Earlier this year, the French newspapers that we read regularly were filled with articles about the long-debated immigration bill. Comments from the extreme-right included, “We can rejoice…progress…victory…national priority” while others said, “a shift in (this country’s) fundamental values” and, “the most regressive bill of the past 40 years for the rights and living conditions of foreigners.” These were all in reference to the bill’s points about migration quotas, benefit limits, family reunification, medical care and amnesty for undocumented workers, among others. While those points didn’t directly affect us, one provision of the bill could, or at least it could for some of the readers of this blog: language level requirements for residence cards and citizenship.

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.

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.