30 million people visited Portugal last year.
Most of them probably left thinking the same thing: could I live here?
I live near Lisbon, and my wife has run a development company here for ten years, over a hundred residential and commercial units delivered.
I tried to do for Portugal what I did for Italy and Greece – find the inland areas where you’d buy a rural house.
But I couldn’t.
We wouldn’t live inland in Portugal ourselves, and I never advise what I wouldn’t do myself.
Portugal, for us, is the coast. So here are 11 places where you can buy an incredible house, live peacefully, and keep the ocean at your door. Every one passes the same test: we would buy there ourselves. Where you’d overpay, including the most famous name in the country, I say it plainly.
How the 11 made the list. Four tests:
The ocean at your door
Quiet. Places to live, not party destinations. One urban exception earns its spot.
Alive in February. Real town, real services, year-round life. Two entries bend or fail this; I flag them and tell you why they’re here anyway.
Above everything: would we buy there ourselves? Everything below is a yes, at the right price. Others will see it differently, and the comments are open for that.
Let’s dive in.
Before we start
A lot has changed here lately: the golden visa lost real estate, the old tax regime is gone, citizenship takes longer, prices kept climbing. None of it killed the interest. I’ve had this exact conversation at least 20 times in the last six months, and the pros keep outweighing the cons.
Two warnings on real estate though.
Prices are inflated by lack of supply, not investor money. The famous names carry a story premium; one town over, with the same ocean, prices can drop by half. So make sure to compare before pulling the trigger.
Construction is the hidden battle. Humidity tests every build, and timelines slip: a friend got his apartment three years late, and there are plenty of these stories.
In our family we also build houses, so the flags below come from delivering buildings. Strong criteria, strong biases: a subjective list from direct experience, shared unfiltered. And of course I am always open to other takes, so please share your comments.
1. Matosinhos & Foz, The Urban Exception
Best for: anyone whose life needs an airport weekly and a beach daily.
Foz do Douro trades close to €5,000/m² and keeps climbing double digits. Matosinhos next door sits meaningfully below. Porto airport 10 to 15 minutes. The best hospital access on this list, and everything open all year.
The one exception is here for a personal reason: our office is in Porto, and my wife’s company delivered a building on this coast, all units sold. We know it well.
Foz do Douro is Porto’s old-money seaside quarter. Granite lanes, the Pérgola on the ocean avenue, the private-school belt, and the city ten minutes behind you. Probably one of the cutest areas in the country, and one of the calmest. Matosinhos next door is the counterweight: a working port town where the sardine smoke on Rua Heróis de França is a food destination in itself, with a real surf beach and a metro line. At the border between them, Siza’s 1966 tidal pools carved into the rocks at Leça, a national monument you can swim in.
February is not really a test here, because this is a city, and that’s the point of the exception.
The market: Foz Velha proper runs €2M and up, and houses are scarce (this coast is mostly apartments). A renovated family house near the metro in Leça, under €900K. Our honest read from having built and sold here: the coast is spiking and demand stays, because the north’s own dynamics feed it. Families retire here, younger people come for the calmest version of city life.
One warning: construction quality changes dramatically between the north and the south of Portugal, and the north is the better half. Even so, you should check what you’re actually getting, because the asking price doesn’t always tell you about the build.
The catch is that the Atlantic never warms past 18°C and quiet here is relative, so this is the entry for people who want the ocean alongside the city, not instead of it.
2. São Martinho & the Óbidos Lagoon, The Calm Water
Best for: families with small kids, actual swimmers, and anyone who wants the ocean without the ocean’s moods.
Just under €3,000/m² in São Martinho, and essentially flat over the last year while the entire Portuguese coastline reprices. The last calm-water spot still priced by locals. Lisbon and the airport, about 1h10 on the A8. Caldas hospital, 15 minutes.
The Atlantic is cold and rough, but here's the one place north of the Algarve that's different. São Martinho do Porto is a shell-shaped bay so sheltered it feels like a lake with tides, and Portuguese families have summered on it for generations. Twenty minutes up the coast, the Óbidos lagoon opens the second flavor of calm water, with Foz do Arelho sitting on its mouth.
The anchor is Caldas da Rainha, fifteen minutes inland, with 52,000 people, a real hospital, and a fruit market that has run every morning on the same square for five centuries, which means it's alive in February without trying.
The biggest wave on Earth breaks fifteen minutes north of the bay in Nazaré, though that’s a day trip rather than a place you’d actually live.
