Thought I'd contribute my little bit as I'm also a foreigner (from the EU though) living in central Portugal for over 4 years now. Generally I agree with most of what has been said but they are a few things which I've seen which are either totally wrong or in some cases I'd at least raise one eyebrow to.
Firstly thanks to D33P for offering his time to do this in the first place. I never realised there were so many places to play. I've only been to some of the main casinos in Portugal myself. As far as I can tell the big problem with playing live poker here is the games start so late. In Estoril the cash games don't start until after 9 p.m. and usually they have only 1 table of €5/10 NL Hold'em. In Espinho (South of Porto) the cash games start even later and it's a €2/5 game - occasionally they can have 2 tables here.
So for me live cash game poker isn't great here - afaik if you want to play during the day time at a casino you need to go over the border to Spain. I know for instance that the games start at Madrid around 4 p.m. and go on till the early hours of the morning. If there's a casino or poker club in Portugal like this I haven't heard of it but I'd love to be proved wrong.
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Originally Posted by D33P
as for online poker pretty much the whole country.
we are set with one of the best cable/fiber optics network in europe all around the country.
I'd agree that internet here is pretty good. Though in my case my house is actually a little isolated and I can't get a telephone line so I'm using 3G for my internet, fortunately I have an excellent 3G connection.
Quote:
Originally Posted by D33P
the live scene in portugal is much bigger tourney-wise than cash game tbh.
Absolutely true. If you like tournaments there's plenty going on.
Here's a schedule for 2012
http://pokerpt.com/calendario-torneios-ao-vivo.html that has still to be further updated as it's missing 12 events form the Solverde Poker Season, also many people from the north of Portugal go over the border to Casino La Toja in Galicia for their tournaments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by D33P
as for best cost of living for standard of living i would go with the center national area in places like Coimbra.
Its a great city with a great vibe and a significant lower cost than the Capital city, wich is Lisbon.
Yip basically anywhere away from Lisbon or even more so the Algarve, which is the most expensive part of Portugal the cost of living gets a lot cheaper. Though now with all the extra tolls on the road due to the economic crisis if you want to drive any significant distance it can get quiet costly.
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Originally Posted by D33P
not hard at all.
it`s the same language (portuguese) obviously with subtle differences.
I'd raise an eyebrow to this
. As someone who can knows quite a lot of Portuguese I struggle when chatting to a Brazilian - it might be the same language but the accent, intonation and pronounciation are very different. So someone say from the USA who has been thought Brazilian Portuguese and is at conversation level I think likewise will struggle initially with Luso Portuguese.
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Originally Posted by AnonyMouse1
I cannot say I've actually been, but I have had a friend who has lived their for much of her life... she talks a lot, so I've been privied to quite a bit of information.
*If you plan to live in central Portugal (away from the beach) you can expect temperatures to rarely dip below 0°C and rarely get above 20°C.
*January is the chilliest month, and I doubt t-shirts would be sufficent.
*It's a bit rockier and more mountain-y than most people think.
*Lisbon has quite a Heroin problem right now, but I think it's gotten a slight bit better as of late.
*Taxes are quite a bit lower than in most of the EU, which might have something to do with the financial hiccup they are in the midst of.
*Because of the financial issues facing Portugal today, you can probably scoop up a nice property at very resonable price.
*Portugese are generally very friendly and open, they like to talk a lot (so she says) and love good food... especially seafoods.
You are spot on with everything you say but I don't know where you got that temperature information from. Average daily high in the shade during the summer here in central Portugal (I'm just 10 km from the geographic centre of Portugal btw) is 26 degrees C and that's just the average daily high. It's often above 30 degrees during the summer and occasionally though not often hits 40. It's true it rarely drops below 0 but it can happen, especially during a colder winter like the previous 2 years, at night time it was dropping below zero quite a bit then, this year that's not the case.
One point to note though that the temperature even in summer time can drop a lot at night time. So in this fairly mild winter that we're having where it's getting around 14 to 16 degrees, for instance it's a max of 14 where I live today but it's forecasted to drop to 3 tonight. Similarly in the summer time you could have a scorcher of a day but later on in the evening you can get chilly in just a t-shirt.
If nice weather is what you're after then the Algarve (the least Portuguese part of Portugal btw!) has imo the best weather it's got the mildest winters and since you're near the coast normally the summers are not overly hot. The next region up from the algarve the Alentejo however can get some real extremes of temperature.
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Originally Posted by Sly Caveat
I've been in Lisbon about 5 days. The city is incredible with all of the culture and beauty.
I think living a normal life here without speaking Portuguese would be next to impossible. If you need something you can usually find someone to help you in English, but I underestimated how frustrating it would be to not understand the native language. I'm going to order some language software as soon as I can get an apartment. Hopefully I'm a quick learner.
Things I've observed in Lisbon so far:
-Um, they kind of like pastries here.
-The women are phenomenal.
-There are no street signs. If you don't have a GPS, good luck.
-People don't make eye contact when you pass them on the street. Ever. If you greet someone, they seem startled. (Maybe this is just a big city thing. Being from Alabama and having lived my adult life in Austin it feels really strange.)
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I'd agree with most of what sly caveat says - I realise taste in womenz is a personal thing and while there are some good looking women in Lisbon - as a generalisation I'd have to disagree with them being phenomenal. Try Hungary for phenom womenz! (I'm not Hungarian btw)
Defo agree with the language thing too, to fully enjoy life there you're going to have to learn the lingo - not an easy language either imo but good luck and persist with it - and if you can find yourself one of those phenom Portuguese women then that should help a lot
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Also I'm attached but I really get the impression that Portuguese are very much into things Portuguese and that goes for relationships too. I don't get the impression that Portuguese women are going to be overly inclined to get involved in a serious relationship with a foreigner, of course there's always going to be exceptions and I guess you'd have a better chance in a more cosmopolitan area such as Lisbon, though tbh I wouldn't be surprised if you have more joy with other foreigners there
Last edited by baztalkspoker; 12-26-2011 at 10:32 AM.