Retiring to Italy—it’s a dream for many people.
But what about for a single man who has sole custody of his small grandchild?
On Episode 551: How to Retire to Florence—with Your Granddaughter we’re joined by longtime listener Dreck Baker. He’s not your typical retiree expat. A retired police officer, Dreck had dreamed of settling in Italy for many years, but rather than seeing his grandbaby as a hindrance to this plan, he was even more inspired to make his expat dreams real when he envisioned their life in Florence together.
Hear about the challenges and rewards Dreck and his granddaughter have faced in their first six months in Florence, from legal paperwork to finding a home, from navigating the language barrier to enrolling a foreign child in Italian kindergarten.
You can listen right here, or find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and elsewhere.
Related Episodes:
Episode 468: Florence, Memories, and A Room with a View
Bittersweet Moment #195: What Else to See in Florence
Episode 33: PARENTS (with Linda Martinez and Steve Brenner)
Here are 5 key points from the episode:
- Dreck Baker, a retired police officer from Texas, moved to Florence, Italy with his 6-year-old granddaughter in January 2023 to pursue his retirement dream.
- While he enjoys aspects of life in Florence like the walkability, architecture, and sense of safety, he faces challenges with the language barrier and adjusting to a different lifestyle.
- Baker is raising his granddaughter full-time, which has significantly altered his original retirement plans and limited his freedom in Italy.
- He’s experiencing practical difficulties like smaller living spaces, lack of familiar appliances, and limited social connections in Florence.
- After 5 months in Italy and a summer back in Texas, Baker plans to return to Florence for at least another year, but is uncertain about staying long-term if he can’t fully enjoy the retirement experience he envisioned.
Full Episode Transcript:
Introduction
Welcome to Rome. This is The Bittersweet Life with Katy Sewall and Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Hello, this is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall. Tiffany is away this week, but I am joined by Dreck Baker. He is a longtime listener and supporter of the show, a retired police officer from Texas who recently and successfully relocated to Florence, Italy, along with his granddaughter. Thanks so much for talking to me.
Dreck
Oh, thank you for having me, Katy.
Katy
I mean, I’ve wanted to have you on for years, so I’m excited that we’re finally doing this.
Dreck
Excited to be a part of it. I’ve been listening for many years. Big fan.
Katy
I want this conversation. I want to talk about both the dream and the reality of your journey to live in Italy.
Dreck
Sounds good.
Katy
Maybe we should start with the most basic question, which is why Italy and why did you want to retire there?
Dreck
I still don’t have a really good answer to that question. I started out about twelve years ago, and with the job I had with the Houston Police Department, I was able to technically retire after 20 years in 2012. And leading up to that, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my future, what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, if I was going to stay with the department or if I was going to try something else. I had looked into some other job paths and nothing really worked out. And to be honest, I had never been to Italy. I think I had been to Europe once. I had been to Paris for like three days. And I just decided that since I had done all the things in my life that my grandparents would have expected me to do. So I was married. I was married to the mother of my children. I graduated from college. I had a career. I bought a house. I had the normal, traditional life that, you know, everything, not necessarily in the order that they would have suggested, but it all, it all came through and supposed to do. And I just decided I was going to do something different with the second part of my life or the third part of my life, maybe. And it just kind of occurred to me that I was going to move to Italy.
Katy
Wow. Did it occur to you to move to Italy with having still never visited Italy? Had you been there before when you moved.
Dreck
When I moved, yes.
Katy
Okay.
Dreck
But when I. When I decided no. So in the. In the interim ten years, I think I had been four times. I first went to Rome, and then I went to Florence. Then I went to Florence and Venice, and then I went to Sorrento, Positano, and Naples. The fourth time, just before COVID I think. So I had been four times, maybe a total of 25 days.
Katy
Okay.
Dreck
20 to 25 days I had spent there. All that was after I decided I was going to move.
Katy
Wow.
Dreck
And I spent those days there. I decided nothing changed my mind, and so I went forward with it.
Katy
Yeah. Do you have any recollection of, like, why, when you were, like, I want to move somewhere different. I want to do something different. Why it was Italy that you kind of landed on, rather than, say, like, France or Spain or somewhere else?
Dreck
Not particularly. I think I had always liked the sound of the language, and I. I think I had always liked the. The combination of history and it could be. I’ve tried to think about it a lot. It could be that around that time, there was several movies and things that came out that were Italy based. And it may have just gotten in the back of my head that it was a thing that I could do, and it just got stuck there.
Katy
I love that. Okay, so you go. Having been there for maybe 25 days, how long have you actually lived there now?
Dreck
I moved in mid January of this year, and then I came back to the states in June, late June. So basically about five months.
Katy
Okay. All right. I mean, I want to ask you immediately, even though I want to do the journey of how you got there. What’s your overall impression so far? Five months in, you know, obviously, you’re going back. You told me you’re going back in a few days, so it’s not. It’s not like you got to the point where you wanted to toss in the towel. What’s your five month point of view?
Dreck
Five months in. I love Florence. I love Florence as a city, as a place to have things to do. It’s a beautiful place to walk around and. And just be immersed in the architecture. When I started college, I was an architecture major. That didn’t work out, but I still love architecture, and I love the art and the history and this kind of the lifestyle of having everything closer to you than things are here in the US. Here in the US, here in Texas, outside Houston, you can’t do everything or anything without a vehicle. And in Florence, I can. We don’t have a car there. We don’t have any sort of transportation. We either walk or take the bus. And so I like that life is closer. The things that you want to do are more accessible.
Katy
Yeah. Okay, boy. So let’s, let’s get into, like, some of the practical stuff also. Um, so some people, like when in your introduction, I said that you went with your granddaughter, and some people might be thinking, oh, your granddaughter must be in her, like, what, teens or twenties? But no, she’s seven years old.
Dreck
Almost seven.
Katy
Almost seven.
Dreck
Nine days. Okay, next Saturday.
Katy
She’s almost seven years old. So you have moved. I mean, it’s just such an atypical retirement story. You’ve moved to Rome to retire, but yet you have a child who’s what, going into 1st, 2nd grade somewhere in there.
Dreck
Second grade. She’s going to second grade.
Katy
Yeah. Okay.
Dreck
So it’s my daughter’s daughter. They had lived with me for the last several years, and a couple of years ago, we just decided that it would be better if she stayed with me and I raised her. So I went through the legal process of becoming her conservator. And basically that means, like, her guardian to give me the legal rights to make her decisions and for her to live wherever I choose and go to school where I choose. And so after I had retired in 2022 and she was with me, she just became part of my journey. And so instead of giving up the dream, I just decided to take her with me.
Katy
I mean, I think that’s what’s so remarkable is that you could have had a pause and been like, well, I guess Italy is out of the question. And I really love that you didn’t do that, that you actually were like, no, Italy’s still in play and this could be really fun for her. Go somewhere else.
Dreck
Yeah, I think it’s going to be. I think if she, she gets homesick a bit, but I think that the total change in culture will be really good for her and her. She goes to elementary school, it’s an international school, so they actually do kindergarten through high school. But at her elementary school, I believe that they had students from 31 or 32 different countries. And so. So that’s different ideas, it’s different languages, it’s different cultural dress when they, you know, they wear uniforms, but when they’re allowed to, it’s just different personalities and obviously the walkable city. She loves to take the public bus for whatever reason. She really likes to. Are we gonna take the bus? And so she likes, she’s used to getting used to public transportation and she likes to walk to the river. And we can do that. We can make it, you know, from our apartment to the river in there. In Florence, we usually will take the bus to do that, but we can be there in 2030 minutes between going to the bus stop, taking the bus, and then a little bit of a walk or what have you, and then we come back through the center, and it’s all the giant churches and the Claire’s that she likes to go to for her necklaces and whatnot, her jewelry and scrunchies and things like that. We detour like that, and we may go get lunch. And I think it’s gonna be great for her just to have a whole different experience than just the same one that she might have had. Even if it’s a good one that you had here, it’s just the same thing. This will be a really good change with you.
Katy
Saying that, you know, where Claire’s is in Florence is just funny to me in a way, because you’re basically getting. You’re seeing the opposite of things, maybe, that you would choose to see. Are you also able to get. Get her into an art gallery or into those big churches or.
Dreck
Yes, not as often as I would probably like. But she’s six and gets grumpy and tired, and so I have to kind of pace the timing of things a lot so that she’s been fed and rested and has the energy to do things and won’t be too fussy before it’s over.
Katy
Yeah. All right. So you’re obviously spending more time in the apartment than you would probably like. I mean, I’m well familiar with Italian apartments and how small they can be, how awkward they can be laid out sometimes because of the way the building is constructed in an ancient time. What sort of space did you guys end up in?
Dreck
It took us several months to find an apartment, but when we did find an apartment, it’s not really small, necessarily. It’s a three bedroom, two bath apartment. The apartment has three wall units for air conditioning. So it’s in the kitchen, her bedroom, and the third bedroom, which is not the one that I actually sleep in. So I may have to be switching bedrooms to that one, because it’s been close to 100 degrees every day since the beginning of July in Florence. So it’s pretty hot over there this summer. We have radiators for heat, which I hadn’t lived in a place with radiators in about almost 50 years.
Katy
Yeah.
Dreck
Since I lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, we had radiators. We had radiators back in the early seventies and I haven’t had radiators since then. We don’t have a washer or dryer. There’s a space for a very narrow washing machine, like 45. Was trying to find one that’s closer to 60, but I can’t find one. And a 45 centimeter wide washing machine is very little.
Katy
Yeah.
Dreck
So I would really be washing clothes almost every day.
Katy
Yeah.
Dreck
Just a little bit at a time. So I have to walk to the laundromat to do laundry every week. We don’t have a tub. Both bathrooms have stand up showers. We have a single linear kitchen. So one side is the stove and in the middle is the single sink. Whereas here at my house in Texas, I have a double sink in the kitchen. And then there’s a refrigerator and the cabinetry is nice, but it’s. Everything’s narrow. So the refrigerator is about one third the size that I have because it’s more narrow. It’s refrigerator over freezer and it’s not as deep. So everything is compressed.
Katy
Yeah.
Dreck
I can’t buy as much food. I can’t keep as much food and I have to go back more often to buy food and I have to walk to get that also because again, we don’t have a car. So I have to take my same little cart and roll it to the coop and do my shopping. And it has to be enough to last a few days but not so much that I can’t take it all home. And I, you know, I roll it home in time to basically put it up and then go pick her up from the bus stop.
Katy
Yeah. I was going to ask if you were taking her along on all these journeys or if you’re doing it while she’s away.
Dreck
Yeah, I do it while she’s at school. I get up early in the morning and I drop her off at the bus stop at about 740 and then I have essentially 8 hours. So I try to run most of my errands while she’s at school. That way, after school we have time to either be together, go to the park, do her homework, or just let her relax a bit after a day of school.
Katy
Yeah. One thing Tiffany and I have talked about a lot is the reality of living in Italy versus visiting Italy. It can be a wildly different thing to be there as a visitor for two weeks than to live there for five months like you have done. Do you find yourself sort of enjoying the adventure of it or are you starting to notice the things that are irritating about it or how are you feeling about this brand new and extremely different lifestyle than the one you were leading in Texas.
