Braga

Braga is still the perfect fit for us. Even more so after spending a few days here. Yesterday we went to Bom Jesus and it was beautiful. The views from there are amazing. Today is mall day. I guess I have to accept that we just go to malls a lot 😆 It started when Sofia was born. She would cry at home, but she loved going out. She would do so well any time we left the house. The problem was that Florida was regularly one billion degrees outside. We realized malls were air conditioned, and free, so thats how this whole things with malls started.

As Sofia got older, we realized malls have some pretty fun things for the kids to do. And I am always appreciative of places where they can’t run out into the street. This morning was a rainy morning, so we headed to the mall. It was definitely one of the better ones for the kids. The playground was great and there were tons of rides for them to go on. It will be a great rainy day activity when we live here.

We also happened to meet a great family at the mall. They have a 1 year old son who Sofia really loved playing with. She loves babies. They are from Canada and have been living in Portugal for a few years now. We talked for a few minutes and we really like them. They love living here. We can’t wait to move to Braga.

Part of what is so exciting to us is that we want to live here for a long time. We want to raise our kids here. We bounced around the US a bit, moving every few years, and we never found anywhere we wanted to stay for a long time. We knew once we had kids (and especially once they start school) that we want to settle down. We want them to make friends at age 5 and still have some of those same friends into adulthood. Braga really feels like the place that we can do that. It’s small enough to feel manageable, but big enough to hold our attention. It has everything we need, and things we wanted that we didn’t even consider until now.

Tomorrow the plan was to take the train from Braga to Coimbra, and then the bus from Coimbra back to Leiria. The train company is on strike tomorrow. I got an email that services may be impacted, so now we’re not sure what to do. I’m not sure if that means that all trains are cancelled or just some. Definitely not looking forward to that. We wish we could just stay here. It’s really beautiful here and the more we see the more we love it. Soon enough. At least we live in Portugal. And now we know what city we want to move to.

We’ve only been in Braga for about 8 hours now and we have barely even seen it, but it’s our place. It was always the place I was drawn to on paper and now that we’re here we are even more sure.

It started with the train station. It’s not too big, so it’s easy to navigate. No stairs or elevators to manage with the strollers. The train lines are marked and there is an electronic board telling you which train goes where. And there are a bunch of taxis waiting outside. One thing that’s hard about Leiria is that when we get to the train station we have a hard time finding a car to get home. It would be awesome having taxis waiting outside.

I knew that Braga has the biggest pedestrian only area in the country, but it’s significantly bigger than I expected. Tons of streets. Some are filled with stores, and some are just gorgeous streets lined with restaurants and flowers. There are so many flowers here. Sofia and I love flowers, so seeing them all over the place is a bonus.

We are at a rental right in the center with great views of part of the pedestrian only area. I would love to live in the city center. It has everything we could want and more. We already saw two playgrounds nearby. There are so many restaurants and cafes here. Today we just picked one at random and it ended up being an amazing meal. Two appetizers, two entrees (pesto ravioli and a braised beef pasta), two coffees, two desserts (banana split and cheesecake of the day), and a bottle of water for 50 euro. I need to work more just so we can eat out when we move here, lol.

This city feels young and there are so many teenagers. We keep talking about how much Sofia and Leo will love growing up here. I can picture them as teenagers, taking the train to Porto with their friends, or even taking the train into Spain. Kyle and I can take a train to Spain for lunch while the kids are in school. How awesome is that?