By far the most interesting thing this week was capturing another electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) here in our Portugal Airbnb (day 299 below). We also took a walking tour of Lisbon on day 301.

Most of my time this week was dedicated to health insurance research. This took way more time than I thought as I learned the intricacies of income levels and avoiding public assistance programs. As part of that I also learned a new trick to help minimize our taxes and get some needed cash in the process.

Travel Log: Day 297 (4/20), Portugal

Aside from language stuff and school, not a lot went on today. JC and I made a grocery store trip, and those are getting really efficient at this point as we become familiar with the store. I looked at car options today and I’m spinning my wheels mostly. One useful thing I learned is that I can rent an actual off-road vehicle from Hertz. It would be a Jeep Wrangler or similar (Bronco, 4runner, etc), and would cost about $440 or an equivalent amount of points through Chase Travel. That would allow us to get a car more tailored to our day-to-day, like a Corolla hybrid. The few times a year we go off road we could just rent something.

In the evening JC and I went for a walk through different parts of the neighborhood than we have been in previously.

Travel Log: Day 298 (4/21), Portugal

Today I ran out of Claude usage and won’t have any more until Thursday. I figured that was a good reason to run the ACA plan by other AI models. I got feedback from Gemini and Copilot and both provided some insights that changed the figures. Gemini pointed out that JC and I can in fact buy a Silver 94 plan at the $46K income level, and to do so you have to uncheck the kids as needing health coverage. They technically don’t since they would be eligible for CHP+. In any case the cost to take the philosophical high ground and keep the kids of CHP+ is costing us even more than I originally thought.

JC and I went for a walk during the last hour of school. Later in the evening we had some drinks and went on a date night while the kids watched a movie. We went to a great place called La Lisbonera, which totally redeemed tourist facing bars/restaurants. I got a moscow mule that actually had alcohol in it, and we ate a meat and cheese platter that was really good.

Travel Log: Day 299 (4/22), Portugal

I worked more on the ACA stuff through the day, still learning new things about it. Today I learned when AC turns 19 our insurance becomes substantially cheaper, and then when BC turns 19 and we’re all adults, the Silver 94 plan kicks in and the plan is insanely good and cheep ($8/month). I updated the blog post with information about this light at the end of the tunnel.

At lunch AC and BC wanted to listen to paranormal, and we ended up listening to EVPs on youtube. It inspired me to try to record an EVP here like I did in Tokyo, even though I said I was done doing that. In 20 minutes of recording I had five oddities, one of which was the clearest EVP I’ve ever recorded saying “hey Elizabeth“. I really don’t understand what these are.

We went for a couple walks, and JC and BC went to the grocery store.

Travel Log: Day 300 (4/23), Portugal

We are really racing toward the end of the year here at day 300. At the beginning of the year when writing journal entries, thinking of writing day 300 in here seemed like that was a breath away from the end of the year. It still feels like we have a good chunk of time left, but it also sort of feels like the remainder of the year is just a long vacation. I think perspective starts to shift when you have to start actively planning things for the return to home life.

The big event of the day was walking back to Time Out Market. It was starting off as a bust for me, as I was getting super annoyed at the dynamic of always having all four of us traveling in a pack. It feels hard navigating through crowds, and finding things suitable for all of us. We were going to get a chocolate liquor thing that is famous here, but the place to get it seemed to be very much a bar, and we didn’t want to take the kids there.

We ended up sitting in the central market at some seats we found open. The kids got ice cream, and JC and I got some drinks. It became more enjoyable after just relaxing there in one spot, people watching, and medicating with some alcohol. We sat there for a long time, talked to a Canadian couple, and also had dinner. BC and I got burgers, JC and AC got a pizza. I would definitely repeat that whole experience.

Travel Log: Day 301 (4/24), Portugal

Today we had a tour scheduled for 10am, and we had to leave the house at 9am to walk there and be early as they requested. We arrived quicker than expected after fast walking, with 20 minutes to spare. JC needed to go to the bathroom so we went to a little coffee shop and got a Mai Da Leite (half coffee half milk).

The tour started with a ten minute or so history on Portugal which was a nice background. The fact that Portugal was a dictatorship up until 1974 is kind of crazy. Europeans seem to look down at the youth of the US as a country, but our government has been established and stable for far longer than some of these countries.

The walk went through less touristy spots of Lisbon and had a local perspective. We saw some impacts from the earthquake in the 1700s, and caught some hidden scenic views. The tour was surprisingly heavy on low grade religion bashing, and science promotion. For example she was putting down the religious leaders of the time for blaming the people for not being good enough christians which lead to the earthquake. She then talked about advancements in seismology and even at one point speculated about alien life. I totally agree with her on that stuff, I just found it bold for a mixed tour crowd.

Immediately after the tour we went to the grocery store and got lunch and dinner. JC and I had happy hour at home, and we watched hulk (BC’s pick) for movie night.

Travel Log: Day 302 (4/25), Portugal

I spent the morning and afternoon in the condo busy doing language stuff, and documenting the stock move we made yesterday to harvest capital gains and lower our 2026 tax bill.

I worked with Claude Code to come up with a better way to deploy spanish-trainer via FTP. It actually worked to automatically deploy, but it turned out to be so slow that I abandoned it. The FTP method pushes every file individually so it takes a good 10-15 minutes to churn through. I can deploy it manually in about a minute.

In the late afternoon I fell asleep and took a pretty long nap. JC and I went out on a date night after I woke up. It was a really fun night; we retraced the Alfama part of our tour and found three local vendor stands to buy the cherry liquor drink that comes in a chocolate cup. We ate at a restaurant called Alfama Tapas and Sports Bar that was really good in that area as well.

JC and I closed the night out watching Pole To Pole on Disney+, which we subscribed to after cancelling Netflix.

Travel Log: Day 303 (4/26), Portugal

I slept pretty decent last night despite waking up from 3-4:30am, and despite the third consecutive night of alcohol. While I was awake I was thinking of these bites on got on my right arm, which I’m pretty sure are bed bug bites. I did a thorough search of our bed today and found no signs of bed bugs though. I ended up going back to sleep and sleeping past 10am.

We went for a long family walk by the river all the way down by Time Out Market. This was great because we got about 10K steps in one shot.

After we got back I did a lot of Duo and Dreaming. Duo is starting to piss me off with the stupid sentences it uses. For example “The cows cleaned their pants yesterday”. This really just started as I approach level 27, where it is throwing these phrases out that are so stupid it actually gets in the way of me understanding it. Often I think, “I must be hearing this wrong because there’s no way they said the pigs cleaned the farm”. I want to find an alternative but its really too late to be switching before Spain. I might just lean into Dreaming Spanish more.

JC and I made a trip to the grocery store and got stuck needing help at self checkout. It wouldn’t accept the weight of our carrots. Eventually some lady came and swiped a card to override the scale. I guess they weren’t concerned about theft because they didn’t check anything.