SheenI landed in Lisbon in the winter and honestly had no idea what to expect. Europe had never been on my radar. My overseas experience was Asia — that was my world, my comfort zone, my frame of reference for what “international” looked like. The Caribbean was my idea of a vacation. Europe was something other people did.
But here I was.
Lisbon hit differently than I expected. The hills. The infrastructure. The old architecture. The way the city felt lived-in and unhurried at the same time. I wasn’t prepared for how much I liked it. I had originally planned to move through Portugal quickly — Lisbon, then Spain, then work my way up through Europe like I had some kind of itinerary to keep. That plan fell apart fast. I ended up staying three and a half weeks in Portugal and barely left.
Then I heard about Porto.
On TikTok, in expat groups, in social media travel threads — Porto kept coming up. People were moving there. Living there. Building lives there. I was already curious about the expat space and Porto was showing up everywhere in that conversation. So I figured, I’m already here. Let me go see what this is about.
I took the train on New Year’s Day.
Porto greeted me with continuous rain and cold and gray skies. I walked around, I looked around, and I waited to feel something. It didn’t really come. The city wasn’t ugly — it just wasn’t speaking to me. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was the timing. Maybe I was still a little Lisbon-drunk and Porto didn’t stand a chance. Whatever it was, I wasn’t moved. I had planned to stay two days but really felt like I was forcing something so I left early. Packed up and went back to Lisbon without much of a second thought.
Porto, I decided, just wasn’t my city.
Then I got home.
January 2025, back in the states, back in my routine — and I kept finding myself looking up Porto. Not Lisbon. Porto. Videos, articles, neighborhood guides, expat stories. Something about the city had apparently lodged itself somewhere in the back of my mind during that rainy two-day visit and decided to quietly grow while I wasn’t paying attention.
The more I researched, the more I understood what I had missed. I had seen Porto in its worst weather on a holiday when nothing was open and I had given it less than 48 hours to convince me. That’s not how Porto works. Porto is a city that reveals itself slowly. It asks something of you. A little patience. A little curiosity. A willingness to look past the surface.
I hadn’t given it any of that.
By the time February came around I had made up my mind. Not to visit again. To move there.
That’s the thing about Porto. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t try to impress you on the first day. It just waits. And if you’re the kind of woman who pays attention — really pays attention — it will get under your skin in a way that’s hard to explain and harder to shake.
I’m living proof.
