Why Spain? Why Toledo?

As mentioned in my previous post, we are frequently asked why we chose Spain, and specifically Toledo, when we decided to move abroad after retirement. We had been talking for years about moving to Mexico after we retired, and after some exploration of the colonial cities, had decided on Guanajuato, which is the capitol of the state where San Miguel Allende is located. Unfortunately, Mexico is going through a rough period now, and although we believe Guanajuato to be quite safe, getting there was becoming more problematic since we normally travel there by bus, and some of the areas we would have to travel through are not so safe. So, reluctantly we started looking for somewhere else to start out our life as expats. (We still hope to get to live there someday!)

We wanted somewhere where we could use our Spanish, since that is our best second language, and so we were thinking about Central or South America, but since we were traveling to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrim route right after retirement, John suggested thinking about Spain. Of course I loved the idea, but I had my doubts whether we could afford to live in Europe, but we agreed to look around while we were in Spain and see what the cost of living was like. We left for a couple of months in Spain in August of 2014, and after having to leave the Camino after only a couple of weeks due to the heat and my feet problems, we had plenty of time to explore the idea of living in Spain. We made a pretty extensive circuit through south central Spain, and discovered to my surprise that the cost of living here is quite reasonable.

So then of course the question was where to live. During our six weeks of exploration we had visited Cuenca (recommended by the International Living magazine publication on Spain), Granada, Malaga, Antequera, Sevilla, Cordoba, and Toledo. When we went back to Texas we had a short list of Cuenca, Antequera (a small but charming city close to Malaga) and Toledo. In the end, as you know, we chose Toledo, partially because it was so close and accessible to Madrid (it's about 50 minutes by bus depending on traffic, and considerably less than that on the high speed train) and partially because it is just so charming and historic. We felt that the accessibility to Madrid was important not only because all the transportation hubs in Spain center on Madrid, but also because we knew John would want to play music here, and we didn't know if he would find a group in Toledo to play with. As it turned out, he has had plenty of opportunities to play here in Toledo, but it has been nice for them to also be able to go up to Madrid to play occasionally.

We are very happy we chose Toledo. We love living in the "Casco", as the historic district is called, and we have gradually found a circle of friends, (or as John calls his musical friends, his tribe) here.