So as a complement to OpalCat’s thread It’s nice to visit but I could never live there again, I thought I’d start the opposite thread. What are some places that you’ve lived in before, and have moved away from, but loved and would live in again if you got the chance?
Mine is Asheville, NC. My dad’s family is from there and we lived there off and on when I was a kid, and then I lived there as an adult for a couple of years. It’s sad to say that I didn’t appreciate it like I should have when I lived there, but now I yearn for it. Asheville is an awesome little city, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, smack in the mountains, and is at the same time hillbilly, artsy-fartsy new age, country, city, sophisticated, and redneck. Lately I’ve been conjuring up the feeling that occurs when you’re on the Parkway, just after a summer rainshower, when the sun comes back out. Ahh, it’s so nice there. I miss it tremendously, and I do plan on moving back- I’ve been trying to for about a year, so one day soon I will.
I would go back to Los Angeles in a flash. I only live in Austin because that’s where my husband wants to live. If the time comes that I have no husband I will move back to L.A. the next day.
Ithaca, NY. Like I said in the other thread, it’s an 11 out of 13 in my criteria. No other place is even better than a 9. Houses are even not very expensive, too (it’s the property tax that kills ya!)
Alameda, CA. We lived there for two years, and even though I knew that our time was finite in the US (Visa related), I cried for weeks before I left and for MONTHS after coming back. It didn’t help that we left the sunny climes of California and moved to Northern Manitoba in the dead of winter.
I loved the quiet little island city sandwiched between two big cities and would pack up and move back there tomorrow.
Falmouth Massachusetts. Dad was stationed at Otis Air Force base for nine glorious years. We moved off base and got a house in Falmouth just before they sent him to Viet Nam.
Cape Cod is such a wonderful place to live. I learned to swim at the beaches there. Still miss the cranberry bogs, beaches and homes. Cape Cod style houses are a unique architecture. The one down side is the winter snow. But the Cape is naturally sheltered from the worst of Massachusetts cold weather.
Oak Island, North Carolina. I hated it at the time, but after over a decade in Chillicothe, Ohio, I’d set my own pubes on fire for a chance to live back there. It’s amazing what living in Redneckistan will do for your perspective.
It has all of the amenities of a really big city but not so big that it takes forever to get anywhere or that parking is impossible.
It is a provincial capital and they keep it fairly clean and polished. Downtown is buzzing with activity and old buildings full of character are quaintly wrapped around the harbour.
Snow-capped mountain views across the Straight of Juan de Fuca into the US and the ocean is right there if you need it. Twice, I remember taking a ten-minute walk down to the shoreline and seeing whales playing right off shore. Whales.
Seattle and Vancouver aren’t too far away if you need a really big city.
Tokyo. And if I could also be 22 and single again but still know what I have learned now and also still be in the present, well, that would be beyond golden.
It was the best five years of my life, but that is not a very high hurdle to clear. I could have made so much more of it, and had more fun, too.
It was a lot easier to move there as a college student than it would be to move there with a family of six.
