Posted February 21, 2012 at 12:53 am
via International Living
You’ll find lots of climate choice in our top retirement havens for 2012, and a good climate is an important consideration for those who wish to move overseas. In fact, thousands of expats have turned in their snow shovels for good and moved to places where the weather is better.
In places where the weather is warm year-round, not only do you eliminate the need for heavy winter clothes, but you gain in quality of life. Better weather means you’re outside more. And that often translates to “healthier.” Plus it usually means lower utility bills, too.
Scoring a country on its climate is difficult, because everyone has their own ideas on what sort weather they enjoy most. But it was Italy’s ability to cater to all tastes that saw it surge to the top of IL’s Retirement Index 2012 in the Climate category.
The weather in Italy is quite different from the stereotypical Mediterranean climate with many of its inland northern regions enjoying weather more on par with what is found with southern France and other continental countries further north. This tends to translate into hot summers and often quite dramatic, picturesque snow-swept winters.
But head south to the coastal areas of Liguria and most of the peninsula south of Florence and you get the more typical Mediterranean weather—mild winters and warm, dry summers.
Altitude also plays a part. Italy’s highland areas regularly get snow during winter while the lower-lying land in the south rarely gets uncomfortably cold, even in winter.
France, coming in second, also enjoys a varied climate. Northern regions are temperate while north-eastern areas have a more [continue]…
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Posted February 20, 2012 at 3:55 am
by Joshua M. Brown
The obituary of John Fairfax (who passed at 74 years old on February 8th) has absolutely lit up the internet over this weekend, he is being called the real-life Most Interesting Man in the World by all who read it…
At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he lit out for the Amazon jungle.
At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar. Afterward he was apprenticed to a pirate. To please his mother, who did not take kindly to his being a pirate, he briefly managed a mink farm, one of the few truly dull entries on his otherwise crackling résumé, which lately included a career as a professional gambler.
You have to get over there and check this thing out, it’s an amazing life story [continue]…
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Posted February 3, 2012 at 3:34 am
by Emily Brandon
Whether you want to spend your golden years watching the sun set over the water or taking on a second career, we’ve identified an ideal place to relocate.
Using data from Onboard Informatics, U.S. News selected 10 key attributes that many people look for in a retirement locale, and a city that excels in meeting each need.
Here are 10 best places to retire [continue]…
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Posted February 3, 2012 at 1:14 am
by Jessica Ramesch
I’m sipping rich coffee—just poured from a French press—when it happens. A white horse ambles by, no rider or groom in sight. Behind him, there appears another…his chestnut brother. Single file they clippety-clop into focus.
Behind the horses is a sweet-peach A-frame with a tiny wooden balcony. Two village boys in stylish Bermuda shorts come into view on a small bike that’s been painted a retro sierra blue…like the ’68 Mustang.
Pines and flowering shrubs surround pretty little Hostal Tierra Libre, where I’m staying. As the cook brings out Dutch crepes and local honey, I can hear life buzzing all around me—the kind of lazy hum that makes me want to spend the morning swinging in the hammock off to my left.
But “lazy” isn’t quite the right word to describe the village of Santa Fe de Veraguas, located in Panama’s Veraguas province. Other words come to mind: “bohemian,” “quirky,” and “effortless.”
A town of about 3,000 people, Santa Fe has no traffic. Even on the main road cars pass infrequently. And everyone—every single person—says hello or buenas as they pass.
The roads are beautifully paved and the homes neatly painted. Despite the good infrastructure, Santa Fe has an undeveloped feel—as though it’s been hidden from the modern world all these years.
One general store seems to hold it all…from t-shirts to steel beams to staples like sugar and rice.
There is just a handful of shops—several new. One local makes tiny guitars known as mejoranas, hand crafting them using centuries-old techniques. A woman has started making and selling her own fresh mozzarella, a welcome addition to the vibrant organic produce.
