This post is an update of our recent workation in Portugal including the planning, what it cost and how it went.
Planning
Why/When
Firstly, I’ll cover off why and when we decided to travel.
When we were moving from Ireland to Canada last summer, I wanted to have a trip planned back to Ireland within the year to take the sting out of saying goodbye to the life we built there over the last 9 years. Knowing we’d be back in a few months made it easier.
We also wanted to trial slow travel, where you stay for a longer period than a typical vacation in any one location before moving on to the next. This method of travel is used by a lot of families who worldschool and travel full time. It is easier on the mind and body in terms of adapting to change and usually cheaper as you can avail of long-term stay discounts.
In terms of when and where, Ireland was obviously part of the equation but when we decided that we’d want to be in Canada for the summer, it made sense to travel somewhere warmer during the winter. Travelling in the off-season is also quieter and cheaper. When we lived in Ireland, Portugal was only a 2.5 hour flight away and we had been a few times and knew we liked it.
I played around with different durations, originally we planned on travelling for 3 months but when it came time to actually book we felt this might be a little too long to be away from our home base and cut it down to 2.5 months.
Flights
As usual, I had a spreadsheet to plot out the trip. I looked at a few different flight routes and checked prices on google flights fairly regularly to get the best price. Once upon a time, I would have looked for the cheapest deal only regardless of duration and flight times but now I know what toll it takes on my body and I’m willing to pay a bit more for better options. I generally try to find direct flights that leave between 10am and 8pm. I’d love to avoid red-eye flights but that seems to be the only option from Montreal to Europe.
The route options I looked at were:
Route 1:
- Montreal-Lisbon 1 way
- Bus Lisbon-Portimao
- Bus Portimao-Faro
- Faro-Cork 1 way
- Bus Cork-Dublin
- Dublin-Toronto 1 way
- Toronto train to Ottawa
Route 2:
- Montreal-Lisbon return
- Bus Lisbon-Portimao
- Bus Portimao-Faro
- Faro-Cork return
- Bus Faro-Lisbon
- Lisbon accommodation 2 nights
Route 3:
- Montreal Lisbon return
- Bus Lisbon-Portimao
- Faro – Cork 1 way
- Dublin – Lisbon 1 way
- Lisbon accommodation 2 nights
All 3 options priced out at about 3,100$ for the 3 of us. That meant the choice was really down to preference. We opted for Route 3. The longest day was the first flight and bus, the rest were direct 1 way flights/bus trips.
Accommodation
Once we had the flights/dates booked, we needed accommodations. Portugal was the simplest as we were staying in one location for the whole duration. I searched on booking.com, homeexchange.com and a local real estate office which we had found through booking.com and had stayed with a few times before.
As we had been before we knew the area and where on the map we wanted to be so it made it easier to narrow down where we wanted to be.
We ended up booking a three-bed apartment with huge balcony as we hoped we would get some visitors to come stay with us.
School
Little MH is in kindergarten so school is not yet mandatory in Quebec. We let the school know the dates we’d be gone and they provided us with some activity books to work on while we were away.
In terms of socialisation, I found some local ex-pat/digital nomad/ worldschooling Facebook groups in Portimao. During the week, school-aged kids are in school so the playground isn’t a guarantee to find similar aged kids, unless they’re on holiday. The world schooling/digital nomad groups would have more school-aged English speaking kids available during the week for meetups. Little MH went to one of the group meetups while we were there but in general was happy out with just us. While I was working, Mr. MH and Little MH would go to the playground, play on the beach and play ball on the boardwalk.
Packing
We’ve gotten fairly good at packing minimally after all our travels. This time we managed to keep it to 2 40L backpacks, 2 regular backpacks and 1 large handbag.
At a high level we brought:
- 4-5 days worth of clothes each
- Minimal toiletries
- 3 months of diabetic supplies
- School activities, pencil, eraser, markers
- Electronics:
- Work laptop, keyboard and mouse
- Personal laptop
- PS5
- Nintendo Switch
- Plug converters and chargers
I have a “leaving for months” checklist at home that I’ll add in at another time that includes the things we needed to prepare before we left to maintain the house/car ie: have plants watered, mail collected, arrange to have the car driven periodically to stop the battery from dying etc. I’d keep a paper list in the kitchen that we could add things to in the days coming up to the trip to help keep track of things not to forget.
