There's nothing funny about Child's Play

As parents with a very active child, one of the things that we spent a lot of time thinking about before moving was the necessary extra-curricular kids activities in our corner of Portugal. Our daughter has been engaged in track & field and swim clubs since 2018 and recently picked up Tennis. She's also picked up singing since her piano classes went bust. As a large and fast growing metro, we were spoiled for choice in Austin when it came to kids activities and extra curricular development. Would we have the same level of options for her in Portugal? We didn't have any doubt about finding something with regards to Lisbon, or Porto but would we have to trade-off some of those options for our daughter when we decided to move to a smaller city in Portugal?

With Portugal being a modern, well-developed economy that has a high level of social well being, not to mention a history of producing some exceptional sporting talent, it would have been ludicrous to think that we wouldn't be able to find a high level of stimulus for our daughter here on the Costa da Prata. Researching from afar proved to be too difficult as we found that the online presence of smaller Portuguese businesses is limited. We were however able to shortlist a few options before we arrived but were unsure about the quality of the services and the facilities available.

In hindsight, it was rather small-minded of us to think that we might struggle to find suitable extra-curricular options for kids here. Once settled in, we went about contacting the various places we shortlisted to schedule visits and trials. We were frankly amazed at the facilities that were on offer. A large multi-court Tennis facility in an extremely picturesque setting and a multi-purpose stadium built for Euro 2004, for Track and Field activities welcomed us. Both also had additional indoor and outdoor exercise facilities with associated services while both also regularly host regional and international competitions. Annual registration fees run between 30-50 Euros per child while monthly fees are in the same range. Also, common to what we've found elsewhere, many among the staff spoke English to a very high degree of competency - excellent for now to help us integrate...but maybe not so helpful when trying to learn Portuguese. It's on us though to make sure we start communicating with them in the native tongue sooner rather than later.

We were also able to find a music school nearby for voice lessons, and a municipal swimming pool complex offering classes for kids and adults. At this point, I'm pretty sure one can find a place that provides pretty much any activity for both kids and adults here on the central Silver Coast. Next stop...Surf School!

Now I'm going to randomly throw in CHUCKY! to very neatly tie the end of this post to it's title.

Tennis courts as far as the eye can see

A full size multi-purpose stadium right in the city