@rickjerv

Great for a visit. Beautiful scenery. Good food. I thought it would be great to live here, start a startup and be in the same time zone as SF, close to Seattle, etc. But compared to Vancouver in 2009, one big change that totally ruined it for me: Absolute zombie apocalypse of drug addicts and shouting/violent home less people. It was shockingly bad. The locals often visibly carry naxalone (anti-overdose medicine, I learned) because there are so many people overdosing in the street. Police were n

Very expensive to live in. Boring, I don't mind the weather so much but I agree with previous reviews about people here having poor social skills and making friends with the locals is VERY hard. This has been confirmed by my other expat friends from US and Europe who lived here for a bit. People overall are very serious and in a group setting things like real estate and social justice/ equality are normally main topics of the conversation. Very little culture in terms of art, museums, history et

Spent the month of September here and it was nice for the first 2 weeks. There are a lot of young people due to the multiple universities and you smell weed everywhere!!! There is also so much construction going on with the roads and buildings, so it’s best to walk and bike most places. The BIXI bike system is awesome! There are also a lot of homeless screaming at people randomly in the streets. Food and rent is expensive. The “European” vibe is isolated to a 3 street area, but the re

I'm currently in Lisbon and I must say that this city has been very overhyped in terms of cost, food and overall fun. There are a lot of issues where foreigners like myself are driving up the rent and we are solely blamed for this. The larger issue here is the Portuguese government is not using these tourism dollars towards their people. I'm staying in Alfama and there is 'fuck tourists' spray painted in a few places but in order to come and stay here we are being asked to provide our informatio

Nomading here is tough because there are no reasonable Airbnbs and finding a short-term apt is difficult. You have to ask yourself, is it worth coming to Barcelona? It's probably the dirtiest city in Spain, and a bit sketchy. There's more beautiful and cleaner cities like Seville where you can find a reasonably priced Airbnb.

It's a pretty awesome place and next year will definitely stay for longer. So clean, has amazing people, and great culture

Porto was like a scaled down Lisbon (I swear they are trying to copy it down to the cable car). Lots to do but manageable walking wise. I walked everywhere and always found stuff to do. Bars and clubs are focused in one main area so everything is just easier. The architecture is wonderful and the people are nice. I'd like to see the city in summer as it's just on the wrong side of comfortable and it rained quite a bit (I was there in December). Dog poo is seemingly an issue generally in Portugal

I really enjoyed my first week here, but as I got to know more locals and heard their stories, I was disturbed at the security situation. Almost everyone I met has horror stories about being robbed at gunpoint, robbed by the police, and in one case even drugged and robbed by a taxi driver. It's not even safe to walk a short distance at night (locals told me to just take Uber). Beyond the security issues, scams also abound, and the covid policy is wacky, with hand sanitizer being forced on you ev