Let’s get the elephant out of the closet right away: I would love to move to Italy. I must admit that that was not always the case, though. Before my husband retired, we’d been to Europe a few times. We were really just tourists then—in one day and out 10-to-14 days later. Once he retired, we went in search of my grandparents’ birthplace in Italy. We found it and spent most of the rest of that month traveling the country. 

We were still tourists, though. We went back a few times more over a three-year period. I still looked at everything through the glazed eyes of a tourist, though. It was after we spent about nine weeks “living” in France and Italy nine years ago that I started to think I could move there.