‘driving from holland to portugal’

A few weeks ago we were driving from the Netherlands back to Portugal. We had some wonderful weeks with friends and family. It felt so good to be back and to see everyone again after a long time.

We stayed at Boris’ parents’ house in Delft and it was great to be able to just walk to the city center and have a coffee with friends. I was even teaching a few yoga classes in the living room and it reminded me of the time when I first started teaching in our living room more than 13 years ago. I absolutely missed teaching yoga in person and especially the tea drinking and chatting after the class. Now we are back to online classes again and that’s a great way to stay in touch and keep doing yoga together. If you want to join one of my online classes – just give it a try. It’s very simple and easy to just book one yoga class at a time and I would be super happy seeing you at one of the online classes. More info here.

The day before going back to Portugal we went to our storage for the very last time. We had rented a small storage unit when we started our journey about 2,5 years ago. At that time we got rid of all our furniture and we only kept boxes with some personal things, clothes, lots of tools and all the yoga stuff.

During our journey we sometimes had to come back to our storage unit, for example when we needed winter clothes for an autumn in France. But most of the boxes had remained unopened for a very long time. Now it was time to finally take our belongings with us to Portugal. Luckily we have the perfect car for this undertaking and all the boxes and a big painting fitted into the car easily. We even managed to bring a tiny version of our original cactus with us. Do you remember the giant cactus we had in our living room? This cactus has a long history and now it’s here in Portugal with us.

Driving to Portugal from the Netherlands is a long journey and it took us three full days of driving. Although it is exhausting, it is also beautiful to make the transition from one country to another. It’s amazing to see landscapes changing slowly, moving through busy cities, peaceful mountains, green forests, sunflower fields, seeing the sunrise and just being in that moment with nothing else to do than just observing the ever changing surroundings. I can totally enjoy the little pleasures of eating croissants for breakfast in France and getting excited when I find vegan ice cream at the gas station. Of course, in the end I’m also really glad to arrive and finally get out of the car. 

Right now our living room is full of boxes and I will not even try to do anything about that because we only have two more months in this apartment. I must say, it feels a bit funny that we finally have all our stuff here but we don’t have a permanent place to stay. If you have been following us for a while you know that we are busy house hunting. We are looking for a property where we can live and where we have the possibility to organized yoga retreats. But buying a house in these times is certainly not easy. So here we are with all our belongings, lots of tiny fruit trees on our balcony waiting for a garden, full of ideas and enthusiasm to create something and super excited to start a new adventure.

But it’s so difficult to find a house. It feels like it takes forever. On the other hand, every time I’ve talked to other foreigners here, they tell me that it took them more than one year to find their house too. This gives me hope that our house is somewhere out there and that we will find it. We just need to continue looking for it and that’s what we do. You can also follow our house hunting journey on Instagram, I always post stories from the latest house visits. Check out my Instagram here. Right now we are searching online to find interesting properties and soon we will hopefully be on the road to view some houses. Wish us luck.

Sending you sunshine and love from Portugal!
Beijinhos
Sophie & Boris

Portugal, September 2021