London Girl in Portugal Guest Post

When Charlotte offered to write a little guide to living abroad (in particular in Portugal) I had to say yes as I’m Portuguese myself. I love this post, I hope you too and I can confirm drinks are certainly more potent in Portugal! All the photos have given me holiday blues! Enjoy….. 
(Ps post was written when I was still abroad but I am back now)
Hi gorgeous girlies! It’s Charlotte from thestylum.com here, whilst the beautiful Sabrina is holidaying
in Northern Portugal I’ve been passed the torch for a quick blog post.
I’m from a town just outside of London
but consider myself to be a Londoner as all of my family lives in the centre
and consequentially when I’m in the UK I spend all of my time there.  However for the last three years I have been
living back and forth in Portugal and for the last year I have been living
there for real. If anyone were to ask me where my favourite place on earth was
I would 100% say London as it’s just amazing, right? But Porto is my home now
and it’s definitely a close second.
As Sabrina is from northern
Portugal I thought I’d talk about Porto which is the capital of the north, and
in my opinion the best city in Portugal! Porto is an old city that is embracing
the new. Much like London there is so much to see and do, there are restaurants
galore and more bars than you count.
Porto is the second biggest city
in Portugal but as Portugal is such a small country it’s not that big lol. The
best thing about living here apart from the cocktails is the fact that in Porto
alone there are like 26 shopping centres and the biggest ones close at midnight
so no matter what I’m doing in my life there’s always time to shop. The
shopping here is a-maz-ing, we have all the normal Spanish shops (Mango, Zara,
Massimo Dutti, Bershka etc.) and then we have the designers such as Marc
Jacobs, Diesel, Marques Soares (a department store which sells everything you
can dream of) and best of all we have a Sephora! The only thing I miss is
Topshop but I can always buy online.
Porto isn’t really like London in
the way that when it rains there isn’t much to do here but when the sun is
shining Porto comes alive. I have been here for three years and I still like to
live like a tourist. I’m constantly going to churches, new street shops and
places like the Botanical Gardens as it never gets old and keeps my time here
fun. I work late afternoons and evenings so I practically have the whole day to
get lost and be a tourist which is great.
The biggest survival tip I would
give anyone moving abroad is to learn to adapt! The food is different, they go
out later, the alcoholic drinks are WAY more potent, the people are friendlier
(and touchier too) and everybody is late (not a problem for me). These things I
had to get used to pretty quickly otherwise I would have either died or have
been pretty miserable for a long time.
Moving abroad has its ups and its
downs, in my case the only down has been the lack of Thai and Mexican food in
Porto.  Some people live in boring towns
and feel the need to move away and look for excitement, my problem is that I
live in two amazing cities and love them both so much that I can’t choose which
one I want to live in!
Thanks for reading and thanks
Sabrina for having me! 
(Photographer: Eunice Pais)

Twitter/ Facebook/ Bloglovin’

8 Comments

  1. 6th September 2013 / 7:51 pm

    those are beautiful photos, makes me want to visit porto

    yukluistyle

  2. 6th September 2013 / 9:26 pm

    Despite the fact that I'm from Lisbon, as a portuguese reader I have to say that everything Charlotte said it's true! haha and the photos are beautiful!! xx

  3. 7th September 2013 / 12:33 pm

    Looks like an amazing place, I love the photos! x

    Maddy from UNSTITCHEDD 

  4. 8th September 2013 / 8:29 am

    What a lovely post!

    thatgirlcalledlauren.blogspot.co.uk

  5. 10th September 2013 / 9:52 pm

    Beautiful photos! I love Portugal I go to Lisbon often with work and love everything about it, would love to travel more of the country.

    MyLushBox

    xx

  6. 2nd October 2014 / 8:37 am

    I admire what you have done here. I like the part where you say you are doing this to give back but I would assume by all the comments that this is working for you as well.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *