Retiring to Sardinia

[SardiniaBound]

I'm not in a position to travel to Sardinia for at least a year but fell in love with it online and reckoned it would be perfect to retire to.

Would love to hear opinions of people who have been or who live there.

Huge amounts of dumped rubbish beside the roads.......

I went 20 years ago so i dont know how it is now. Reality is often very different to online curated content.

Complications of Brexit too.

Ha - I’ve been having fantasies about retiring to Corsica (I speak French but no Italian)

In reality I rather suspect both islands are quite suspicious of incomers. Not sure what this is based on but just a feeling.

Also not sure what they’d be like in winter.

I lived in Corsica when I was a kid (I am a dual national British/French) and visited Sardinia too.

Be aware that it gets really, really hot in the summer.

Beautiful scenery though and some nice food.

Also it is lively in the spring and summer with lots of tourists but very quiet the rest of the year.

Honestly I think those are nice places to visit but I would never want to live there again. There was a lot of anti-French issues when I was there and Corsica has had its fair share of terrorist activity because of it. Obviously this is not an issue in Sardinia.

People can be quite parochial. At least that was the case when I was there and not accepting of people from other ethnic backgrounds and the LGBTQ+ community. Bluntly probably not an issue if you are a white British straight woman, harder to fit it if you are not...

Also the islands can feel quite isolated from the rest of the world so you need to fly out to France or Italy first because you can travel to another country for a holiday.

OP I would look at mainland South or France or Italy instead.

Do you have an EU passport? Otherwise you need a minimum 32k euros passive income for an Elective Residency Visa, and you are not allowed to do any other paid work. Plus 30k of insurance cover.

@Cattreesea

Also the islands can feel quite isolated from the rest of the world so you need to fly out to France or Italy first because you can travel to another country for a holiday

I don't understand what you mean by this paragraph ? Why would you need to fly to Italy first ?

'@ShinyAppleDreamingOfTheSea · Yesterday 22:38

Also the islands can feel quite isolated from the rest of the world so you need to fly out to France or Italy first because you can travel to another country for a holiday
I don't understand what you mean by this paragraph ? Why would you need to fly to Italy first ?'

I mean that there are very few international flights flying directly out of or to Corsica for example.

So if you want to go to England, Germany, Spain or anywhere else from Corsica you need to fly to a French airport first then get your international flight from Nice, Marseille or Paris to your destination.

Makes travelling more expensive and time consuming.

This is a good point - there are lots of flights in the summer holiday season but they dry up off season

Yes that's a good point @minipie . I was clarifying what @Cattreesea meant as I know there are several flights to Sardinia from the UK - but I visited in September and it makes sense they may stop in the winter.

You say you fell in love with it online, but have you ever actually visited? If not that is surely your starting point.

I went last year briefly. It was lovely but on the basis of that short visit I wouldn’t be retiring there. Ho and spend some time there, but also check how it would work post Brexit. I’m incredibly lucky to have an EU passport but know of many others who’ve had to change retirement plans.

I went last April, it was sunny then but still quite chilly, night times were cold! I'm going again at the end of June, it will be very hot then. We are staying with friends who have bought a holiday home there, they don't go in the winter as the house doesn't have central heating.