Dreck
So the thing about it is that my life is more like it was here than I expected it to be. Before we left, I still had to get up early and take her to school before we left. I still had about an eight hour day before I had to go get her from school. So all that’s the same. Obviously, here at home, I have more space. I have more rooms. I have a big workshop out back where I have a lot of tools that I’ve had to put down, maybe permanently, which is shocking to me because I was really getting into using them a lot, and now I’m not. Because in Italy, not only is there no space to keep the tools, there’s no space to use the tools. And anything electric I couldn’t plug into the walls anyway. So, you know, unless I take up, like, carving or whittling or something, I’m really at a loss temporarily for being able to keep up my. My woodworking and my working with those kind of tools. I didn’t cook as much here as I do there, but I still provide the same meals here. My granddaughter, I was able to take more of a break from her every week or two, and she would go see her mother or see her grandmother and maybe spend the night or at least the afternoon. Whereas there in Italy, we don’t have anybody. I didn’t have any friends when I moved over there. You know, some of the other parents at the school are nice people, and we get along well, but we’re not friends yet, and I I don’t have it. You know, they’re nothing. Babysitter friends, for the most part. And we don’t have any family there, so it’s just us together all the time. So that’s a bit different. Like, here, I don’t have a lot of great friends on my block, but at least I know my neighbors. Whereas my apartment building, three floors, each one is a single apartment owned by a different person. So I don’t even really have any neighbors. They’re neighbors, but you don’t really ever see them. It’s not like you pass each other in the hallway or we don’t have yards.
Katy
I have two conflicting questions in my head, and one is, like you were saying, you know, you’ve only been there five months. Of course you have to be patient, but have you found it to be sort of lonely?
Dreck
Uh, the thing is, I don’t really get lonely. I really like being alone. I can go a whole day or I used to be at a get off work and come home on the weekend, and this is before anybody else lived with me. And I could come home on Friday and really not talk to anybody else. And I go back to work on Monday, so I don’t really get lonely. So that’s not a problem. But it’s more of the, the language problem. And I don’t, I don’t know. I’m not good at Italian yet. I say yet.
Katy
I like that.
Dreck
I’m convinced I’m good. I convinced I’m gonna get there.
Katy
Mm hmm.
Dreck
I’m not. I don’t speak Italian well yet, but that’s okay. I understand that. That’s on me. The problem is when you kind of need to have a conversation about something, it’s easy enough to go to the grocery store. You don’t have to talk to anybody. You can just pick up what you want. You go half the time. I can go to the self checkout, and I don’t have to talk to anybody the whole time I’m in there. But if I want to go get a sandwich or something on the way back to my apartment, then I have to go in. I would prefer to be able to identify the sandwich by the right name or what’s inside or what they call it, because it doesn’t matter if I call it a sandwich. If they’re calling it something else. I mean, they know what I mean. But that’s, I’m in Italy. I should speak Italian. So it makes me hesitant to stop, and I’ll just keep on walking. Or the washing machine thing. It would be fairly straightforward to just go buy a washing machine. Like, okay, this will fit. But because the connections are different from what I’m used to here, I need to talk to the salesperson. Maybe showing pictures on my phone of, well, this is what I have will disconnect to it, and this is how big my space is. Do you think there’s a way to make a bigger one fit or arrange the delivery and explain that I live on the first floor for the delivery purposes? All that becomes harder if you don’t speak the language. And so it makes it easier for me to just, well, that’s okay. I’ll worry about it.
Katy
Some of it’s so funny, like, hearing you’d say that, because I was just thinking, like, yeah, I had the exact same thing when I was living there. I saved so much money that year because I, like you said, some things are just impossible to do. You know, you just don’t do that. Exactly that. You walk past the sandwich shop instead of stopping.
Dreck
Yeah. When we first got there, and I was trying to figure out how to use the bus. Now, that kind of thing happens when you’re a tourist and you’re only there for a few days. You want to take the bus, you want to go somewhere, but you’re not sure of where’s the bus stop? Yeah, but you can’t really ask anybody, where is the bus stop? If you don’t know where and you don’t know, like, buses, you could say bus. Even if you don’t say autobus, you could say bus, and they’ll know what you’re talking about. But if you just say bus stop, it doesn’t translate and certainly not where is, if the person doesn’t speak English. And then the people in Florence very much seem to be quite busy. They. They’re attentive to what they’re doing or where they’re going or who they’re with. I don’t think it’s an unfriendliness. They’re taking care of their own self and their own business. Like, you can interrupt somebody. I can interrupt somebody in English. I can say, excuse me, would you mind telling me where the bus stop is? Or something like that? But if you can’t be overtly generous or overtly kind, you can’t speak the language, so you’re already a little out, and then you can’t compensate, so you just stay out as opposed to kind of weaseling your way in by being extra nice or what have you.