The market: a contemporary 3-bed with pool near the bay, around €550K. A 5-bed villa with pool looking over the Óbidos lagoon, just over €1M. The gated golf version exists too, at Praia d’El Rey and West Cliffs, from €700K into the millions.
The catch: August is wall-to-wall, precisely because this is the only fully sheltered ocean bay for 200 kilometers of coast. And the flat price cuts both ways: no international story yet, which is the opportunity, and no international exit either, if you ever need one. Caldas next door is already repricing fast, and the window for buying here is already closing.
3. Ericeira, The One That Already Boomed (flagged: hyped)
Best for: surfers, and buyers who accept paying yesterday’s growth for today’s community. Everyone else, look at Ribamar and Santo Isidoro.
Europe’s first World Surfing Reserve. Seven world-class waves along four kilometers of cliff. Prices flat this year while the country kept climbing. Lisbon airport 40 minutes. No hospital ER in town; Torres Vedras or Loures, about 35 minutes.
A whitewashed old fishing village at its center, and the digital nomad capital of the country. Everyone loves Ericeira, which is the problem, and the honest signal is this: prices went flat this year while the whole country compounded. The boom already happened, so what you’re buying isn’t a bubble, it’s a fully priced market.
Santo Isidoro, the freguesia next door, now asks more per square meter than Ericeira itself, which is where the smart money already went, five kilometers north.
The market: a townhouse in the old center runs about double the area average. The value sits in the villages around: a T4 with sea view in Ribamar, under €600K. The trophy tier exists too, close to €2M at Coxos, the wave itself.
February works differently here, because winter is peak surf season and the town lives all year. Coworkings stay open, cafés are full of wetsuits, and that year-round rhythm is rare on this coast and worth real money.
The catch is that Ericeira is fully priced with flat growth while cheaper neighbors compound. Summer crushes the N247 and the parking, and the nomad churn means friendships on three-month visas, sometimes.
4. The Sintra Coast, Where the Cliff Does the Talking
Best for: the buyer whose priority is the house itself. The most spectacular residential settings in this piece are on this stretch.
Colares is the most expensive corner of Sintra, around €5,000/m², cooled off its spike and climbing again. The cheaper entry point is São João das Lampas one step north, at roughly two thirds of that, but the same coast. 40 minutes from Lisbon airport. Inside a natural park that has blocked overbuilding since 1981.
Azenhas do Mar spills white down a cliff into a seawater pool cut from the rocks. Praia Grande is the surf beach. Colares, in between, grows something that shouldn’t exist: wine from ungrafted vines planted directly in beach sand, because phylloxera can’t live in sand. There were over a thousand hectares of these vines in the 1930s. There are barely twenty left. You can drink a bottle of the survivors.
A friend of ours is moving right now and shortlisted exactly this coast, so we’ve been watching houses here recently. Some of them are, frankly, among the most beautiful we’ve seen in the country.
The market: a 3-bed with sea view on a big plot in Assafora, under €800K. A historic quinta in Colares village, under €2M. The Azenhas trophy tier, several millions.
The catch is written in the sky: the serra catches the Atlantic fog, and August here runs four to six degrees cooler than Lisbon, ten or more when the city bakes. Every time I go up toward Sintra the weather changes twice and the humidity swing gives me a small headache. I say all of that with love. The locals will tell you it clears up after lunch, and sometimes they are even right.
This is love-it-or-hate-it geography: mountain-life people adore it, and sun-lovers struggle. Sintra is also large, so it matters enormously whether you buy toward the Gothic center or out toward the coast, and the coast itself can feel very empty even when the view is incredible. That’s the trade, and the park protection that keeps it beautiful also means you buy existing stock, because building new is close to impossible.
The detail people miss is that depending on where you sit, Cascais is only 15 to 25 minutes away, so you're not actually isolated, you're next door to the Cascais-Lisbon coast at a discount, and the whole stretch is completely underrated.
5. The Coast Between Cascais and Lisbon, The Gem
Best for: anyone who wants the ocean without giving up a single city convenience. The one entry I’d recommend to almost everyone.
The most expensive stretch on this list, pushing toward €6,000/m² and setting records, with prime houses well above that. Trains to Lisbon every 15 to 20 minutes until past midnight. International schools, two hospitals, and a real city of 220,000 that never closes for winter.
Now the one my wife and I circle every time. If we were signing tomorrow, anywhere on this list, we would sign here: the gem.
And let’s be precise about what we’re advising, because it matters: the gem is the coast between Cascais and Lisbon, the string of towns along the train line, not Cascais town itself.
