I will return to the US in an urn’: She moved to Portugal with her husband, and this American says she’s never coming back

They’d always planned to retire somewhere outside the US, but when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Cynthia Wilson and her husband Craig Bjork felt compelled to bring their plans forward.

The couple, who married in 2009, had already chosen Portugal as their intended destination after Googling “best places for Americans to retire to” and finding that the European country – a place Wilson had never visited – was high on the list.

“It’s funny because I’ve been to like 33 countries, and almost all of northwest Europe,” Wilson, originally from Seattle, tells CNN Travel. “I’ve been to countries like Estonia, but I almost knew nothing about Portugal.