Katy
Yeah.
Dreck
And so. And so a lot of. A lot of times, a lot of things, we just kind of, you know, I’ve gotten on the wrong bus, and because I can’t ask, where should I get off for x, I just keep riding the bus. And we’ve wound up on the far wrong place. And not long after we got there, mayBe, like, late FeBRUaRY, we were on the bus, and we got on the bus, and we missed the right. We missed the stop, but then I wasn’t sure where the next stop was supposed to be, so we just rode the bus way past where we were going, and finally we just got off. Because I knew we were going in the wrong direction. We got off the bus. I couldn’t explain, how do I get back to wherever? There wasn’t anybody to ask anyway. And my phone was dying, so I couldn’t even really use the app or Google to tell me where to go stand. I finally figured out where the bus stop was, and we got on the bus. But the other thing about the bus, when you buy a bus ticket in Florence, it’s. I think it’s 75 minutes that the ticket is good for. Yeah, but if you don’t plan ahead, then I would just buy the going tickets. So it’s two of us. I would buy two tickets and I would validate them on the bus and go. But of course, that means you don’t have a ticket to come back.
Katy
Right.
Dreck
So I didn’t know where to buy a ticket. Two tickets for us to get back. And so we got on the bus even though we didn’t have tickets for the reverse, the return ride. I knew full well we weren’t supposed to be on the bus. And I knew full well that the. I don’t know what they’re called, but the monitors randomly get on the buses and check tickets. But I didn’t really have any choice. I can’t call a taxi.
Katy
Yeah, right. Because you don’t speak the language.
Dreck
I don’t speak the language. I can’t tell them where I am. So we got on the bus anyway. We get on the bus and we ride back. We’re going in the right direction. I know we’re going in the right direction. And of course, the monitors, I can’t remember the call. They get on the bus. They get on both doors.
Katy
Yep.
Dreck
The front and the back. And so then they start working their way, you know, toward the middle. Now, I did see one. One man just jump off as soon as they got on. And I kind of knew that he knew. He knew what he was doing. He got off immediately, but I didn’t realize instantly, but we rode a couple stops, and before they got to us, we jumped off the bus.
Katy
Good. Yeah.
Dreck
I didn’t get the three or 400 euro fine that you can get for riding the bus without a $2 ticket.
Katy
Uh huh.
Dreck
So we avoided that. And after that, I said, I’m just going to get the bus passes. So now I welcome when they get on the bus. Like, I’ve got passes, I’m. I’m good. Come on and ask me for it. No problem.
Katy
It’s such a great illustration of. Of the confusion that can come from being in a new place. Curious, just because you have a background as a police officer, does that inform how you experience living in Italy or do you have any, uh, views that have struck you as perhaps unique to you and that experience?
Dreck
Oh, man, it just feels so much. I don’t want to say calm, because that’s definitely not Italy.
Katy
Yeah.
Dreck
It feels safer. Like I don’t have anything to worry about. My granddaughter is six, and she’s been six to five months we’ve been there. And I don’t have any problem with walking after dark with her. I don’t have any problem with. We go to the. There’s a park about five minutes from our apartment, and I’ll sit on a bench and I’ll just let her go play. And I’m not concerned that she’s gonna get snatched out of the other side of the park. She’s got roller skates now and trying to teach her how to ride a bike, and that’s not going so great. But if she roller skates around out of my sight, I don’t immediately get up and wonder what’s, you know, where is she or what she’s doing or everything. I’m calmer about it that I think I would be here. And of course, here is different because I’m in a suburb of Houston. My neighborhood is very calm, and it’s very safe, and she’s very clingy. So if she would go outside and play, I would let her go outside and play here, because I’m not really concerned. As long as she stays out of the street, I’m not worried about anybody come along and doing anything to her here, but she won’t go outside because she’s so clingy. But I wouldn’t be worried about in my neighborhood. I’m not sure it would be the same if I lived in the city. I worked in the city for 30 years. I patrolled for about half that time, I think, and only once in 30 years did I ever go into a neighborhood itself that I didn’t feel safe. I was a police officer, and I was in uniform, and I had my own car and whatnot. So I could always have left any situation that I was in if it came to that. And to be honest, I took a lady home from our district to another district, and I was in uniform driving a police car. But the people in the other district, they looked at me like I didn’t belong. I belong wherever I go. I’m working, I’m helping somebody, as a matter of fact, that lives in your neighborhood, and they still look at me like I didn’t belong. That was the only time in 30 years.
