Bem Vindo a Lisboa!

Right, Welcome to Lisbon! Sorry for the long hiatus after our previous post from England, We Are Those Merry Wanderers, but Sarah and I decided to return to the US and begin the process for moving to Portugal for Sarah’s full retirement after three years of teaching in India. We had hoped to visit Lisbon as tourists to find the right neighborhood and a flat to rent, but Covid had other plans, keeping the borders closed and showing no signs of improving.

So, we flew back to Indianapolis, we voted, we got to see our daughters and a few friends–not as many as we would have liked, thank you Covid–and we worked through the steps toward getting the coveted D7 Residence Visa to allow us to fly to Lisbon. First up, we needed FBI background checks to include with our application to the Portuguese Consulate in DC. No problem, since neither Sarah nor I had ever robbed a bank or even gotten a speeding ticket, right? Well, Sarah had one little problem–or actually ten of them–since the FBI check is tied to one’s fingerprints and she had never been able to even to use that touch thingy to activate her iPhone or her laptop or, worse yet, the scanners at the immigration desks at the Chennai airport!

Thankfully, we had discovered a wonderful Facebook group, Americans & Friends in Portugal, where folks going through the same steps to a move to Portugal–and after they were there–shared their experiences and hurdles and successes and where there was a treasure trove of detailed information files. Anyway, we learned that Sarah could improve her chances of success with her prints if we had it done electronically at the Post Office–instead of with ink at a police station–and prepped her hands with Cornhuskers’ Lotion for a few weeks! Who knew?

So, fingers nice and soft and ready, we went bright and early one morning to the main Post Office in downtown Indianapolis and were the first people in the door. Sarah explained her concerns and the delightful lady at the counter said she was an expert and had never failed to get ten good readings. Perfect! Ah, well, she ended up calling in an even greater expert and, together, they gave Sarah 45 minutes and nearly 75 attempts but they finally got ten “acceptable” readings, whew! Then, I stepped up and said this will be easy . . . and my first reading showed I only had nine fingers! At any rate, they managed to find my last finger and we got it done, so we offer many thanks to the gracious team at the main post office Indianapolis!

A few days later, the sealed envelopes with our FBI reports arrived–we had already gotten the online clean results within hours–and of course they had to remain sealed for when you send your application to DC. We completed the rest of the application checklist with the help of highly recommended Timely Solutions, in Lisbon, and we FedExed our package in early December . . . and then the clock started ticking. But only seven weeks to the day later, we received an email letting us know our visa’s were approved and that we should send our passports to DC to have the visa’s inserted! Can you say WOOHOO!!??

Then we got to focus on one of our favorites ever: cleaning out our 15×15 storage space and starting the selection of what to take to Lisbon and what to toss, sell, donate . . . or pretend it didn’t exist! Sarah of course deserves the ultimate patience award, putting up with my constant refrain of “Why in the world did we keep this?” Of course, we were experiencing our first real winter after more than three years in south India, so we loved the frigid temps, the icy walking, and the comfy–not–ambience in the storage space!

As the days counted down to our early March flight to Lisbon, we turned to the next hurdle, the requirement for a negative Covid test taken within 72 hours of the flight’s departure for Lisbon. No prob, right? Not so fast! Our flight was set to leave Newark at 8:20pm on a Friday, so 72 hours would mean giving our samples no earlier than 8pm or so on Tuesday. But . . . that’s too late to get the samples into an outgoing fedex drop box for that day . . . and the labs all note they will email results within 24 to 48 hours of their receipt of the samples. So, if we take samples the next day–Wednesday–and the lab gets them on Thursday, we might get results on Friday before the flight . . . or not! Anyway, playing the belt and suspenders approach, we ordered three test kit each, and took one on Tuesday and two the next day. To our delight, they all came back in fewer than 24 hours and were all negative, so onward for us!

Then, it was only a simple matter of packing and repacking and unpacking and weighing suitcases to meet the dreaded 50lb/23kg limit to keep the price at $200 per. Ah, and figuring out how to pack my guitar, which turned out to be rather straightforward. We loved playing the “Do I really need my flippers if the gyms are still closed? If I take out this, what will you leave behind to match it?” But we made it with only six gigantor suitcases and the guitar and off we flew!

So, here we are, just over a week in lovely Lisbon, starting to settle down in our flat in the Chiado neighborhood in the heart of the city, with theaters and the opera house and cafes and restaurants and a multitude of shops all within walking distance as we get to take part in the “desconfinement” of Lisbon and a return, hopefully to a more typical life for us all. For now, though, we are still under direction to go out only for essential purposes—I’m so glad that Casa Havaneza, the cigar shop around the corner, is clearly essential! At any rate, as things open and activity grows, there will be many, many walkabouts and meals and wines and photos and stories soon to follow as we settle in to life in Portugal . . . And maybe even a flashback or two to update our odyssey in Cornwall and Devon last fall . . .