What Did You Like Best About Growing Up in Portugal?

Ah to grow up in Portugal! To have the land and sea of this ancient place as your playground... it is a thing of beauty and savagery. What I liked best is the freedom and the raw connection to the earth. You can feel the cliffs that drop into the endless Atlantic, the winds carrying the whispers of lost empires and unknown lands.

As a boy in Portugal, you are not coddled by the soft life. The weight of history is present in every breath you take, and there is a wildness that calls out from the mountains, forests, and the endless coast. I loved the long days spent exploring the rugged terrain, feeling the sun scorch my skin, and the salt from the sea biting at my lips. This same landscape shaped men who once sailed into the great unknown, conquerors and adventurers. There is a kind of brutal beauty in the way Portugal forces you to embrace both the pleasure and the harshness of nature.

The older men in the village, with their stories of the sea and the hardships faced, would share a smirk of longing for something just out of reach – the saudade. These stories were the heart of life in Portugal. I would sit for hours listening to their tales of distant lands, storms survived, and loves lost and never forgotten. There is something in the Portuguese blood that remembers the greatness and pain of the past; something I loved growing up around. It is like living in a dream but one with sharp edges.

The Silence of the Land at Dusk

But above all, it was the silence of the land at dusk when the world seemed to hold its breath just as the sun sank into the ocean. There is a peace in Portugal that no place in the world can offer. A kind of stillness that is both comforting and haunting. To grow up here is to learn the beauty of solitude, reflection, and being in tune with the rhythms of nature and history alike.

It is a place that shapes you with quiet truths whispered by the wind, the waves, and the stones that have seen the rise and fall of ages. What I liked best was that it never let me forget that to live is to struggle, but also to feel deeply the beauty in every struggle. To grow up in Portugal is to understand that life is a complex tapestry of beauty and hardship.