Chasing the Sun South

So here's what I'm doing this winter, since a few of you have asked and I've been giving vague answers.

I'm leaving in October and I'm not back until mid-January. Three months, mostly Portugal, and the whole thing is built around one embarrassingly simple idea: go where it's warm, and keep going as it gets colder.

That's it. That's the strategy. I looked at a map, found the warmest edge of Europe, and arranged my life around not being cold for three months.

The shape of it

I fly into Amsterdam on October 19th, which I'll admit is not the warm part. But that week is ADE — the Amsterdam Dance Event — which is the biggest electronic music festival on the planet, 300-something venues turning the entire city into one enormous dance floor for five days. Some of you know this is my thing. The rest of you can picture me, 62 years old, out until 4am in a converted warehouse, and decide how you feel about that. Days for canals, nights for music.

Then on the 26th I fly to Lisbon and actually live there for a month. Not tourist-live — get-a-neighborhood-live. I'm basing in Santos, down on the riverfront, which took an absurd amount of research to land on and which I'm now completely sure about. Trams grinding up the hills, tiled buildings, the Tagus doing that thing the water does in the late afternoon. No car. Just walking and a monthly transit pass and figuring out which café is going to be my café.

In late November I duck down to Marrakesh for the international film festival — they do free public screenings out in Jemaa el-Fnaa, the big square, which sounds like exactly my kind of chaos. Souks, mint tea, the Atlas mountains sitting on the horizon.

Back to Portugal for a week in Setúbal, just south of Lisbon, where green hills fall into water so clear it looks retouched. Then December in Lagos, down on the Algarve — gold cliffs, hidden coves, and the warmest, sunniest corner of mainland Portugal, which I have deliberately saved for the exact stretch when the rest of Europe turns miserable.

And then the finale. I fly to Madeira on December 29th — a volcanic island out in the Atlantic, closer to Africa than to Lisbon, subtropical and green all winter, roughly 65 degrees in January. They do a New Year's fireworks show over Funchal bay that holds a Guinness World Record. Cruise ships park offshore just to watch it. I'll be there for two weeks.

Three days back in Lisbon, and then home.

Why

The honest version: I'm 62, I'm healthy, I work about 25 hours a week and I can do it from anywhere with decent wifi. At some point you notice that the reasons not to go are all just habits.

I've also been giving away most of what I own. Not in a dramatic way — I just kept noticing how much of it I never touched. I'm going with a carry-on and a backpack for three months, which sounded insane until I did the math and realized I dress like a person with about nine outfits anyway.

One logistical note, because someone will ask

Yes, an American gets 90 days in Europe. Yes, I counted. Twice. My trip is 89 days, and Morocco doesn't count against it because it's outside the zone — so the Marrakesh trip is both a good time and, conveniently, a legal instrument.

What this site is

I built this thing to keep you all in the loop without spamming everyone's phone. Maps, photos, and stories as they happen. If you want to know where I am at any given moment, it'll be here.

I'm working East Coast hours from six time zones away, which means my workday ends around 10pm Lisbon time. So if you see me online at strange hours — that's just Tuesday.

More soon. Bring on the cliffs.