At 1,300 to 1,400 feet, the climate is wonderful, with temperatures rarely climbing above 88 F at midday.
Evenings linger in the 70s F. The rainy season stretches officially from May through November, but afternoon rains are often fleeting. Most mornings are sunny, the baby-blue skies dotted with lambswool clouds.
The Santa Fe National Park is one of the best places in Panama to [continue]….
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Posted January 31, 2012 at 1:25 am
by John Bardos
My wife and I have finally gotten settled in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We spent a few days in Bangkok and are now going to stay here for 7 weeks before heading to Australia.
It has been about 6 years since we have been to Thailand, but this is first time we made the trip up north to Chiang Mai.
Every long term traveller makes it to Chiang Mai sooner or later, and for good reasons. Great food, great weather and great prices make it a hard city to top.
At only 1.6 million people, Chiang Mai is a little tamer than the raucous streets of Bangkok and its 9.1 million inhabitants.
The lack of any public transportation system keeps the traffic a little crazy, but it is also possible to escape to the mountains or to nearby towns.
There is no denying that the cost of living is a huge factor in attracting foreign visitors and retirees. My wife and I have an hotel style apartment for $360 per month. My uncle is renting a three bedroom house outside the city for only $200.
I recently met up with Nomadic Matt and he was paying $7 a night for a guest house. Really posh flats can be found for $500 to $1000 if you wanted to splurge, even cheaper if you rent for a year.
Meals typically range from $1 a dish in a cafeteria style restaurant or food stand to [continue]…
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Posted January 9, 2012 at 12:23 am
by Finn-Olaf Jones
“When Alive, He Lived,” reads the memorial to FORBES’ late editor-in-chief, Malcolm Forbes, on a palm-shaded lawn overlooking his beloved, green-as-money Laucala Island, a 3,000-acre shoe-shaped Valhalla in the eastern Fijian islands.
Since 2003 Austrian tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz, who owns the wildly profitable energy drink Red Bull, has lorded over this isolated paradise, and now he’s opened it up to people who want a taste of billionaire life.
Mateschitz built 25 sprawling guest villas in traditional Fijian style, with timber beams tied together to support sea grass roofs. Their connected pavilions—bedroom, bathroom and living room—encircle private pools facing the beach. I kept my sliding doors open to let the sea lull me to sleep, though civilization was close at hand with Wi-Fi and satellite TV. A light switch turned on a dozen tiki lamps, converting the place into a one-man luau.
You could easily hole up in your compound and have everything brought to you, and you might not encounter anyone even if you went out for a swim.
The island has a dozen beaches and 38 pools that blend into the tropical surroundings while delivering distinctive wow factors. My favorite was a clear glass cube discreetly jutting above the beachfront like an aerial aquatic sculpture.
Serving the privileged few—this must be the world’s highest staff-to-guest ratio—are an astounding [continue]…
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Posted December 7, 2011 at 2:03 am
Are you dreaming of taking a year off from work to travel around the world? Emanuele and Romana Siracusa share their experiences and offer detailed advice for future world travellers.
Should you purchase around-the-world airfare? How much money do you need? Where should you go? What kind of travel insurance do you need? It is all covered in this interview.
We left in November 2010 and stayed away until the first half of July. We kicked-off our around the world trip with a flight from London to Delhi . After 6 weeks of travelling within India we flew to SE Asia, where we stayed until the second week of May. We did Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and finally Bali, Indonesia.
Then we went to Australia and New Zealand for some winter time and some great camper-van road trips. Finally, we spent some time in Fiji and a short week in California before catching the flight back to London.
