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Recently Answered Questions

How reliable is the water supply in San Miguel de Allende? Are there water disruptions?

Greg Gunter - Dream Pro Homes

san miguel de allende water – Best Places In The World To Retire – International Living

Readers, this sounds like a home-buyer’s question! The city water supply has been very reliable for many years now, but the standard of construction is still to build an underground water cistern for each home so that, in the unlikely event the water is shut off to your street for a day’s worth of street repair, you still have several days of reserve water already available.

What are the best things to buy in Portugal as opposed to other places?

Carol Bartlett Ribeiro - Carol Bartlett Ribeiro, Property Consultant

My Portuguese cookbook and dishware – Best Places In The World To Retire – International Living

One of the best things to buy in Portugal is the Portuguese wine. Portuguese wine is not exported as much as in other places, which is a great shame because the wines here are really prize-winning and they are excellent.

Pastries are excellent as well. If you like codfish, that’s good here, but most foreigners don’t seem to like codfish. There’s a huge variety of things that you can buy. There’s silver Portugal, which is very...

If you want the “cheap and cheerful” things, there’s plenty of that as well.

And then you have what they call “custard tarts” which are in the Pastéis de Belém area (about half way between Lisbon Cascais, which is on the coast), and which is almost like a religion here. These are very good little custard tarts.

You really can get everything here in Portugal now and there are many countries that have what they call a “one-shop” where they’ve got mainly South African and British products from England. You’ve got a shop that is a Russian shop. There is an Ikea so the Swedes can get what they are missing from home.

It’s amazing that as small as Portugal is, when you’re down in the Alenteijo, which is an area that is just before the Algarve or even in the Algarve, the food is completely different. The area is different; it’s much more farm land. You have a lot of cork plantations there. As you start going up north, there as well, the food is different. Like any country, the pronunciations are different in the north of Portugal, but you have the same sort of things. You would have perhaps more lamb to eat down in Alenteijo than you would here. But Portugal is a bit of melting pot of everything. So at Christmas time, here they have the codfish on the 24th and then they’ll have turkey or lamb for the 25th and that’s pretty well all over now.

In addition to food, Portugal has arts and crafts. There’s a lot of very, very good pottery and china and porcelain. And, of course, what Portugal is very known for the hand painted tiles, a lot of which are antiques that are extremely expensive.

(Portuguese cookbook and tableware made and bought in Portugal, pictured.)

How's the golf in and around the Panama City, Panama area of Marbella?

EPA! Espanol Spokesperson - EPA Espanol en Panama

Marbella is an urban part of Panama City, Panama, and there are not golf courses.

What are the best reasons to retire overseas?

Valeria Espinoza - Gran Pacifica

One very good reason to retire overseas, based retirees enjoying at Gran Pacifica, Nicaragua – Best Places In The World To Retire – International Living

retirees enjoying at Gran Pacifica, Nicaragua – Best Places In The World To Retire – International Living

on my experience working with retirees moving to Nicaragua for the past 9 years, is to have a lower cost of living and a great quality of life "south of the border".

What's the overall cost of living in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua?

Daniel Snider - Snider's Realty Nicaragua

The cost of living per person, in San Juan Del Sur can be anywhere between US $1,000 and $2,000 per month. With $1,000 per month, you will able live a comfortable lifestyle and rent probably a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment or condo. That amount may also already include maid service, other types of amenities, and some nightlife. For $2,000 a month you could live a lavish or extravagant lifestyle.

For a married couple who are early retirees, they could live on around $2,000 plus per...

What are the construction standards in Corozal?

David Berger - Tradewinds Hospitality at Orchid Bay

Home in Orchid Bay resort, near Corozal, Belize – Best Places In The World To Retire – International Living

In Corozal, there’s everything from no standard to very high standard in construction. It’s very difficult to get an estimate of the cost to build something without knowing what they’re going to do because the standards for electricity are very strange here. Plumbing has very low standards here in Corozal. You have to reach out and find reputable builders, and you have to do some homework and ask people they’ve built for if they did their job well. Everyone...

Recently Posted Expat Stories

How To Become an International Pet Smuggler

I moved to Panama from Toronto in July, 2007, but the airline I flew on would not take my dog Roscoe -- something about the summer heat being too much for animals in the cargo hold. So I ended up having to ship Roscoe by a different airline to San Jose, Costa Rica (at three times the cost of my own flight), and of course I then had to drive from my new home in Panama to San Jose to pick him up.

Thus began, innocently enough, my career as an international...

Casco Viejo, "the Old City of Panama"

Casco Viejo, or “the Old City of Panama” French Embassy in Casco Viejo Panama City Panama – Best Places In The World To Retire – International Living

is the historic city center of Panama. It is a peaceful and charming district of narrow streets, accompanied by balconies full of the flowers of two and three-story houses. At its end is the French Park, a monument to the French builders who began construction of the Panama Canal, and the beautiful French Embassy, pictured here.

On the boulevard around the monument, visitors have a good view of Mirador Amador and the Bridge of the...

My First Trip to Panama

My first trip to Panama was an accident. I had originally planned a holiday in the Brazilian Amazon. I like tropical jungles – big, green, humid things with massive, towering trees, snakes, and animals whose names I do not know and cannot pronounce. The strangeness of jungles appeals to me – strange at least for someone like myself from the wintry reaches of Canada.

It was my habit to take a winter vacation around March, just when I could no longer stand the grey,...