Tuesday, January 29, 2013

A Beginning and an Ending

Today is very significant milestone.  TerraPlan is still a dream but today, that dream has an address!

Avenida Rodrigues de Freitas 287

A few decades of dreaming, more then a year of searching, and 6 months of intense planning and investigation has resulted in the purchase of a casa (house) in the bairro (neighborhood) of Bonfim in Porto, Portugal.  If all goes to plan, within a few years, this house will contain a cafe/bar, (and hopefully a few happy customers).

Three (large) checks magically transformed into keys!

From this point on, TerraPlana begins to take on it's own life.  Of course it is possible to abort the mission now, but only with significant cost.  We have reached a new phase that will be consumed with approving/licensing, building, furnishing, decorating, and ultimately: opening.

There will also be some blogging.  We plan to document the process of opening a cafe in Portugal.  Hopefully, this blog will help us remember the challenge and excitement (and yes, even the excrement) that we encountered turning our dream into a running business.  We aim to create an amazing space, and hopefully a few years from now our future clients will enjoy reading about how it all came to be.

Today, TerraPlana begins to exist in a physical form, but it is far from complete.