A PLACE THAT IS "PERFECT" FOR YOU...

Since a very young age, I have always loved traveling, and discovering new cultures, new traditions and new ways of living has always fascinated me. I believe that traveling opens up your mind and makes you see your world in a different light, makes you less rigid and more open to accept different points of view.

In the past fifteen years I have lived in six different places and, although I have always been excited about moving to a new city, I learned that to visit a place and to call it your home are two very different things.

When you are a tourist in a city everything seems beautiful. You spend your days enjoying yourself, visiting museums, sightseeing, going to great restaurants, reading, relaxing with your loved ones… but you have to remember that locals experience a very different life. They wake up at the sound of an alarm, rush to work either in traffic or on overcrowded public transportation, come home at night exhausted and experience day after day pretty much the same way. I have lived most of my life in Italy, one of the most beautiful countries in the world, then for three years in London, then in another wonderful city, Toronto, then for a few months in L.A. and then in a beautiful part of Pennsylvania, before moving to sunny Florida. And I can tell you that living in Italy is very different than visiting it. It’s not at all what you might experience while renting a beautiful villa in Tuscany or visiting beautiful places or eating at an incredible restaurant overlooking a beautiful valley or the ocean or a Greek ruin. I can tell you that living in London is great in many ways because of what you can have access to (shows, museums, restaurants, shopping…), but it’s very hard because most days are grey, rainy, it gets dark in the middle of the afternoon and you need to take the overcrowded tube to move around. I can tell you that Toronto is an amazing city, but it gets so crazy cold that, unless you are not bothered by super freezing temperatures, you are going to hate just stepping out of your house to go anywhere. I can tell you that L.A. is an exciting city, but I believe a very hard one to raise kids in. And that sunny Florida is great in many ways, with the ocean and sunshine most days, but some people don’t know how to drive and when the snowbirds are around it will take you forever to go from place to place…

Over the years, and through my personal experiences, I have come to the conclusion that the perfect place doesn’t exist, that your priorities change and that what’s important to you at some stage in your life might be different later on and that you might want to move throughout the years to different places. I realize that what’s important to me in this phase of my life, with young kids to cater for, is the quality of my daily life. I know that I don’t do well in a colder climate because I get affected by the greyness and low temperature, and that sunshine and closeness to the water feed my soul and keep me going; I have learnt that I would rather spend my time driving in traffic than taking crowded public transportation and that when you have clarity of what you want your life to be like, you can make it happen… It might take you some time, possibly years, like for me, but if you figure out where your “perfect place” is, you can make choices and drive your life to get there. But remember, even your “perfect place” won’t be perfect after all, but it will be “perfect” for you!