Never Retire Flashback: Why Spain? And The Best Chinese Food In Barcelona?
31 days until we move to Spain
Barcelona almost immediately sealed the deal for us.
It didn’t take much time there to realize that Spain makes the most sense as our Never Retire destination. And now, nearly two years later, we’re headed to Spain in just 31 days. Or, put another way, today marks the first day of our last month in California.
Wow.
Why Spain? This is a question one of my yoga instructors—(who is moving to one of the best cities in America, Portland, at the end of the year!)—asked me the other day.
Because—
It’s actually the country my wife has wanted to live in for many years. Long before it became a thing.
Originally I thought it would be Italy, but as much as we love Italy and I feel a connection to the place, I’m not sure Italy could ever feel like home. I’ll have discussed this in the past and will likely write more about it once we start living our reality in Spain.
Spain feels like home. Melisse mentioned this the other day. That—in some strange way, for some strange reason—when we land in or cross a border into Spain, it feels like we’re home. And we haven’t even lived there yet. It’s weird feeling. We’ll see if it sticks. I strongly believe that it will.
The cities are so well-planned. I wrote what follows in early 2023 when I had a rudimentary understanding of urban planning in Barcelona and—subsequently—Spain. Since, I have a pretty decent handle on what they’re doing there. I actually wrote about it in a column recently published at SF Gate. As a city lover, I really appreciate cities that innovate like Barcelona and Valencia have at the same time as maintaining their authentic urban character.
We’re moving to Valencia. We think we’re going to want to stay there. But—make no mistake—as a couple, Melisse and I fell in love with Spain in Barcelona. So we have not ruled it out as our final destination. It’s definitely a place where we intend to spend a lot of time, including the first few days in our new home nation.
Last week, I had a story published in SF Gate. There’s not much in here that subscribers to this newsletter don’t already know, but it’s worth a read. SF Gate, in general, does excellent work with a focus on San Francisco and the State of California.
Welcome to all of the new subscribers who came from the SF Gate piece. It means a lot to have had at least part of my story published in a San Francisco-based publication. I love that city and it's the place that really started the ball rolling—25 years ago—on this move to a better urban environment in Europe.
If you joined for free, now is the time to upgrade to a paid subscription so you can see everything we publish, including near-daily on-the-ground accounts from Spain. Starting in January, I’ll cover every detail of the move from the seemingly mundane to the most profound aspects. When you subscribe, consider a founding membership. I convert all founding memberships to comped lifetime subscriptions. Pay Today. Never Pay Again.
Here’s how I look at buying a lifetime subscription—
I plan to live to 100, which means 50 more years of the newsletter. But let’s say I only make it another 30 years :-)
*A $100 founding membership works out to $3.33 per year.
*A $250 founding membership works out to $8.33 per year.
*A $500 founding membership works out to $16.66 per year.
At 50 years, we’re talking $2, $5 and $10 annually!
It’s a good way to support the newsletter and my work as a freelance writer upfront and be here for the duration without a recurring subscription charge. It's also a great way to build a long-term community of like-minded people each on their own individual journeys.
Anyhow, here’s some of what I wrote at the end of our February 2023 trip to Spain and Italy. Later in this series, you’ll get to contrast this with what I wrote in February of this year. It’s interesting—to me, at least (!)—to see my thinking and understanding evolve.