And . . . We’re Off to Greece!

When Carla and I began this particular journey, we thought we had a fairly good idea of where it might lead. We were looking seriously at the possibility of expatriating to Europe, and Portugal seemed like an obvious place to begin. Everything we had read suggested that it checked many of the boxes that matter to Americans considering a move abroad: beautiful weather, a gorgeous coastline, good healthcare, friendly people, a relatively easygoing lifestyle, and a reputation for being welcoming to foreigners. We arrived genuinely excited and, if I’m being honest, with the expectation that somewhere during our three months here we might very well discover our next home.

We began in Lisbon and then settled into Lagos in the Algarve, where we spent several wonderful weeks. There is so much about Lagos that we love. The coastline is magnificent, the food is excellent, the people have been warm and welcoming, and daily life has a gentleness to it that suits us very well. We’ve loved our morning walks along the cliffs, the pedestrian streets, the cafés, the markets, and the simple pleasure of being able to move through most of the day without getting into a car. By almost any reasonable measure, Lagos is a very appealing place to live.

And yet something wasn’t quite landing for us.

At first, Carla and I wondered whether we were simply being too picky. After all, what exactly were we looking for that Portugal wasn’t giving us? The weather was good. The ocean was right there. The towns were pleasant. The people were lovely. We could imagine a comfortable life here quite easily. Still, that little voice remained, and after enough conversations between us, we finally began to understand what it was trying to say.

We were missing a certain kind of historical and cultural weight.

That’s a difficult thing to explain because Portugal certainly has history. It has beautiful architecture, old towns, castles, churches, traditions, and a culture that is distinctly its own. This isn’t a judgment about Portugal lacking any of those things. It’s much more personal than that. For whatever reason, the particular layers of history and architecture here weren’t stirring us in the way we had hoped they would.

Southern Spain helped us understand the difference.

When we spent time in Andalusia, we were continually aware of the civilizations that had come before us. Moorish architecture stood beside Christian churches. Roman ruins appeared in modern cities. Streets, courtyards, fountains, tiles, walls, and buildings carried visible reminders of one culture meeting another, sometimes peacefully and sometimes very much not. Places like Sevilla, Granada, Córdoba, and Ronda had a kind of depth that Carla and I felt almost physically as we walked through them.

We realized how important that is to us.

We want more than a place that is pleasant to live in. We want to walk out the door and feel some sense of antiquity around us. We want architecture that makes us curious. We want the streets to tell stories. We want to see the evidence of different peoples, religions, empires, artistic traditions, and centuries layered together in ways that make us stop and wonder who stood there before us.

Apparently, we are asking quite a lot of our future neighborhood.

But if you’re going to go through the trouble of moving to another country, you might as well be honest about what feeds you.

And that brought Greece back into the conversation.

We had already planned to spend three months there later in the year, and the more we talked about what we felt was missing in Portugal, the more Greece seemed to be calling us sooner. Like Portugal, Greece offers beautiful weather, extraordinary coastline, walkable towns, and a culture with a reputation for warmth and hospitality. But it also carries the visible imprint of an astonishing number of civilizations - Minoans, Mycenaeans, ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Venetians, Ottomans, and others who passed through, conquered, settled, traded, built, worshipped, and left something behind.

That kind of layering fascinates us.

It doesn’t necessarily make Greece “better” than Portugal. That would be a silly conclusion after spending such a relatively short amount of time in either country. It simply may make Greece better suited to us. That distinction matters.

One of the things travel continues to teach me is that liking a place and feeling connected to it are not quite the same thing. There are places I admire enormously that I would never want to live. Others may not look quite as perfect on paper, but something about them reaches us more quickly and more personally. The heart apparently refuses to use spreadsheets.

So rather than spending the next two months moving through Portugal while quietly comparing every stop with somewhere else, we decided to change direction.

We’re going to Greece. It feels surprisingly good to write that.

There was a time when changing an itinerary might have felt like admitting we had planned badly. Now it feels like exactly the opposite. We came here to discover something. We did. It simply wasn’t the answer we expected.

Travel is supposed to loosen us up a little. We leave home partly because we want to step outside routine and certainty, so it seems slightly ridiculous to become rigid about the itinerary once we’re gone. Sometimes the most interesting turn in a journey comes when you allow yourself to admit that the road you chose isn’t the one you want to keep following.

There’s a line attributed to Lao Tzu that I’ve always liked: “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”

That seems particularly appropriate right now.

We’ll spend one more week in Portugal, staying in Cascais and exploring Nazaré, Sintra, and Óbidos. We’re looking forward to all of them and will continue enjoying Portugal for what it is rather than asking it to become something else for us.

Then we’ll head to Chania, on the island of Crete. And I have to confess, we’re pretty excited.

The photographs accompanying this story are of Chania, and even before arriving, there was something about those images that seemed to speak directly to what we had been describing to one another: the Venetian harbor, old stone buildings, winding streets, layers of history, mountains, sea, and the sense that different cultures have been passing through this place for centuries.

Will Chania be what we’re looking for? We have no idea. And I like that.

We’re learning that this search for home may involve a little zigzagging. There may be places we’re certain will work that don’t, and others we barely considered that somehow reach us immediately. That’s part of the journey too.

We started out looking for the right place.

Increasingly, I think we’re also learning something about ourselves. And sometimes the best way to find where you belong is to be willing to change direction when something inside you says, Not quite. Keep going.