Goodbye North America: We Moved to Tuscany, Italy and You Won't Believe Our Lives Now!

We made this the living room because it had easy access from all the rooms. What they had originally used as a living room is actually up here, so we call it our Wine Vault, since the wine doesn't get hit by the sunlight as much, so this is kind of like where we keep our wine. and my collection of wine corks that I've collected all over Europe, look at your head and then here we have our technology-free Loft Library space up here originally they had this as a living room, but we set this up it's like a cozy moment in the corner where we can read, have a cocktail, listen to some vinyl records, but then we are placed here in probably the best space in the entire apartment, which is our garden terrace, we eat, we drink, we take a nap.

Sometimes I tan. I'll even work out here if the weather is nice, but this is where we have kind of a little escape if we don't want to go too far from home. I mean, why would you want to? This is basically the best bar. in Florence, right here, yes, that's more or less our little tree house, an apartment in Florence, the best home. I think I have ever felt so happy if you can't tell that I love showing it off every time we are in a bar, restaurant, shopping. We always try to make an effort, especially if someone is nice to us, to know them by name and it's very sweet but a little embarrassing but it's very comforting for us to be able to walk down our particular street and they tell us.

Hello to so many merchants who will collect our mail for us because they are very kind to us, say hello, offer us a glass of prco to pass if there is something extra. I mean, we have one type of wine, we have restaurant people, we have people who own a pub that we are very, very friendly and familiar with and I think that's really exceeded our expectations now that we're here, we feel safer and happiest we have ever been and we. I'm lucky that when our friends come to visit we see that and take the time to mention to us that they see the best in us now that we live here.

It's a validation when they come and see that we are living the best we can.

lives

here um so you can elaborate on this too but we had to find out that we needed to find an apartment even before we were legally told we were allowed to live here so in order for our visa to be approved we had to have a signed lease, which doesn't make sense when you think about it, that we had to have a signed agreement that we had a place to live and a receipt showing that we had paid for it before we were even allowed to live here in this country , so that's part of why we signed over our apartment almost six months before they told us we could live in it and therefore it's an investment risk to live here legally and work legally, it's very bureaucratic, you have to go through for a process to obtain a visa. from the country you want to move to that says you can move to that particular country here, we had to get work visas which are very difficult to get, like self-employment visas, they only give out a few hundred a year. normally and that required a lot of paperwork, some professional assistance to make that happen.

I have two pieces of advice that are closely related: one, do your homework and two, get help. You need to do a lot of research to understand everything. The government processes you will have to go through are incredibly complicated, there are many rules, whatever the requirements are, you need to overcome those requirements and take advantage of professional assistance like smart move Italy that can help you overcome not only what the rules say, but what actually happens on the ground, the other thing I would say is that I think it's very important when you move, especially to a country like Italy, you need to build a community quickly, you need to have people who know your name and who We're happy to see you and we're there to help if you have any questions or just know you need a friendly ear.

It's great for us to be able to walk down our street and see people who are excited to see you. us because they've gotten to know us, that makes this feel like home, at least for me. Hello, my name is Dre Baker, I'm originally from the Houston metropolitan area in the United States and January of this year about 2 months ago um me. and my granddaughter

moved

here to Florence, Italy around 2010. She was thinking about the future and decided I wanted to do something different with the rest of my life, especially with my retirement. He was a Houston police officer.

I was in the department for about 18 years and I ended up working 30 years before I retired in 2022 and after I retired I was raising my granddaughter and Italy just presented itself because it felt like a different positive change that I could make and I just thought about the things that I was hoping to live here and thought they would be good for her living in a smaller but more maneuverable city, we lived outside of Houston, in the suburbs and you can't really go anywhere without your own transportation. Then I knew I could move to Italy, to Florence, and use public transportation or even be able to walk, we walk most of the places we go now, so that wasn't a problem and it would be good for her to learn a second language. and meet people from all over the world and have a broader view of life as I hope to have for myself this is our kitchen, it's like a linear kitchen, it was fully furnished, so we have a dishwasher, here we have a four burner stove over here and we have a little built-in refrigerator with enough cabinets so you know, just the two of us, everything is unfurnished so we don't have living room furniture yet, but this will be our dining area if you look at this. window and you look to the south, you can actually see the Koopa of the two uh, my granddaughter likes to look out and say the Dome.

I see the Dome, so you come this way, so this is kind of a second living room, it could be a third. bedroom, it's going to be their playroom, so most of our stuff is still being shipped, it hasn't arrived yet, a lot of toys and books, so if we come back this way, we go through the front door, here's the biggest bathroom, here it has a toilet a bed a standing shower so this is my room in my room again there are no closets so I had to put cabinets to the side and add a dresser, a couple of nightstands, you go through the main bathroom and you go to the room that is my granddaughter's room when we

moved

in, the previous tenant had left a double bed YES, a single bed in her room, she has the bedroom with the en-suite bathroom, uh, with a toilet with shower and a small sink and another large window, lots of light in that. she likes to open up to help her get ready in the morning for school and that's all our apartment before we are ready to move in.

I did some research and there are a few different types of visas for me, the only practical one was the elective residence visa is the visa for people who are going to retire, so when I realized that, I think through the Internet, through Facebook, I came across the company Smart Move Italia and they offered online classes and, uh, the experience of moving to Italy and different types of visas that you could apply for and a lot of information, a lot of basic information, so after several years to do it, you know, I got to the point where I was able to figure it out financially and then I had My granddaughter and I had retired, it was about time, so I contacted Smart Move Italia and we went from there.

The first thing I did was consult with her and she said, "You know, considering that my granddaughter Florence would be a good place because it's a big enough city." There are enough things to do but they also had international schools and she suggested looking for the school first because it would tell me what part of the city I needed to try to live in and then we looked for a place to live well, my dream was it was a retirement dream so which was a lot of freedom, it was getting up in the morning and going to see the sunrise or in the afternoon being able to take a night tour, going to Sicily or going to Spain for 2 or 3 days. uh, you know, however, with my granddaughter everything is different, it's much more of an everyday life, so I'm still working on how to find a balance between the responsible part of raising her and the joy part of the experiences in general.

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