Hey guys, I decided this Jan to apply for residency and matriculate my car ... it has been a mission and I only had until 5th March and I managed to do it in time without paying the ISV/IVA tax ... which would have been in total around €14k for my car that only cost me £2.5k in the UK (I know, crazy right?). Following is my story and costs to get this done. Everybody's story will be slightly different as their situations are different and the rules of Portugal are different depending on who you speak to or what day it is. Something I will mention is that I did all this in Portuguese ... if I didn't pick up the language and couldn’t communicate in Portuguese, I wouldn’t have accomplished this (not without a ... read more

Just over a week since I arrived back in Portugal ... and what an eventful week. Let's summarize what's been going on:I have an internet package with a company called Meo which is like Virgin for internet/landline/tv ... and when I joined I knew they gave me 100MB per month free internet to use outside the house with a dongle. I tried some months back to order a dongle from them but it got lost in translation ... so I tried again.Now with Meo there are 2 support numbers, one is technical which costs a lotta mula and the other is customer care which is free. I have both numbers in my mobile so I call up the free customer care one and start chatting to a representative, asking all sorts of questions I have about ... read more

Now that we are in March and spring is pretty much here, I think it's time to chat about my 1st winter in Portugal, what it's like and how it's different to the UK. First of all, when people research into the Algarve, they think it's tropical paradise year-round, especially when websites tell you there are over 300 days sunshine per year, the temp rarely drops below 10c and daytimes you are sweating outside. Now to an extent this is true ... but as anywhere, there are differences you have to get used to. Because the summer is soooo hot here (hit 42c last summer I believe), the houses/apartments here are built to be cool in the summer, not to be warm in the winter. They are not well insulated and it is rare to see ... read more

Hey all, So this week I've been spending time doing what Ive been doing for some time now ... trying to get my car imported here tax free, something which should technically be free but which has cost me around €1400 so far and a whole lot of headache, stress and frustration at the bureaucracy over here. I won't go into details yet, I want to wait until it's done and I get the yay or nay from customs before I write about the full process ... all I'll say is I've lost 3kg of weight in the past month so clearly on some level this has been affecting me. I refuse to buy a car here as the tax on them is extortionate ... my 2005 vectra which I bought for £2500 would cost around ... read more

"I AM A PORTUGUESE RESIDENT, YAYYYY" This week has been a challenging one with a number of things to sort out. One of the things I knew would be interesting coming here is dealing with my properties in the UK. For a start there's the Hull nonsense which I left to an agent before leaving, which still continues to be a nonsense. And then one of my properties had a boiler pack in up in Newcastle where it's ridiculously cold just in time for the snow. Many phonecalls, messages, url=http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fyell.com%2F&h=pAQF3xO3jAQE1fR_-VXVwCdjZzRUaC6peDJoXylC7uiPbtw&enc=AZOiwiZsldlr6em-OGch_a0zR23GfeU06fBYkDCORn2qyfs8k1BPIz1SRsiyuJy_5I-N-eryBYqHeLo2992Ak6CTS6W5i7PxxsE37U-GXBeRz7GrvDMel3JmX-ChK0xGrQjArn83i6QPMdiJSA-CAmzIA81xc0dLQSd7UzYzii_jGjfX61H9rQ9f4ap3t9djGYs5RjckVJpeoqCuBo1Q3tUs&s=1yell.com sessions later it still isn't resolved which is bad news for the ... read more