Katy
But when you think about, like, the fact that Florence feels just generally safer, do you feel like that is because it is actually safer, or is it because you don’t know exact, like you don’t know everything that’s going on because you haven’t worked it for 30 years.
Dreck
It’s probably a combination of both. I think it generally is safer. So I don’t have a television there, although it’s been suggested that if you listen to the radio or tv, it will help you pick up the language. I don’t listen to Italian radio. For me, I can listen to a sentence, and I only understand 15% of the words. The words that I do understand, I may not understand what they’re related to, the gender, the plurality, the tense. And so while I’m focusing on that one word, there’s another hundred words that have gone by. And so I feel even more lost. I don’t feel like I picked up the words that made that one make sense. I feel like I lost all of it. So I don’t. I don’t do that. So I don’t watch the news, so I don’t hear about things going on, but I don’t see. I’ve seen. I think in five months, I saw two or three cars with broken windows, which indicated that someone had broken into the car overnight. I did see one road rage incident between a car driver and a scooter driver. And I could hear the. There was a woman driving the car and a man on a scooter. And I didn’t see what happened. I don’t know who was at fault, but I could hear her screaming. And so I went over and I looked. They were arguing back and forth. She was going to move. He came over to the car and pounded on the hood to get her to stop. So she stopped. She got out. They continued to argue. He goes back toward his scooter. She goes to the scooter and shoves it to the ground. So, you know, I’m thinking broken mirror, damaged paint, maybe the muffler, who knows? And they’re still hollering back and forth. And a couple of guys helped him pick the scooter up, and he got on the scooter and rode away. And she didn’t chase him. They didn’t wait for the police. They just hollered at each other. And he banged on her car, and she knocked down his scooter. And I guess it was over, like, okay. And then I told my aunt, who lives near Atlanta, and she’s like, man, somebody would have got shot on an Atlanta highway if that happened. So I went and I watched them, and I had no concern that it was going to get out of hand, that somebody was really going to get hurt, that he was going to hit her or she was going to pull out a stick and whack him over the head or anything. So I don’t necessarily hear about the problems, if there are any. Also, I don’t see them for myself. It may be that I’m kind of sheltered from the realities, but no, maybe that’s a good thing.
Katy
Yeah, the general lack of guns is probably helpful.
Dreck
What’s the worst they could do to each other?
Katy
Yeah. Yeah. Puncture his tires. Yeah.
Dreck
Yeah. Nobody’s gonna die. Cause you knocked your scooter over.
Katy
Right. Well, since we’re almost running out of time, I wanna just ask you a couple more things. So since you’re. You are in Texas right now, you’ve been there for a little bit of time, getting your house in order for a renter, but you’re about to go back to Florence. Do you have a sense of how your granddaughter is feeling about going back? Because I imagine she’s kind of now settled into being back in Texas a little bit over the summer. Do you know how she’s feeling about, or if she’s even registering that you guys are heading back out overseas?
Dreck
She knows we’re going and she’s not ready to go. If you ask her, she will tell you she’s okay with it. She’s ready to go. But the truth is she does get homesick. So she actually would rather that we didn’t go back. If it just was just up to her, she would rather that we didn’t go back, that we stayed here at our house. She’s not fully on board. I mean, once she’s there, she has friends at school, but the most of the day to day part is very similar for her. But the going back, she would prefer that we didn’t go back, but she doesn’t get a vote.
