Why retire to France

When I saw an article entitled, “6 Reasons to Retire to France”, I was anxious to read what those were and to compare them with our own experience of moving here 8 years ago. The online newspaper The Local France does a great job of compiling information for anyone making the big move and this story was no different. In fact, it led me to another feature on Yahoo Finance about “13 Countries with Easy Citizenship for Retirement” and I’ll put some of those details at the conclusion of this post. But first, let’s take a look at those reasons to retire here and see if we have any other thoughts.

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Two day trips from Toulouse

By a fast train we live only about 45 minutes from Toulouse yet we decided to spend a few nights there to make a couple of day trips centered around the “Pink City” so named because of the color of its bricks. That way we didn’t have to start out as early, we could spend the day at a destination, and still get back to the hotel in time for an apéro before dinner. Taking some of our own advice, we clicked on the tab above marked “Topics & Tags” then “Destinations in France accessible by train” and scrolled down to “The Beautiful Small Towns around Toulouse” to find a list of 20 possibilities, including our own Carcassonne. Of the remaining 19 towns, we’d already visited 8 of them and we didn’t want to spend much more than an hour on the train so that left us with Gaillac at 40 minutes and at 67 minutes a town that wasn’t even on this list, Castres.

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Lost, hidden, and secret Toulouse

The two of us are probably like most tourists on our first visit to any city; that is, we want to see all the highlights and take all the photos of the sites we’ve been admiring for years on TV and at the movies. Since we travel by train, we’re often in a hub city to make a connection but sometimes we stay over in that hub to see what we’ve been missing by not leaving the train station. That’s been the case with both Bordeaux and Montpellier where we’ve written about our first impressions and then what we discovered by returning. That’s how we learned of the public demonstration of a parachute in 1783 and the American Ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, in 1787. Now it was time to uncover what Toulouse was keeping under wraps.

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Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurants

Before we moved to France, we’d been coming to Europe on annual (or more frequent if possible) vacations for 30+ years. Almost every one of these trips involved a stay in Paris so naturally we had to find places to eat. That task got easier in 1996 when Adrian Leeds published her first edition of Top 100 Cheap Insider Paris Restaurants with the goal of listing value-for-money restaurants all over the capital city. The cover stated, “You don’t need to be rich to dine well—you just need to be in the know!” Sadly, the book has now gone out of print but all is not lost. Although you might typically associate the word Michelin with starred restaurants and correspondingly multiple $$$$ or €€€€ signs, that doesn’t have to be the case.

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La Fête Nationale

Today is July 14 and in France it’s officially called “La Fête Nationale” (the National Holiday) although most often we hear, “le quatorze juillet” (the 14th of July). Interestingly, none of our French friends ever say “Bastille Day” even when they are brave enough to practice English with us. Apparently the name was just a practical choice since neither of those translations above would have much meaning except in France—think “4th of July” outside of the US for a comparison. Given that today is such a beloved holiday here, I wanted to investigate further its origin and make some comparisons with America’s Independence Day.

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Citizenship interview

There’s a France 3 TV game show called “Questions for a Champion” (thanks France 3 for today’s photo above) where they ask lots of general questions to determine a winner for the day. Last Thursday I felt like a contestant on that program except instead of being on a soundstage in Paris, I was in the compact office of an immigration officer in the Préfecture building in Montpellier. It was a little over 3 years ago when I mailed in my application to acquire French citizenship and about 2 weeks ago an email arrived summoning me to the interview. The purpose is to show that you’ve integrated into the society here rather than remaining an outsider who lives in a bubble that in our case would be called “Little America”.

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Whatcha packin’ ?

Thanks, Larry, for sending us a link to an article with the intriguing title, “Why Tourists Need To Be Cautious Of The Clothing They Pack On A Trip To Europe.” Before moving here, we were one of those visitors making an annual transatlantic flight always trying to figure out what to bring and what to leave behind. Once we started staying in holiday homes/apartments with washing machines it became possible to cut in half the sets of clean clothes that we needed, effectively reducing our luggage requirement to just a carry on bag. I saw an ad for a travel backpack that promises you space for 5 days of vacation clothing. Hopefully that doesn’t mean just the “bare essentials” you might require at a clothing-optional resort.

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