This is a week you might want to skip reading. We were all pretty sick at various points during this week so we didn’t do much. Figuring out what we are going to do for health insurance back in CO is what passed for excitement this week.

Travel Log: Day 290 (4/13), Portugal

JC was feeling a little better today, and sleeping on our mattress in the living room was a big improvement. Her sickness is exactly one day behind mine. I had no fever at all today but still dealing with a little congestion and I’m finding myself irritated at everything. That’s probably just part of the sickness, sort of like being tired where everything seems bad even if it’s not.

Aside from school and a grocery run, we didn’t do anything today. JC and I went for a walk in the evening over to the lookout that she and AC walked to. Along the way we noticed many restaurants and bars that would be good for dinner or a happy hour.

In the evening I played Roblox with BC during his hour of screen time that he earned.

Travel Log: Day 291 (4/14), Portugal

JC took a turn for the worse today with her sickness. Nothing major but she was surprisingly in worse shape today than yesterday. I had a coughing fit for about 30 minutes overnight, but I’m still getting a little better each day.

AC and I went to the grocery store to get a handful of things.

I wrote my South Africa travel reflections blog post. I did a smaller amount of language stuff today, but probably still got over an hour between Duo and Dreaming. I also got the Spanish prompts/responses tweaked and ready to deploy for restaurants, cafes, and grocery stores.

BC earned screen time again, and I played Roblox again with him. We played a horror game that I recognized from him watching Caylus, and then a dangerous road bus driving game which was pretty fun.

Travel Log: Day 292 (4/15), Portugal

We are still recovering, trying to shake off the lingering symptoms of our colds.

Just after school we walked down by Alfama. It was really busy with tourists of course. We bought pastel de nata at a famous place there that JC recognized, and I thought they weren’t any better than the ones from the grocery store.

JC and I took a relatively long walk at the end of the day. We went down near the lookout but wrapped around it and kept going. We figured we’d just pop out somewhere around the grocery store, and we sort of did but it was more in the area of the road we use to get to Humana and it was much farther than expected. Besides that we didn’t do much today.

Travel Log: Day 293 (4/16), Portugal

JC and I are still struggling to shrug off this cold. During school when the kids had reading time, JC and I went to the grocery store.

In the afternoon JC and I walked back down to the Alfama area and we had a beer (me) and a cider (her). There is a nice stand there which is easy to order at, pay immediately, get your stuff immediately, and sit outside. You have to pay a premium but it’s so convenient.

I finished the post on expat cost of living for South Africa.

Got in the usual language work in Duo, Dreaming, and had claude add a new section for Spanish greetings and pleasantries.

Travel Log: Day 294 (4/17), Portugal

I might just really not like it here. I’ll reserve judgement for a few more days as I’m clearly still not well, and probably just hating life because of that. This place is irritating me with their “Menos Tourismo, Mais Barrio” signs. Had I known they had this sentiment I would have obliged and not come here. Lisbon isn’t that interesting in the first place, so that would have made it a no-brainer.

JC went on a different walking path today and found a nice wide walking path as well as some restaurants that look good. We will probably hit those up in the near future. AC is really sick today though. We are going to hit the two week mark with not everyone well since we’ve been here. We just need BC to get sick in the next few days to put the finishing touches on our shit existence here so far.

Travel Log: Day 295 (4/18), Portugal

More evidence that I’m not well is that I slept good last night (85 sleep score) after I took a one hour nap from 3-4pm and after I slept through half of the FAC movie tonight. I feel surprisingly good after all of that sleeping rather than groggy.

I thought I’d get a jump on researching health insurance, since that’s coming up on our calendar. I had marked May 1st as the day we could apply for a plan. This ended up taking every bit of free time I had in the day. I had to work through the different income levels and what they mean using the ConnectForHealthColorado website and Claude. It ended up getting so detailed that I documented it all into a blog post.

I feel like I have a very clear path of what to do now, but it involves a large enough money conversion that I’m going to find a fee based consultant (CPA or tax advisor) to review the plan.

JC and I went out for happy hour and it was a total bust. We went to a restaurant with a patio over by Alfama. We each had two gin and tonics and I felt zero buzz at all. It tasted like I was just drinking tonic. We went back over to the stand we went to last time and had a third drink. After that I got some stuff at the grocery store for us.

I watched the nuggets first playoff game later in the evening, and they won.

Travel Log: Day 296 (4/19), Portugal

I didn’t get very good sleep last night between getting to bed late and the couple beers I had during the nuggets game. I was thought spiraling overnight about health insurance and the Roth moves involved. I spent more time talking to Claude and it talked me off the ledge. I added another section to the blog post about why the conversion is a good move even if we weren’t buying health insurance.

We all went for a really long walk today down by the water. We kept walking until we got to this major tourist hub called Praça do Comércio. It was really cool with a large open courtyard area, and then this street you could walk down with tons of stores and restaurants. We went a little further than this even, planning to eat lunch at Timeout Market. It was so overrun with people though that we ended up getting lunch at a restaurant stand similar to our happy hour stand. This one had tables with wait staff that would serve you at the table. Kind of pricey at 55 euros, but it was quite a bit of food.

We stayed around the house the rest of the day aside from a short walk that JC and I took. I worked on a decent amount of Duo and Dreaming after getting almost none in yesterday.