This coast has been solving February for a century. Salazar’s neutrality made Estoril the waiting room of Europe during and after the war: spies at the casino tables first, exiled kings on the seafront after. The story goes that Ian Fleming watched a double agent play baccarat here and went home with the seed of Casino Royale.
What the kings knew, the market still knows. A sheltered microclimate, a train line, two hospitals, and international schools, on a coastline that still finds room to be quiet.
The market here is that you buy at the top and I still say it’s right, because the fundamentals aren’t just a story, they are a train line, a school belt, and a century of proof.
And where on the line? Really, almost anywhere. Every town between Cascais and Lisbon works: Carcavelos and Parede on the beaches, the quiet grids of São João and São Pedro above the cliff coves, Oeiras and Paço de Arcos closer to the city. They all share the same train, the same ocean, and the same fundamentals, so you should be picking by street rather than by name. A detached house near the beach in the quieter grids still starts under €1M, and the postcard addresses run several times that. Quinta da Marinha’s pine-forest gated calm is worth looking at too, if you don’t need the train.
The strategic point people misread is that this line lets you be technically close to Lisbon and practically out of it. Cascais town proper is its own bubble, and the back and forth from there is longer than everyone expects. The towns in between are the actual move, because they give you most of both worlds.
The catch is that the Marginal jams, summer packs the beaches, and nothing here is a bargain, because you’re paying for the absence of compromise.
6. Sesimbra & the Arrábida Coast, The Clearest Water Near Lisbon
Best for: water people, meaning divers, sailors, spearfishers, and anyone who wants Lisbon at their back and the country’s clearest sea in front.
Sesimbra trades in the mid-€3,000s per square meter, pushing toward €5,000 in the center. Azeitão, a notch below, for the wine-country version. Lisbon airport 40 minutes, Setúbal hospital 30.
A swordfish-fishing town stacked in a cliff amphitheater under a Moorish castle, with the Arrábida park on one side, turquoise coves that don’t look Atlantic at all, and the wild dunes of Meco on the other.
The fish auction runs almost every day of the year, which is Sesimbra passing the February test without noticing the question.
Inland 15 minutes sits the genteel base: Azeitão, wine estates and azulejos and sheep’s cheese, 30 minutes from Lisbon. The triangle between them is one of the most underrated places to actually live in the Lisbon orbit.
The market: a luxury 3-bed with pool and sea view in town, just under €1M. A contemporary 3-bed near Meco on a big plot, around €900K.
The catch is that summer is a documented parking war, to the point the council now bans cars from the Arrábida beaches in high season, and the park blocks most new construction; you should buy existing stock and verify the plot classification before anything else. The town itself is also steep (stairs, not garages).
7. Troia & Soltroia, The Beach That Isn’t a Town (flagged: expensive, February fail)
Best for: the beach-first buyer with the main life already sorted somewhere else.
Listings here run over €8,000/m². The car ferry is about €20 each way, winter frequency drops, and the road detour around the estuary is about an hour and a half. There is no school, no real grocery in winter, and effectively no town.
Seventeen kilometers of sand spit between the open Atlantic and the Sado estuary. Dunes, pine, Roman ruins minutes from the marina, and resident dolphins that cross the ferry lane. Soltroia on the estuary side is the quiet 1980s villa colony; Setúbal is 20 minutes across the water.
Here’s the February verdict, and it’s the first fail on this list: the casino and the ferry run all year, most of everything else publishes a summer schedule. Almost nobody lives on the peninsula in winter.
We know it well, having stayed many times across the different resorts, and at one point we seriously considered buying, either as a second house or even as our primary base. We didn’t, because it’s still far. But we kept it on this list for one reason: if the beach itself is the whole point, nothing in Portugal beats this beach.
The market: expensive sand, Lisbon-city money for dune and pine. A villa a short walk from the beach in Soltroia, low seven figures. Beachfront, several millions.
The catch, put simply, is that you’re buying a beach and not a place to live. Your 3 am hospital plan is the boat schedule or an hour’s drive. As a second base used hard in the warm months, it’s arguably the best pure beach purchase in the country, and for many people excellent value for money. As a full-time life, though, it isn’t one.
8. Comporta & Melides, The Famous One (flagged: overpriced in our view)
Best for: people who can afford to be wrong in the most beautiful way possible. Everyone else keeps reading.
Comporta asks close to €8,000/m². The same unspoiled-Atlantic product on Spain’s Costa de la Luz asks half that. Even Sotogrande, Spain’s most established luxury enclave, is cheaper per square meter. And a prime buildable plot costs roughly the same in Comporta and in Sotogrande’s top gated reserve.
