Well, we wouldn't live in Florida full-time either... at least now. We
lived in Boca Raton on the east coast from 1985-1995 before moving to
Boston for a post-IBM job. But, 11 years later, when it came real
retirement time, Boston was too expensive. In 2006, While considering
where to go to retire we traveled up and down the east coast of Florida
in a fruitless search for a retirement place. My wife finally
summarized the situation with: "I think you're looking for the Boca
Raton of 1985 and it doesn't exist anymore." She was spot on. We ended
up going back to New York to my wife's home town, where we were married
and I had first started working at IBM. Upstate New York is quite
beautiful, has a lower cost of living (despite New York's taxes) and
where we still had a few mutual friends as well as my wife's brother and
sister.
Some of those mutual friends also wintered on the west coast of Florida
and convinced us to try it. We did and have been wintering here for the
past 6 years. While we initially came here to escape very cold winters,
what we really discovered was our desire to live in a 55+ community. We
now have a lot of new friends from all over the US east coast and beyond
plus Canada and enough activities to keep us perpetually busy. Although
we're on the far south end of Tampa Bay, where we live is still largely
rural and agricultural. It's rare that we have to venture into really
heavy traffic and congestion.
But the friends who initially invited us to join them in Florida have
run into health problems and have retreated back to New York to be near
their kids... but in a different part of New York. They were half of
our reason for being here and in New York and we asked ourselves what we
wanted to do. We decided that what we really wanted was to live in a
55+ community full time. But we also wanted to be warm in the winter
and live in a single story home on a slab. Multi-story homes, winters
and basements are not kind to senior citizens. I could probably live in
Florida (near the Everglades) full time but such it not for my wife.
That started a 6 month internet and driving search to locate the ideal
55+ community in a warm environment. We believe we've found it on the
coast of South Carolina and will complete our permanent move there in
less than 3 weeks. We plan to stay in South Carolina through this coming
November, December and January... first, to meet our many new neighbors
and second, to see what it's like to live a winter on the South Carolina
coast. Whether we return to Florida for winter living after that
depends on what we find.
I've never been to Spain but did live in Germany for 13 months and also
spent a fair amount of time working in Paris and the south of England.
I've also toured around much of the UK. My wife and I'd be very happy
to visit any of those places again but, culturally, they're too far
removed from us to ever consider any of them as a place to live. And,
I'm sure, none of you here will find that as any surprise. :-)
Chuck Norcutt
On 10/31/2014 2:51 AM, ChrisB wrote:
Well, I don’t know what Florida’s like now, but we enjoyed our time
there, even if it was living in part of Tampa. Dale Mabry seemed to
us to be part of the culture of the USA: a long, straight road with
loads of different signs set up, higgledy piggledy, along it.
It wasn’t far from a good beach at Fort de Soto; parts of Florida
were very pretty and we lived in a decent little condo on Bayshore
Boulevard, not far from Ballast Point. Yes, Hillsborough Bay was a
bit smelly at times, and having only 2 seasons was a bit boring, but
we enjoyed our stay and made some good friends.
I was glad to come home to the UK, but then that would have been the
case for any part of the USA; I couldn’t live there. I wouldn’t mind
visiting again, with our sons, for a bit of nostalgia, but that might
not work either.
Chris p.s. Ken, that should be “. . . are two reasons . . .” :-) cb
On 31 Oct 2014, at 06:25, Nathan Wajsman <photo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Well, depends. I lived in Gainesville for 3 years. It is the site
of the main campus of the Florida state university system, and is
therefore a very pleasant college town with relatively progressive
politics and much more cultural offerings than many big cities. I
then moved to Tampa for my first full-time job out of graduate
school, and found that my quality of life had plummetted. Tampa had
all the disadvantages of a big city: congestion, crime, etc., but
none of the advantages (culture, Latin spirit like in Miami etc.).
The road on which I commuted to work, Dale Mabry Highway, was
elected among America’s 10 ugliest roads in some travel magazine
during the time I lived there, and I cannot really disagree. So
when I got a job offer in New Jersey, I was happy to accept it for
a variety of reasons, and getting out of Tampa was one of them,
albeit not the main one.
Cheers, Nathan
Nathan Wajsman
Alicante, Spain http://www.frozenlight.eu http://www.greatpix.eu
PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws Blog:
http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/
Cycling: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/belgiangator
YNWA
On 30 Oct 2014, at 17:51, Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Reminds me a bit of my 3 years living in Tampa in the late 80s,
a place I was only happy to leave when the opportunity arose.
There really is only two reasons for me to even contemplate
Florida: January and February.
AG --
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