A Tour of My New Lisbon Neighborhood

Over the last month, my wife and I have been looking for new digs in Portugal. And we have a winner.

More on that in a moment…

First, I will say that despite Portugal's overall affordability, the reality is that real estate in the highly desired areas of Lisbon and the Algarve (the Southern California doppelgänger down along the country's south coast) can be off-the-charts ridiculous. Porto, too, though Portugal's northern metropolis is still more affordable than the other two. You just have to be OK with more Seattle-like weather.

While food, utilities, insurance, and the like are far more wallet-friendly in Portugal than most places in the US… Portugal's sheer popularity with expats has jacked up the cost of buying or renting houses and apartments, which I have now experienced on two occasions: renting in the coastal town of Cascais last summer, and now renting in Lisbon as we transition our life back into a major urban center.

That said… We're chuffed to be back in a proper city.

We've been wandering around the streets of our neighborhood and taking the metro down into the urban core of Lisbon (the touristy area), and Yulia and I are both over the moon with our ability to stroll broad, city sidewalks and pop into restaurants and shops and cafes we happen upon along the way.

We're happy to get around on a metro, or to hop on one of Lisbon's iconic yellow trolley cars instead of having to drive everywhere like we did in Cascais.

Near our new apartment, we've already found a local taverna run by a Lisbon native who once lived in Hillsborough, Oregon.

Taberna os Pagapaios near our apartment…

It's the kind of place where the menu is written on large strips of tape stuck to the wall. And there's a sign warning anyone who thinks it's too loud that "We do not lower the music!"

The gazpacho we ordered was sublime, and I am a gazpacho snob. Same with the pastel de bacalhao, a savory pastry made from dried cod fashioned into a short, plump torpedo and deep fried—a national snack. The sangria, "best we've had so far in Lisbon," Yulia announced after her first glass.

Sublime gazpacho…

After our meal, the owner placed two bottles of liquor on our table and two shot glasses. One was something akin to a Portuguese version of a single-malt whiskey, the other a dessert-style white wine. We could drink what we wanted… gratis.

I love hospitality like this that you find in neighborhood taverns when you're a local…

As for our new apartment, it's literally 30 seconds from the taverna. If you saw my piece in Field Notes detailing our hunt for a new apartment, well, the apartment we rented is the one I said was leading our quest. We toured several others, but none of them came close to what we found, even those at higher prices.

For the apartment we picked, we'll pay $2,435 per month including parking. To be frank: That's more than we'd like to pay. But everything we saw at $2,000 and under has been depressing… Or located in what Yulia calls "sleeping districts"—her term for the bedroom communities that ring Lisbon and are little more than collections of apartment towers with all the energy of wet Wonder Bread. (I refuse to live in one of those. I didn't move to Portugal to settle for that lifestyle. It holds no appeal to me whatsoever.)

"We definitely upgraded our living standards, and at minimal cost," I said to Yulia as we wandered around the empty apartment earlier this week after signing the lease and collecting the keys.

The view from inside our bedroom overlooking the circular Mercado do Arroios (think: daily farmers' market).

We have about 1,350 square feet now, vs. 950 back in Cascais. We're on the third floor and our windows welcome in heaps of sun throughout the day. A set of French doors in the master bedroom opens onto a tiny balcony overlooking a farmer's market ringed by all kinds of restaurants, including the Lisbon branch of a Lebanese eatery that had become one of our favorites in Cascais.

Frankly, I'm most pleased with the kitchen.

I am a weekend Gordon Ramsey who loves to cook all sorts of cuisines. Our last apartment had a kitchen that was way too small for a pretend-chef. Not nearly enough space for my cookware and all the gadgets I use. I've collected spices from all over the world in my travels and I had to cram them all into a plastic tub because I had no available drawers or other storage space.

But now?

Well, my editor is going to struggle to tear me away from my new kitchen to spend time writing Field Notes dispatches rather than whipping up a Bolognese or a particular Persian rice dish I like…

We've spent a few days this week unpacking and I gotta say, I don't think I've ever been as happy to move into an apartment as I am with this one. I am looking forward to our life here.

The new-apartment honeymoon has begun…