Katy
Well, and obviously you love your granddaughter and you’re fully on board with raising her, but this is obviously not the vision that you had for yourself. Dancing off into retirement and what you were going to do with yourself in Italy. You know, you might be out at night rather than putting a seven year old to bed. Do you ever wish that you could be on this journey on your own?
Dreck
Yes, sometimes I do consider the path that I was supposed to be on because it was a retirement dream. It was being free to do what I wanted, when I wanted, where I wanted. And that’s not the case. As it is, I’m very restricted in the choices I make and the decisions I have to make. And so I do consider that. And I do consider that if it’s not going to be the retirement dream, then it may not be worth it to stay because I could come back, and her elementary school is a mile away. I would still have to take her to school and bring her back. But here, I have a washer and dryer. I have a truck. I have my workshop full of tools. I have a bigger refrigerator and a pantry and twice as much kitchen cabinet space. I already have furniture. And in my apartment in Italy, we don’t have, we have a dining, a kitchen table and chairs, and we have a sofa, but we don’t have a tv. We don’t have a coffee table yet. We don’t have bookshelves. We don’t have enough places to store all her toys. We don’t have enough lamps, and we don’t have enough storage. And we don’t have a lot of things that I would have here. And if I’m going to be giving up every day parenting, then it might be easier to just do it here instead of there where I’m not getting to enjoy the retirement, which was the freedom, was the dream.
Katy
Yeah. It’s possible that by being there and complicating your life even more in some ways that you’re actually having less freedom than what you were hoping for, even though you are able to just walk down the street into a world class duomo.
Dreck
Yes. I mean, and there would be, it would not be a, like, hundred percent better if I came back. I would give up that comfort of being able to walk into the city center and having so many museums and churches that I still haven’t even gotten a visit yet. And I look forward to riding a bus like she does. But I don’t mind riding a bus. But it’s, everything’s more convenient.
Katy
Mm hmm.
Dreck
Without everything, a lot of things are more convenient. Some things are less convenient, yes. But, like, so the dream was you give up some things at home to get new things. And so far, I’m not necessarily getting the new things.
Katy
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Dreck
So why am I giving up this if I’m not gonna get that? So we’re gonna go back and we’ll be there for another year for sure, and we’ll work on each other and life in general and learning Italian, and we’ll see if it’s still the best choice. I mean, I think. I still think it’s a good choice. No matter what, I’m still glad I did it. And I like Italy. And this fall, maybe even take her out of school early on Fridays so that we can make it a little further afield, maybe even go to Rome and get a particular person to do a tour for us or something.
Katy
Please do.
Dreck
Yeah, we’ll contact Tiffany and see what we can do one day in the fall when the temperature is a little bit cooler and try to, try to, you know, get the most out of it while we’re there for sure. And then I don’t have to make it. I mean, I have a four year lease. I don’t have to make a decision anytime soon.
Katy
That’s great. Well, you know, I’m going to want to check back in drag.
Dreck
I’ll be glad to. Be glad to.
Katy
And if you do find yourself or I find myself near you in October when we take our grand tour of listeners, I’ll, I’ll try to swing by and say hello if I can.
Dreck
It’s a distance, but, yeah, I wish I was able to make it. But with the granddaughter, you know, I just, you know, she’s got, she’s got school, and I, although I think they have time out of school sometime in October. I don’t have anybody else to watch her, especially not for a week.
Katy
Yeah, it would be long, for sure. Yes.
Dreck
So again, if this was my full retirement dream, it would be very much more possible. But as a single parent, it’s not easy at all.
Katy
No. No. Well, you know, you’re a saint, I think, and I’m really glad.
Dreck
I appreciate that.
Katy
I’m really glad you still went on this journey. And. Yeah, I can’t wait to hear what you think. Six more months from now, you’ll hear. Keep in touch.
Dreck
Thank you. I sure will.
Katy
All right. Well, thank you so much for doing this, and we’ll leave it there. And until next time, this is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall. Talk to you soon. Bye.
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