What it cost
The below details what it cost for the 1 month in Portugal for the month of Feb. Flights and travel insurance are proportioned 40% to this portion of the trip and 60% to the Irish portion which I’ll detail in another post. The total cost was 4,342€ (6,338$).
| Item | EUR | CAD |
| Accommodation | 1,660 | 2,424 |
| Food/Drink | 1,500 | 2,190 |
| Flights | 707 | 1,033 |
| Travel Insurance | 326 | 475 |
| Transport/Parking | 126 | 183 |
| Shopping | 23 | 33 |
| Total | 4,342 | 6,338 |
We of course have ongoing costs at home which add to this. Costs for Feb for remaining expenses like Rent, Electricity, Internet etc came to 1,369€ (2,000$). Some of the travel costs like flights and accommodation would have been paid in December and January so the outgoing for Feb was not the full 6,292€ (9,187$).
Our estimated annual spend for the 12 months including travel is 44,000€ (64,000$), this averages out to 3,652€ (5,333$)/month. So the Portugal portion on its own is only a little over 1,000€ more than the average monthly spend.
How it went
In summary, it was lovely. The weather was warm and sunny and we had the beach, boardwalk and restaurants pretty much to ourselves, which is typical for this time of year. Working from a nice location was also great.
That said, a month is probably our limit. As we experienced in a previous mini-retirement, even though we had people visit us, it does become very isolating to not have friends and family to visit on the weekends.
A typical work day
- I would wake up naturally without an alarm between 7 and 8am
- Make my way to the kitchen for breakfast
- Little MH would already be awake, playing the switch or PS5
- Make myself and Little MH breakfast, having my tea on the balcony in the sun if it was out
- Get dressed, brush teeth etc
- Go for a walk on the beach by myself, taking a few moments to consciously breathe in the fresh sea air and look up at the sky without sunglasses to let in the morning light to my retinas to set my circadian rhythm and regulate hormones.
- Get back, grab my water bottle and log on to work
- Mr. MH would usually get up some time between 9 and 10am and get himself and Little MH ready to head out for some activity and groceries.
- I would typically have lunch by myself on the balcony
- Work for a few more hours
- Mr. MH would have dinner ready by the time I log off from work
- Eat dinner together as a family
- Spend the evening sometimes doing a school activity or playing card games, sometimes doing our own thing.
- Get Little MH ready for bed and asleep some time between 8:30 and 9pm. I’d usually go to bed at the same time as Little MH.
- Mr. MH would stay up a bit later.
A typical weekend
Similar to the work day in terms of wake up and sleep routine. We’d go to restaurants more often on the weekend. Sometimes for brunch, sometimes for dinner, heading down to the beach and playground either before or after food. I’d call home at some point. We had Mr. MH’s sister over for a few nights one weekend.
A few weeks before we got to Portugal, I saw on Facebook that someone I went to school with was posting pictures of Portugal. We got to chatting and it ended up they had moved there in 2020 and spend their summer’s at a cottage 20 minutes from where we are living now in Canada. Although I was probably 12 years old the last time I saw them in person, we decided to meet up. They came down with their partner for a night and we got to catch up. We will likely meet up again this summer. Such a small world.
Lessons learned
As with every trial, there comes some error to learn from 🙂 As long as we learn from them, it will make the next trip even better.
- We may have been able to save money on groceries by availing of grocery delivery from bigger chains. Continente and Uber Eats offer food delivery which we’ll likely avail of next time.
- Uber/Bolt to and from the airport is only slightly more expensive and less hassle than the train and bus that we used to take. The bus/train takes 1.5 hours from Faro to Portimao and you still need to use Uber to get to the train and to the accommodation costing about 28€ for the 3 of us. Uber was 50 minutes total, 40€, and no timetables to worry about.
- In regards to deposits, from now on we will take a video tour of the accommodation as soon as we get there. This trip Little MH accidentally pulled a curtain rod down and as a result the property manager did a thorough walk through when we left and blamed us for breaking a number of other things that were broken when we got there. We are still trying to get some of our deposit back on this one. Also, best to give the deposit as a separate payment not included in the total for the accommodation so that you can dispute it with your bank if needed. Lastly, perhaps booking through a website like booking.com rather than directly though the property company might give you more protections in terms of these types of disputes.
- Packing wise – next time we might try to pack 1 checked bag between us. Having to carry all our bags on our backs any time we move around is cumbersome. While it’s nice to not have to wait for your bag in baggage claim and there is no risk of it going missing, we’re still trying to find the balance of what we carry and what we check.
- As mentioned before, a month is probably a little too long, unless we can get more people to come visit us. I think the sweet spot might be 3 weeks.
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