You knew this was coming. The rice fields, the storks, the cabana aesthetic, the celebrity neighbors. Louboutin built a hotel in Melides, Discovery Land brought the Clooney circle to the pines, a princess reportedly lives in the golf estate.
So here’s where a decade inside Portuguese real estate makes us the bore at the dinner party: in our view, at today’s asking prices, you’d overpay by roughly half.
The premium is not in the dirt, it’s in the story.
The market has started agreeing with us, and asking prices have slipped off their 2025 peak. That may be a bottom forming, but it’s not cheap.
And the politically incorrect part: strip away the styling, and much of what’s on sale here is, construction-wise, a bungalow. A luxury bungalow, beautifully art-directed, at five million euros. The correct reaction is the simple one, that it’s too much.
February: about a thousand permanent residents in the whole freguesia. The grocery, the pharmacy and a handful of restaurants hold the winter line, most of the village shutters. Melides, ten minutes south, is the more honest version. A real farming village with the same light, still at a discount, though the branded-villa pipeline is repricing it fast.
If you love Comporta, buy it the way you’d buy a boat: for love, priced as consumption, eyes open. If you want the investment case, it’s not here, in our humble view. And thousands of branded units are still coming to a market that trades a few dozen homes a year.
9. Milfontes & the Costa Vicentina, The Wild One
Best for: the buyer the interior version of this piece was written for, except this one comes with an ocean and a functioning town.
Milfontes trades around €3,000/m², and less as you leave it. About 5,500 residents. Schools, clinics, supermarkets. Lisbon and Faro airports both about two hours, neither on full motorway. Serious hospital, 45 minutes.
The Alentejo coast, where the Mira river opens into a sandy estuary and the wildest coastline in the country begins. Milfontes has river beaches on one side, surf on the other, and whitewashed streets that stayed low because nearly everything here sits inside a natural park that has said no to developers for nearly forty years.
Of all the wild-coast towns, this is the one that actually lives in winter: quiet in February, yes, but not shuttered.
This is also where your money goes furthest on this list’s southern half: a great house here costs what a mediocre one costs in Comporta, one hour north.
The market: a detached 6-bed in town, around €500K. A recent 4-bed with saltwater pool near Almograve, €800K. A modern quinta on hectares near Zambujeira, well over €1M. The sub-€400K townhouse still exists here.
The catch is that distance is the price of the wild. The park that saved the coast also blocks new construction almost everywhere, so you buy existing here and don’t dream of building on a rustic plot. And even the liveliest town on this coast is properly quiet from November to March.
10. Moledo & the Minho Coast, The North’s Quiet Money
Best for: buyers with a northern soul, whose idea of luxury is a cold beach, a warm house, and nobody around.
This is the cheapest entry on this list, and it’s not close: Caminha trades under €2,000/m², a fraction of everything south of it. Prices are up sharply this year though, because the north is repricing and the secret is leaking. Porto airport is about an hour, and Viana hospital is 25 minutes.
Back up to the top-left corner of the country, where the Minho river meets the Atlantic and Spain’s sacred mountain stares at you across the water. Moledo is where Porto’s old bourgeoisie has summered for a century without ever advertising it: modernist houses hidden in the pine forest, the Ínsua fort in the river mouth, and one of the great architecture pilgrimages of Portugal, because Souto de Moura built here.
The locals have a line about why it never got ruined: o mau tempo salva. The bad weather saves it.
Vila Praia de Âncora next door is the real year-round town, fishing port and daily auction included.
The market: a big villa in the Moledo pines, under €1M. A century-old stone quinta near the sea in Afife, €750K. A contemporary villa with pool in Âncora, under €600K.
The catch: it rains two to three times what Lisbon gets, the sea never passes 19°C, and Moledo proper mostly empties in winter. The February life is in Vila Praia de Âncora and Caminha town, ten minutes away. You buy here for the pines, the architecture and the drama, not for the swimming.
11. Tavira & the Eastern Algarve, The Civilized Finale
Best for: the person who wants southern light, a real town, and an airport inside 40 minutes; Tavira is the most complete warm-weather package on this list.
Tavira trades close to €3,600/m² at record highs, and it’s still clearly below the Algarve average. The catch-up is running, though: Tavira’s rural parishes are climbing at some of the steepest rates in the Algarve, and the gap is closing while you read this. Faro airport, 30 to 40 minutes.
