Paris. My favorite city.
Well, I think I would have to choose Honolulu with long visits to other places. It has the narrow temperature range I’m used to and agrees with my picky body, great food, nice people and gorgeous views.
I’m just a small sample, but everyone we know who did an ex-pat retirement to another country has returned. That includes Mexico, Panama, Belize and France. It was great for a few years, but they missed the good old USA.
If I couldn’t live in Tennessee I guess it would have to be Denver or Greenville, SC.
Aside from a 2 year stint in DC when I was in grad school, I’ve never lived where it snows and can’t imagine living anywhere cold at this stage in my life. So, while I love the idea of the adventure of moving somewhere exotic/very different, that weather issue eliminates a whole lot of options. We have been fortunate to travel extensively and, while we’ve loved many of the places (i.e. Vietnam, South Africa, Thailand), I wouldn’t want to relocate to any of them.
When I started reading this post, I thought of Santorini because it’s one of the most beautiful and serene places I’ve ever seen but I don’t think I’d want to live there permanently. I think Honolulu hits a sweet spot of a city, a university which brings an element and features I’d want, along with beautiful weather and the ocean. While I love Italy, I don’t think I’d want to reside there permanently either. I think I’m just a happy bay area resident! What I miss is a warm water beach so, if I could find good weather year round, lots of culture (theater, art, etc.), a nearby university, a liberal community and friendly people, maybe I’d be tempted to move but I have no idea where that would be!
It’s funny that millions want to come here and so many of us want to leave.
Like all those international grads who are begging for a chance to stay.
Maybe we can arrange a formal swap program to help make room for those who risk everything to come here.
To have lived in place that offered me an opportunity to educate my children so wonderfully and still.have a enough money to move away - blessed fortune in my book.
Also the ability to freely move if we like, not always the case.
Canada’s great though. I get it. But it’s a big place and it’s been around as long as we have - wonder why we have the 360mm people?
Perhaps our complex problems and unique freedoms that sometimes lead to such dissatisfaction among so many here - would be transferred elsewhere if we had so few citizens as and all those natural resources too.
I prefer to travel. Love different cultures. But it is rare that I’m not happy to get home at the end of my journey.
I think we have a beautiful and wondrous country with so much to offer. So many places to see and live in perhaps.
Perfect doesn’t exist except in the mind.
The problem with a formal swap program is it isn’t the same countries - at least - not for the most part. I’ve yet to see anyone list Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala (in the poverty areas for those three anyway), Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc, etc, etc as places they’d like to go and spend a year or longer.
In school I’ve yet to see any refugees or immigrants (legal or illegal) from the areas we’re considering going to. When we have exchange students from some of the countries listed, they are always ready to go home after their year here.
Why do we have more people than Canada? Winter! When we’re south for the winter, in the US or other countries, we often wonder if anyone is left back in Canada running the country. 
Ah…but there’s southern British Columbia, which in my opinion has very pleasant winters that are very much like my own. 
@doschicos. Good point about Canada. And the swap program was just to make room here for everyone. We are free to choose the leaving destination - Greece, an island, France, Tuscany and other magical places are all open on the outbound leg.
Doesn’t t sound so bad when I say it out loud actually.
the Big Island of Hawaii, IF I had the $$ to be able to afford it.
I guess because of chronic health issues, an ideal location for me to live would include excellent or at least pretty good medical care. Some more remote places may not have many/any specialists. As I get older, good medical care is increasingly important to me.
No matter where I lived I would always be American. If I lived in another country I’m sure I’d always be on the internet checking our what’s going on at home. So probably should just stay here.
For those of you who can’t imagine living in Canada because of the weather, then I’m guessing that you couldn’t live in the upper third of the U.S. either because our Toronto weather is pretty much the same. And we get far less snow than many U.S. cities. Canada isn’t the frozen wasteland that many Americans think! 
My young hairdresser asked the same question at a recent appointment and I answered, “right here” and she reponded, “no - really where?”
No matter where we lived, I was always a Southerner with an accent. I remember being eleven or twelve, standing outside, looking around and thinking I have got to get out of here asap. If the internet had existed, I’d have probably been on the other side of the world the next week. I got my wish and lived far away places for almost my entire adult life, but now I’m back in the south, in a middle of nowhere rural community, living in my dream house… an antique restored exactly to my specifications, under my supervision.
I hang out with other older southerners, back home after living in NYC, CA, Asia ,Europe, etc. All of us in this middle of nowhere rural paradise. Most of them live on family land. All of us intend to die here and be buried on our property. We all have some regrets about leaving in the first place, because we have to acknowledge that made us part of the problem, not the solution. And so we are doing our best to make up for lost time.
We are traveling far away for a few months and it makes me more than a little homesick. We have barred owls, too. Probably they are wondering where I am.
@alh I always say “I was born in the South and I got back as fast as I could!”
Others around during our southern winters, if not from Canada, are from the northern US states. Oodles upon oodles of people migrate like birds if they are able to (nicknamed snowbirds). Even on our regular trips from PA to the NY/ON border we see plenty both in the fall and spring. The only thing that changes is the direction they are going.
Not nearly so many opt to spend summers in the boiling heat. We won’t either. We lived in FL for five years and that was plenty.
We’ve mused that our most ideal migration would have us going from PA to “south” after the last leaf falls - usually in early Nov, then from “south” to PA in mid March to catch the gorgeous spring flowers on our migration north. Sometime in June we’d head up to the Canadian maritimes and return to PA as the leaves turn.
Wildebeest and other critters follow grass. We’d be following flowers/leaves and 50-80 degree temps.
Since life is rarely ideal, we plan to get south from Jan - Mar. We spend a bit of time further north in the summer as even PA gets into the mid 80s to lower 90s.
We’re totally unsure yet if we want to buy/own places that we rent when we’re not there (been talking with people who have done this successfully as investments) or keep investing elsewhere and meander to different spots as we love doing. It will all depend upon the world/country economics, politics, and what our kids see themselves doing at that time. They are 100% “in” on our discussions and add their own thoughts.
I don’t see myself as solely “American.” I see myself as a citizen of Planet Earth and a member of my faith. Which country (or state, city, town, etc) I’m in is really irrelevant to me. Our kids feel similarly. It’s merely a “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” sort of alignment for taxes and laws, etc.
I would not choose to live in the upper third of the US again. I grew up in the Philadelphia area, went to college in Indiana and spent 5 total years in Chicago before I discovered Texas and then Tennessee. The cold weather we get is plenty for me. I do love Colorado, but the winter season is just too long.
“summers in boiling heat”
My first August back in the south, an old friend looked at me wearing a sweater and asked, “How long do you think it will take you to thaw out?”
I really like the greenery of our Pacific Northwest and the mild climate pretty much without weather extremes. We have no poisonous snakes on this side of the mountains, a small tornado that touched down made major news because it is such a rarity, and the Big One… if it hits, we are all screwed anyway. Of course, I probably jinxed us now. So don’t move here, people!
Actually, I’m glad different people prefer to live in various areas. It makes it far easier to travel and see the planet when there are local people and services around!