Favorite Place to Live

Since I am complet[[ely unable to pick a favorite place and others have a similar problem, lets look at it another way.

Assuming sufficient money, where would you like to live for at least a year? (As many years as you like so you can pick more than one)

So while I like visiting Venice or NYC, I would absolutely not like to live there. I have moved 14 times since I've been married and have also traveled and spend a week or two at a time in a lot of places. I cannot say that I would go back to any of those places. Not that where I am now is perfect by any means. But I can't think of a place I'd rather be.

I see all the people on the HGTV shows who want to live on a beach. IMHO that's absolutely the WORST place one could live. The first bad storm and - whoops there goes your house. I'd as soon live on the San Andreas Fault.

Quoting greatgrandmaR

The first bad storm and - whoops there goes your house.

That does rather depend on the quality/build of the house and the severity of the storm.

Although I know plenty of people that live next to rivers or beaches and they do say that the enjoyment factor is weather driven.
Somewhere (like say Skegness or Frinton ) where the weather is generally cold and very windy for a large part of the year wouldn't be enough to justify the few weeks when it was an idyllic location.

I'd certainly give Hua Hin and maybe Phuket a year each.
I could also say the same of a few places in Malaysia (Pangkor) and India (Kerala especially) as well.
But I'd use them as a base to travel the area, rather than want to spend all 12 months in each place.
Beyond that, I really don't know.

Somewhere along Glebe Point Road in Sydney.

Victoria (Vancouver Island).

Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. (The only place where it isn't cultural / city-life aspects to keep me in place for a full year, but nature and The View.)

I already lived in Melbourne for half a year, but I wouldn't mind tacking on another half year. Ditto Auckland.

If I also spoke the language fluently, there's a bunch of cities in Andalucia which'd appeal for October through March. I could probably stand to combine them with Helsinki from April through September.

Possibly Stockholm year-round? I like it there both in summer and winter, but I don't know if I could endure the grey months in between.

Maaaaybe Hobart, Tasmania. I can't really say; I was there too short to be confident about it.

That's funny. We lived a couple city blocks from the San Andreas Fault for 20+ years and loved it there. Yes, we had constant earthquakes but most were very tiny and the larger ones were no real problem because they now build to withstand them. Our worst damage was when a stone carving on a shelf fell into a box of Kleenex. A most fortunate place for it to land . . . (I did fasten it down with museum sticky stuff after that.) We moved north in California for several reasons, smog, fires and family and love it here too.

We spent a month in Paris for our 50th anniversary and I would cheerfully live in Paris for a year. I think I could spend a year in the Loire Valley somewhere near Montrichard and another year in the Dordogne near Cenac-et-Saint-Julien. Perhaps a final year near Mollégès in Provence and then I'd be happy to come home to California which I absolutely love.

I lived in California for two years in the Monterey area. My husband did not like the climate (fog) but I had a good time there. I would like to back to visit, but I wouldn't go back to live because of the political climate, and also I really don't care for earthquakes as you can't really predict them.

If I were younger, my choice of a place to live would probably be a lot different. At the moment my greatest need is access to doctors that I trust, and helpful friends - more than beauty of the location or friendly people or things to do/places to go. If I did not consider that, I think I could live for a year in Cornwall, Bermuda, or Barbados

My third daughter's in-laws have three sons. They have chosen to move to the location where my son-in-law is living rather than to live near the other two sons. They moved from Charlottesville VA to Maryland, to Frisco Texas and are now in the Houston area, following him. I think this is a good decision on their part.

I have visited a lot of places I would love to visit again but as for living I can't say any have particularly sparked my interest. I would stay longer in places to visit an area more thoroughly, but I think if you set yourself up to live somewhere it will probably leave you disillusioned with a place. You lose the travellers' rose tinted glasses.

My cousin loves France visited all the time so a couple of years ago she decided to move to Paris for at least a year and ended coming back after seven months. She said while visiting Paris was enchanting living there she was exposed to cultures and a tedious bureaucracy that took the shine of the place. In saying that my mother's cousin went for a year long contract teaching French in Tahiti and nearly four decades on is still there

If I had the money to do that and no responsibilities throughout that year, I'd try out the following:

1. Applecross Peninsula, Scotland (I even know the house I would pick!)
2. Zennor Head, Cornwall (again, the house is already there, but quite likely unaffordable)
3. Edam, the Netherlands (just a lovely, quintessentially Dutch small town)
4. NYC / London / Copenhagen (great cities that I would love to spend more time in)
5. a small, not overcrowded Greek island (half a year over the winter would be enough)

I suppose I'd want to try out all those places where, when visiting, I was overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of them. That would add a lot more to this list, though...

I'm a city person when it comes to living (the countryside is great for visiting but I like the convenience and bustle of a city around me) so my 'where to live' favourites would be very different from my 'take a trip' ones. I've always fancied trying a year living in NYC, San Francisco or Paris, and I also liked Cuenca in Ecuador (great foodie scene and geared for ex-pats because quite a lot of Americans retire there, apparently). If I were looking at a smaller town I'd head for Italy.

Mine is southern Spain, where I have lived for some years now. I live on the edge of a small town, near the shops. A 4 km beach is several minutes walk away.

The trouble is that the town fills up with Spaniards, come summer, which is why I live on the edge of town, away from almost all of them.

I would have expected Spaniards in Spain. It is their country.