This is the version of the Algarve that doesn’t need a stag party. Tavira drapes over both banks of the Gilão river, seven-arched bridge, a castle, more churches than anyone needs, working salt pans, and beaches that are actual islands inside the Ria Formosa lagoon, reached by ferry or a miniature train across the marsh.
Ten minutes down the lagoon, Santa Luzia lands its octopus every day like it has forever. Cacela Velha, further east, might be the most beautiful village viewpoint in the south.
A confession: the side of me that likes warm climates always ends up thinking of the Algarve, and the sport facilities down here are incredible. We haven’t made the move ourselves, so this is as objective as I get: Tavira is fantastic, and I would really consider it.
The February test is one Tavira passes: it’s repeatedly named the Algarve town that stays alive off-season. Ten thousand registered foreign residents live here year-round, the town still rolls up its pavements by ten at night, and both of those things are features rather than bugs.
The market: a renovated old-town townhouse, €400K to €800K. A 3-bed with pool and roof terrace in Santa Luzia, under €800K. Quintas with land ten minutes inland, from €450K into seven figures.
The catch is that the beach is an island, which keeps it magic and means nothing is a barefoot stroll from your door. August is brutal, and water is the Algarve’s structural question, so on any quinta you should check the cistern and the borehole license before you sign anything.
Bonus: Madeira, the island answer
If February is my proudest test, honesty demands saying that Madeira wins it outright. Twenty degrees in deep winter, Funchal a real city of over 100,000 that never closes, and Ponta do Sol reputedly the sunniest corner of the island.
So why isn’t it entry number 12? Because an island is not really a place, it’s a decision. Everything arrives by plane or ship, the airport is famous for its wind cancellations, and renovations cost island prices. And the digital nomad wave already repriced it: Calheta now asks more per square meter than Funchal itself.
If the island decision fits your life, Madeira belongs at the top of this entire piece. Around €4,000/m² in Funchal, great villas from €1M on the west coast, and Ponta do Sol just printed its first cooling number in years, the most interesting signal on the island.
The Azores are a different conversation entirely, greener and cheaper, and you’d better love rain: they are their own piece.
What else can go wrong
The parks are the moat and the wall. Arrábida, the Vicentina coast, the Sintra serra: protection is why these coasts are still beautiful, and why you buy existing stock. The “cheap rustic plot to build on” dream dies in a Portuguese natural park. Verify plot classification before anything else. It’s the most common foreigner mistake on this coast.
The Atlantic itself is cold. North of Lisbon it never passes 18°C, and even the Algarve is refreshing rather than tropical. You buy this coast for the light, the walks and the fish, and you’ll swim less than you think.
Buying costs run roughly 7 to 8% all-in. Renovation: think several hundred euros per square meter for a refresh, and well past a thousand once structure is involved, because crews are the scarcest resource in the country. Expect major delays. The supply problem from the top of this piece? At renovation time, it’s personally yours.
And the summer crowds are the tax you pay for the February life. Every place on this list is worse in August than in the photos. You should choose for winter, and visit in winter before you buy, and that one habit beats every guide ever written, including this one.
The visa question
If you hold an EU passport, none of what follows is your problem. If you hold a US passport, or any other non-EU one, Portugal has a visa layer that shapes the rest of the plan.
The D7 is the passive-income route: around €900 a month of qualifying income, which makes it the friendliest passive visa in Europe. The D8 is the digital nomad version, roughly four times that. The Golden Visa runs from €500K in funds, no real estate route anymore. There’s also a cultural donation route to the Golden Visa at €200K, which is currently the lowest entry point into Portuguese residency-by-investment. I’ll come back to that in a moment.
The corporate route exists too. Structuring through an actual company abroad works, and I know people doing it. But it fits people with real operating companies, not the typical remote worker.
On to taxes, in the honest version: the famous NHR is gone, and its replacement, IFICI, gives qualifying professionals a 20% flat rate with most foreign-source income still exempt. That last part is why it keeps working for people whose business lives abroad: a service company locally, foreign income at zero. I know many people using it successfully. It just takes more structuring than the old NHR ever did. Portugal's advantage is still the life, not the tax rate.
Citizenship now runs 10 years, not 5 (7 if you’re from the EU or a Portuguese-speaking country). The new nationality law survived a Constitutional Court battle and took effect in May 2026. But note the detail the headlines miss: the Golden Visa reaches permanent residency at year five, and from there the investment and the ongoing requirements can be dropped. If bureaucratic status is what you need, that path still holds.
