in the States is hard enough, I am told, but working in a foreign country as an “irregular”, as we illegals were called, was really tough.  As an irregular, we were paid less than an EU citizen for doing the same job.  Sound familiar?  Bottom line, we had to put the traveling on hold a bit and just enjoy our newly found local, ex-pat and other American friends.

When we did manage to save a bit of travel money, we figured a quick jaunt across the border to Portugal was an economic way to slake the travel bug thirst, pauper style.  After eight years, what I remember the most: the wonderfully friendly and accommodating Portuguese people; how similar the written language of Portuguese is to Spanish, though not the pronunciation; the Algarve coast with its breathtaking red cliffs; and most poignantly, the delicious, orgasmic, melt in your mouth, don’t want to swallow for fear of never tasting such a thing again, seafood.

I have been back in the States now for six years.  Many people have heard me say that if I didn’t miss my family and we hadn’t have run out of money, I would still be living in Barcelona; I loved it.  Needless to say, when Jonathan and I decided to embark on this chuck it, sell it, store it European adventure, I was ecstatic!  Furthermore, when I realized that our first farm hopping stop required that we fly into Lisbon, Portugal, that was it.  I was dabbing the drool from the corners of my mouth!  And, imagine my additional excitement at the prospect of sharing my love for Portuguese cuisine with my new cheffy husband!

PigWizard & Baby Bird, Europe at Last!

After an amazing week of hanging with my new family in Dawsonville, Georgia (love you guys!), we hopped an I don’t remember what time plane to London (neither of us slept more than an hour on the plane but that's a whole other story), and laid over for 4 hours before boarding our last 2 hour leg to Lisbon.  After a 20 minute cab ride with an amusingly gregarious driver who ended most sentences with “man” (e.g. “You’d be surprised how many Portuguese people have not been out of Portugal, man.”), we arrived at our flat at I don’t remember what time.  We found two cold beers in the fridge and had a cheers on the balcony.

 

Exhausted from our trip and, let’s be honest, from the last month leading up to the trip, dinner consisted of a few potatoes and onions found in the flat, a zucchini, a lemon and a bottle of wine purchased from the around the block Middle Eastern mini mart (there’s one on every block and they don’t do siesta, which is a major plus when you just need a few essentials and everyone else is napping).  Sautéed with a little bit of smuggled PigWizard chorizo (expertly packed in the checked baggage to avoid the strip search that occurred in the Atlanta airport), delish simple dinner, done and done. 

Stay tuned for tales of our breakfast of grilled sardines and snails…

No Return Ticket

At the moment, I have not had enough alcohol to make the words flow freely, and I'm not particularly inspired to write.  I would rather just sit back in my chair, read a bit, and stare at the awesome view and sunset that is about to paint the sky in the tiny little village of San Vincente de Alcantara, Spain.  But, my lovely wife Nicole, is itching to post about our trip so far, and so it is up to me to introduce this blog.  So here it is.

About ten months ago, after multiple efforts in multiple ways to start a viable PigWizard business without going into massive debt that I wasn't ready for, we decided to chuck it all in and move to Europe for a while.  I had never even so much as flown across the Atlantic but Nicole had lived in Barcelona teaching English for a little more than a year and a half, returning to California in 2006. She has wanted to return for years, and I needed a change of everything.  So we started saving, and planning.

I knew from my friend and former landlord Charlie Cascio of a website that would allow us to network with farmers, hostel owners and retirees that needed extra helping hands, and would provide a roof over our heads and food in our bellies in return. It seemed like the best way to stretch our dollars, and it suits my way of traveling.  Getting to a place and leaving in a week after staying in a hostel, seeing a few monuments and eating a few meals just doesn't is not my cup of tea.  I like to get to know the people that inhabit the place, get invited to house parties, BBQs, fiestas, luaus, pig roasts and wine bottling parties, and you can't do that much in a week or too.  Fortunately, Nicole loved the idea.

Then we decided to get married before we left, like, two weeks before we left.  I'm still recovering from the weeks of planning, moving stuff, feeding people, organizing carpools, cleaning up, thanking everyone completely inadequately, eating leftovers, packing, and working a day job.  It was awesome though, and we had the best weather we could ask for, with the most amazing backdrop, most gracious hosts, wonderful ceremony, wittiest photographer, incredible food, and outrageous bartender. I'm being inadequate again, without a doubt,  for not mentioning the most dedicated cake maker of them all.

So here we are, in SPAIN.  I don't want to be a spoiler, and tell you about all of the awesome things that we did and ate in Lisbon, or what we are doing on our first farm, or the amazing offer we have had in the Pyrenees that we are looking into, because my Baby Bird Nicole has been keeping notes for days waiting for me to do the introduction.

So I'll skip ahead to the end.

There isn't one.  At least not one that we know of.  Because we saved like crazy, got really generous wedding presents, and don't have to pay for room and board 90% of the time, so we can stay for a long long time.  (I know you're all bummed that you won't get bacon, but most of you haven't had much more than a taste to begin with.  Trust me, you're better off not knowing until we get back, because I had threats of kidnapping before we even left to bring me back to make the stuff.) So we are here, and it's awesome, and we miss you, and we don't have return tickets.  Hell, we don't even know where we are going when we leave this farm, but we will be sure to keep you posted.  Shoot us a line if you know someone that we should visit, hang out with, work for, or drink with.  Better yet, come and visit, and introduce us to your favorite people and places.