Lincoln: it’s my alma mater, and hanging around that town is always pleasant. It’s close to family, too. DOWNSIDE: it doesn’t really have a year-round climate. Also, visits to Lincoln are kind of like a special dessert now. If I lived there, who’s to say I wouldn’t quickly tire of the place.
Bloomington: love that town. Great diversity for a college town of its size, and it’s a hotbed for my particular intellectual pursuits. DOWNSIDE: again with the climate. It’s also a site of rather heated class warfare; the gulf between people who came for the university and “townies” is as great as anywhere in the US.
Austin: the best American university town without a harsh winter. I’ve really never heard a harsh word spoken about the place. DOWNSIDE: I really don’t know the place, and I understand summers are brutal. Also, it’s in Texas. I might fit very well in Austin, but not so well anywhere close.
Chicago: I’ve always loved the place. Tremendous cultural opportunities, and the manners and culture are right in line with what I’ve grown up to expect. DOWNSIDE: again with the weather, and I’m used to cities much smaller.
Brisbane: the idea of moving to a place with tropical climate, European culture, and extremely appealing social mores has always intrigued me. I’ve never really thought of Australia as a place I’d like to vacation, but it would be a great place to live. DOWNSIDE: it’s Australia. Not sure I’d be ready for a complete cultural break.
So, like I said, I’d give them all a try, then settle into a home base.
I would have at least two houses. One on Salt spring Island with a view of the ocean, and the other would be somewhere in Southern Ontario close to my husbands family.
The Left Coast calls to me, but I would travel mostly. I think I would pick a small city to live in but make sure that I can get to a decent airport fairly easily. So I guess that leaves Sonoma out. Maybe Vancouver, WA.
One town over. There’s a former private school/camp for sale, approx 30 secluded acres. There’s a full gym (indoor basketball court), which I’d expand, a baseball field (for da kiddies), a human sized chess board outside, complete with pieces 2-3 ft high. I’d scrape the school building & build my mansion in it’s place.
Obligatory Joisey shore & Pocono mountain homes, an apartment in NYC (for weekends), maybe something in the islands, too.
Houses in Buenos Aires and Inverness; I’d spend summer at each. Leave at the end of summer, spend a month or two traveling, get to the other house as spring nears its end.
Since I hibernate and, conversely, sleep very little in the summer, it would mean a lot more waking hours. I’ve never been to Buenos Aires (the airport doesn’t count), but I speak both local languages (albeit not the local dialects), both places have good food, both are places where it’s easy for a Spaniard to obtain residency (for the UK I don’t even need to “obtain” it, just move).
Wait…Inverness, good food? Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed my time there, but it is not exactly a gourmet’s paradise. Now Oban, that had a good restaurant culture, but IIRC the best place I ate at in Inverness was a pie-and-chip place.
I wasn’t talking about restaurants; I don’t like restaurants. I’ll eat in a restaurant as part and parcel of “going out with people”, but I’d much rather eat at home. So, I was talking about good ingredients to cook at home.
Even if I’m eating out, I prefer “home-style” places to gourmet 100:1 - and that may be missing several zeros.
Even so, I’m a bit surprised…when I was in Inverness I stayed in a B&B which served home-cooked meals, and I don’t recall them as being particularly memorable.
It’s a place where I can find good ingredients in the supermarket to cook the kind of meals I like the way I like them. Unlike other places I’ve enjoyed living in but where I missed many of my preferred varieties. I’m talking about MY home cooking. I’ve lived in many places where I could not cook my own home cooking the way I like it, because the ingredients I wanted or the varieties I’m used to were not available, or were not available at acceptable prices. In Inverness, I can find my kind of peppers, my kind of potatoes, my kind of oranges, my kind of green beans…
Tough to say. I’d like to move to a warmer climate, but I do have some investment in staying close to friends and family here in Nebraska, and most of the warm spots in the US have a culture that I don’t care for. You may look down on Omaha, but at least it’s not Mississippi. And it damn sure isn’t Florida.
I would investigate living in Southern California, probably out in the Temecula area, or even further away from the crazy traffic. East Australia is tempting, too, especially Sydney or Brisbane. I might maintain homes in both Omaha and a southern city like Santa Fe. Were I truly stupid rich, I’d probably be travelling a lot anyway. I don’t think I’d like to live in London, but staying there a few weeks a year would be awful tempting.
We would move back to NYC, where my husband was born and raised, and I lived in or near for 25 years. We would buy an entire brownstone in the West Village, on or near Perry Street.