Bali will always have a special place in our heart – we managed to stay away from the loud tourist triangle of Kuta-Legian-Seminyak and tried to keep off the beaten path. We also explored some of the most beautiful parts of the country by [continue]…
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Posted December 4, 2011 at 11:04 pm
(LonelyPlanet.com) — As temperatures plummet in the Northern Hemisphere, why not enjoy some of the great travel experiences that only a big chill can bring. We look at the world’s top seven winterland marvels, as chosen by Lonely Planet authors:
It’s the middle of night, in the middle of nowhere. It’s so dark that you can hold your hand three inches from your face and not see it. The silence is so complete that the low thud of snow falling from a nearby tree makes you jump. Your eyelashes are close to frozen and it’s a struggle to separate them when you blink. And yet you’d happily sit there all night, for many nights to come, for the chance to see nature’s most mysterious sight: the northern lights.
With little light pollution, optimum weather conditions (very cold, with plenty of clear nights) and its position directly beneath the prime-viewing zone of the auroral oval, Churchill in Canada is one of the best places in the world to see the northern lights. The Arctic tundra and boreal forest surrounding the town see over 300 nights of auroral activity each year. Displays might last hours, or be gone in a minute.
Flashing neon pink, turquoise and green, the lights swirl across the sky in myriad imagined shapes (is that a walrus, a witch, a whale?) before whipping back on themselves and disappearing. In the presence of such a spectacle, it’s easy to believe local Inuit myth that the aurora borealis are signals from the afterlife, particularly if you hear the sky crackle and swoosh as some claim. What is in no doubt during those moments when the lights whirl above your head is that you’re part of the greatest show on earth.
January in St Petersburg. The city’s residents, long used to the cold, don fur hats and heavy coats to stand in line. Nowadays, they wait not for bread, but for art: frozen art. Every winter, sculptors [continue]…
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Posted November 25, 2011 at 3:02 am
via Kiplingers
There are millionaires among us — perhaps many more than you think. A new report by Phoenix Marketing International, a firm that tracks wealthy households, ranks 942 towns and cities by concentration of millionaires. By PMI’s count, there are about 5.94 million millionaire households in the U.S.
So where do these millionaires live? Not surprisingly, metropolises such as San Francisco and Washington make the list. But the wealthy also reside in desert towns and coastal villages. And we’re talking bonafide millionaires.
PMI’s research keyed in on households with liquid, investable assets of $1 million or more (excluding real estate, retirement plans and business partnerships).
In addition, we looked at the median income of all households to gauge how much it takes for average families to live alongside the affluent. Just for fun, we also calculated the maids-to-millionaires ratio for each city. (It’s 15:100 nationally.)
Check out the list of the top 10 cities with the highest concentration of millionaires [continue]…
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Posted November 16, 2011 at 11:51 pm
by Bob Howells
If you’ve heard of British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, you probably associate it with wine, and for good reason. The 110-mile-long valley 250 miles east of Vancouver is home to 150 wineries and some of Canada’s finest vintages.
You can stay busy for days or weeks tasting the wares of the valley’s hospitable vintners.
But the Okanagan is also blessed with astounding natural beauty. Eighty-three-mile-long Lake Okanagan is the valley’s signature feature. The vineyards stretch out along low hills called benches that surround the lake and its kindred chain of lakes to the south, and rising above the benches are mountains clad in ponderosa pine.
For me, an ideal long weekend in the Okanagan encompasses forays into the wilds as well as judicious samplings of its fruits and nectars as you make your way from south to north. Here’s how I spent a few days in the area recently.
DAY ONE: OSOYOOS
The arid Okanagan is generally warm and dry from spring through fall, but nowhere is it warmer than in desertlike Osoyoos, which gets as much rainfall as southern Arizona — i.e., not much. The tiny town on Osoyoos Lake is surrounded by sage-covered hills, fruit orchards, and, of course, vineyards.
Morning
Explore In the hills west of Osoyoos is Spotted Lake, basically a flat mineral basin filled with shallow, multihued puddles that look like giant amoebae from above. If there were a lake on the moon, it would look something like this.
Haynes Point Provincial Park on Lake Osoyoos is such an exceptional spot for [continue]…
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