You may be asking yourself why you’re even reading this blog? Why are Meg and Grant moving to Spain? Fair questions.
The short answer is that we have been dream-talking about this idea of traveling for a few years. We knew we wanted to travel before we started a family, but we weren’t sure when it would happen or if we’d both be ready to pick up and leave our jobs at the same time. Last Fall, we had both been at our jobs for over 4 years, and we both were feeling antsy to move to the next thing. So we asked ourselves if this was our opportunity to travel.
Believe me, the luck that both of us want to live abroad, are ready to leave at the same time, and have been able to save up money with our past jobs, is not lost on me. We are so incredibly lucky that in our partnership, we are both equally ready and excited for this adventure.
The next question was where we would go. Europe, Asia, and Australia were the immediate front-runners. I had loved Hong Kong when I traveled there for work last year. I found these bike-across-Australia tour that I was excited about. It came down to the fact that Europe has a LOT to see for relatively cheap travel costs (thanks goodness the dollar is strong) and that we were both more excited about exploring Europe. I did an analysis of cost of living across major European cities, and Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Berlin bubbled to the top. The rest was process of elimination – we don’t want to live in a cold place, and I know Spanish. So Barcelona it is!
We knew if we wanted to legally stay within Europe for longer than 90 days out of 180 days that we would need to apply for residence in a country. We applied for a Spanish non-lucrative residence visa, which basically means we pledge not to work for a Spanish company. Getting our visa means that we can stay in Spain for up to a year and travel outside of Spain for up to 3 months. Our rough plan is to travel 1-2 weeks out of the month and spend the other 2-3 weeks in Barcelona.
That’s the whole of it!