Now, back to the €200K route.
The €200K Golden Visa Donation Route
Portugal’s cultural donation Golden Visa is the lowest entry point into a residency-by-investment program currently on offer anywhere in the EU. €200K, one-time. Minimum stay is roughly 7 days per year on average. Permanent residency at year five, at which point no stay requirements apply. Citizenship at year ten (seven for CPLP nationals), subject to language and residency requirements.
Important reminder: it’s a donation, not an investment.
The capital is not recoverable. So it fits people who want the residency and are moved by the project itself, not those focused solely on capital preservation.
We’ve partnered with FRESS, the Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva Foundation, one of Portugal’s most respected heritage institutions, on the restoration of a landmark building in Évora. FRESS was founded in 1953 by the banker and collector Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva, and its museum-school of decorative arts sits in Lisbon’s Azurara Palace, classified as Immovable Heritage of Public Interest.
The building itself is at the heart of Évora, inside the Roman walls of the UNESCO-listed old city, next to the Misericórdia church on its leafy square. A grand house with a gardened courtyard, painted frescoes and five centuries of history. Once restored, it will operate as both a museum-quality public space and a working hotel, combining heritage access and hospitality under one roof.
Évora is the living intersection of Portuguese history: Celtic, Roman, Visigoth and Moorish rule under the same city walls, and a golden age that started in the 15th century when the royal family made it Portugal’s second city. Much of the resulting architecture survived the 1755 earthquake that reshaped the rest of the country. It’s a snapshot of a Portugal you can’t find elsewhere.
There were 50 total available spots, now only 5 remaining.
If you want to walk through what the donation, residency timeline and citizenship path would look like for your situation, book a free consultation with Bitizenship here.
Matching each place to a profile
The ocean AND the city: Matosinhos & Foz.
Calm water and family summers: São Martinho & the Óbidos Lagoon.
Surf community, priced for yesterday’s boom: Ericeira.
The most spectacular house you’ll ever own: the Sintra coast.
No compromises, priced accordingly: the coast between Cascais and Lisbon.
The clearest water near a capital: Sesimbra & Arrábida.
The best pure beach, not a life: Troia.
Love, priced as consumption: Comporta.
The wild coast with a working town: Milfontes.
Cold beach, warm house, nobody around: Moledo.
Southern light with an airport: Tavira.
If you’re moving with kids?
Strong: the Cascais-to-Lisbon line (the school belt is the point), São Martinho, Tavira, Sesimbra, Foz.
Honest no for school-age kids: Troia, Comporta. Magnificent for you, thin for them.
My personal shortlist
Our own answer, since the whole piece is built on it: if we were signing tomorrow, it’s the coast between Cascais and Lisbon, picked by the specific street rather than by the town name.
My wife would argue for the Sintra coast instead, because for her, the specific house you fall in love with matters more than the fundamentals around it. That disagreement, between location-first and house-first, is what every buying couple has to work through, and it’s the real point of buying well.
This was the next installment of the Rural Europe series but it became a more personal edition – because we live here and could not publish advice we wouldn’t take.
The interior dossier still exists. The 8 rural areas I researched, priced and ultimately cut, with every number and every listing, for the specific kind of person that life actually fits. This will go to Substack subscribers in a concise form, with disclaimers.
If you missed the earlier pieces, here is the Italy version comparing coast or mountains:
And here is the piece that maps which European countries work for which American profile:
Spain is next.
Reply and let me know which of these speaks to you, or if there’s one my wife and I missed.
And if you enjoyed this, click the ❤️ button and restack.
Stay free,
Ale
Writing from Lisbon
Interesting. But I don't understand why you wrote off Nazaré, where we live. It's authentic, vibrant, and thanks to the surfing brimming with life in the winter. More than 200 restaurants, the funicular to bring you up and down (we live in Sitio), walkable, daily market.
Excellent Comprehensive piece here, and architect props here for the Siza and Souta de Moura name drops as value adds; these were the professor class for my generation. Also super curious about the Discovery Land purchase; I did not know they were in Europe now. My architect/conservation development career has been one step ahead of those guys in Montana and the Big Island of Hawaii for 25 years and proves the maxim: pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the gold. I’m sure it’s the same with costa Licosa and for sure with Laino but it’s such a joy to work in these places that aren’t yet discovered and will always be places of “compromise” and recovery. The hard parts provide the authenticity and reward. The princesses live there in stories only, but they are good old stories worth retelling.
How’s the surfing for non-adrenaline junkies? 3/2 wetsuit or always 4/3?