My favorite thing to do on a Sunday in Ecuador is a trip to Baños. Not the major spa town in the central sierra…but the little village in the southern sierra, 15 minutes from Cuenca.
I’m in Cuenca, Spain, a provincial capital less than an hour by train from Madrid. For budding expats who dream of living in Spain, provincial cities like Cuenca are a great option.
Douglas Willis didn’t come to Cuenca, Ecuador, with the intention of retiring. When he arrived in 2007, it was with his wife Lisa, and their two children and they came as part of a volunteer program.
The Annual Global Retirement Index is 12 months in the making. Rivers of data, facts, figures, and numbers are crunched, analyzed, and distilled to a perfect list of, this year, the 23 best places to retire in the world.
I had been researching the prospect of retiring overseas for two or three years.I had targeted seven countries: France, Italy, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Uruguay, and Ecuador. I attended International Living’s Live and Invest Overseas Conference in Las Vegas last September, and all these countries were represented.
In this video, IL editor Glynna Prentice is at a tapas festival in Cuenca, Spain. Cuenca is less than 2 hours east of Madrid, and has a beautifully-preserved medieval center that is a World Heritage site.
If you live in Cuenca, Spain (the provincial capital) you can enjoy affordable, convenient small-town living…yet you’re as little as 45 minutes from central Madrid and its big-city action.
In this video, IL Mexico editor Glynna Prentice takes you on a tour of Cuenca, Spain, a medieval mountain city less than 100 miles east of Madrid. Cuenca is the capital of Cuenca province, which is in the central Spanish region of Castilla-La Mancha.
We’re considering a move to Ecuador at the end of this year, after our third child is born. Still weighing up all the options, but one city high on the list right now is Cuenca. I was in Ecuador a few weeks ago, visiting Quito, Cuenca, and some of the mountain towns and guild villages of the southern sierra. On this visit, I noticed something about Ecuador that you probably don’t get to hear about that often.
In Cuenca, Ecuador, you’ll find plenty of new-build condos a few blocks from centro. The two-story penthouse in this video is five blocks from centro, and is huge—the biggest apartment I’ve ever seen. It has three big bedrooms and two large terraces. You can see the view from the main terrace of the mountains that surround Cuenca. The asking price was $210,000.
We fell in love with Cuenca, Ecuador, South America’s city of festivals, because it had everything we had ever wanted in a home—warm friendly people, year-round pleasant weather, wonderful restaurants, live music everywhere, a sense of pride, and the invigorating challenges of living in a new culture and language that makes every day an adventure.
Just one year ago, my husband Bryan and I pondered our quandary. We needed a change. But here we were in our 30’s with a young daughter. How do you find more time to enjoy life when you have a family to raise and the cost of living continues to rise?
Back home at holiday season, I’d often hear people look back with regret… “Another year’s gone by and I’m still not where I want to be in life.”
Cuenca, one of the nicest cities in Ecuador, enjoys beautiful weather, great culture, and incredible lifestyle…but don’t forget to factor in the cost of living in Cuenca as well.
I saw the “revolution” news from Ecuador last Friday morning, October 1st. CNN’s coverage started off in typical fashion with these words: “Ecuador’s government appeared teetering on the verge of collapse Thursday…”
In Cuenca, Ecuador, your senses gorge themselves. It’s beautiful…with its blue-domed cathedral, red-tiled roofs and neatly kept parks.
In Cuenca, your senses gorge themselves. It’s beautiful… with its blue-domed cathedral, red-tiled roofs and neatly kept parks.
Cuenca, Ecuador is a jewel nestled in amongst the amazing beauty of the Andes Mountains…and is rated as one of the best places in the world to retire. After living here for the past year I can understand why.
Cuenca hit the top spot in International Living’s Retirement Index in February this year. …
The Costa Rican government wants to position Costa Rica as a true retirement haven and has declared retirement communities aimed at U.S. pensioners to be “of national interest.”
I’ll always think of Cuenca as the city where women wear pants and dogs wear skirts.
A friend says the ratio of women to men in Cuenca is 2:1, and everywhere you look you’ll see female shopkeepers, waitresses, salespeople, business owners, police officers, etc.
Wander along the cobblestone streets and through the manicured parks in Cuenca, Ecuador and it’s easy to imagine yourself thriving in this UNESCO World Heritage Site. A sea of red-tiled roofs pops against the blue sky. Ornate wrought-iron balconies cling to the colorful flat facades. Cuenca is one of the prettiest and liveliest cities in South America, known for its architecture, vibrant markets, and high-spirited festivals.
One of the most common questions we get from IL readers is: Where in the world is it easiest to retire or relocate? The answer? It depends.
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