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Living That No Car Life In Portugal
Will life without a car be as simple as this American family hopes?
Two days before we moved to Portugal, we sold the minivan.
One day before we moved to Portugal, we sold the station wagon.
Checks were deposited on the way to the airport.
This was a symbolic and permanent closure to our life in America. There was no looking back. It was Lisbon or bust. Besides, we weren’t going to get too far on foot, lugging 11 suitcases and 5 carry-on bags.
There were many reasons we wanted to move to Portugal. Not having to drive everywhere was right near the top.
As aspiring minimalists, we wanted to cut extraneous things from our lives. This included physical things — stuff.
But, it also meant cutting time wasted driving.
On a typical day in the US, my wife and I each drove about 1.5 hours per day. We worked for a very exclusive delivery service, with 3 bosses who were also our top clients — our children.
To us, the car didn’t equate to the freedom of open roads. It was a peculiar trap we had created by our own design, strapped by a seatbelt, 20 to 25-minutes at a time.
