I wanted to give you an update of our Valentine’s Day adventure in Florida. This trip materialized because Tod and I like to have some romantic adventure for Valentine’s Day. Someday, I will tell you about the year he bought me an exotic “frog” yes a FROG, named prince, but, that story is for another day. You all know we went to Ecuador to investigate retirement possibilities. When we returned we knew we would love to go back for vacation but Ecuador was just not right for what we wanted for a permanent retirement residence.

You know Tod, he started talking about the Azores for our next adventure in the great search for the perfect retirement location. To be honest, I did not even know where on this earth the Azores Islands were. Turns out they are located about 600 miles off the shores of Portugal.

I took a deep breath and calmly said, “Honey, what language do they speak there?” Everyone knows I have no aversion to moving half way across the world, but Portuguese? I don’t even know Spanish that well! How on earth am I going to learn Portuguese? I investigated the Azores and Tod was right, these islands sounded amazing and I knew we would Love them. The problem is, the practical side of me (yes I do have one) kept thinking about Tod’s consulting business and how that would require him to be traveling back and forth to the states. (The flights would be grueling if he had to do it on a regular basis not to mention that it would be challenging and expensive for any friends or family to visit us.) Hmmm, we had to come up with an acceptable plan B.

After a few days I said, “What about Florida? It would be easy to get to any major city in the US for work, easy for the kids to visit, golf courses, tropical weather, ocean sailing and beach access. Plus if we had to be someplace in an emergency, we would have quick easy access.” Tod was sold on that idea and ready to go to Florida the next weekend. He said, “I always wanted to checkout Punta Gorda” (I had never heard of it, big surprise. Not!) Tod continued, “That town has been on my radar since 1998.”

I said, “How about for Valentine’s Day weekend? We can have a get-away romantic weekend, play in the ocean, checkout the beaches and the town to see if it is anyplace we think we would like to retire.” That was it, the flights were scheduled and we were adding Florida to the list of potential retirement communities.

Tod started checking out real estate and wanted to checkout properties and Marinas, you know, just to get an idea of the market. The next thing I knew, we contacted a realtor about some listings he found and scheduled a full day of condo shopping on Friday February 12. And somewhere during all this, Tod found a few places on craigslist for sale by owner, so we scheduled to see one on Saturday in Burnt Store Marina and one on Sunday before we headed back to Dallas. (I don’t want to spend the entire trip checking out real estate – I want to swim in the ocean!)