[BK001]

Hello,

Last month while getting my nails done here in beautiful Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, I met an old friend who, when I told her DH (Dear Husband) and I want to retire in 3 years, suggested I check out something called The Villages in Florida.

In the past month I have googled, took several golfcar tours on youtube and joined TOTV.com. I almost feel as if I know the place and have mentally already moved here.

DH is such a couch potato now – I don’t think it’s going to improve when he retires – so I am very attracted to an environment whereby I can get to where I want to go and to have plenty of social interaction, hobbies and various other pursuits, without him. The Villages seems perfect. DH was not too enthused until I said – ok reality time – what are you going to do if I die first? I want to make sure you are in a supportive community where it will be easy to find someone to replace me (well, if not to replace me to replace my services as in house cleaning, laundry, paying the bills and being the primary (actually solitary) financial guru.) That seemed to clinch it for him – I can tell because he said “Oh, yeah” as if it were an AHA moment! LOL

So I just suggested we take a vacation this year to check it out. My DH has a hundred reasons why this is not a good year for him to go (I won’t bore you with the details although some are quite hilarious) however he thinks it would be wonderful for me to forge ahead – spend a week and checkout the TV landscape.

So I am planning to come down for about 5-7 days within the next three months. I have a couple of questions that I was hoping you might have some responses to.

1. I am thinking of foregoing the LSV and just renting something (with a golfcar and bicycle of course) and spending the week on my own exploring. I guess I feel that since I am alone and that I might just be a little intimidated by meeting with sales people before I’ve really decided this is the community for us. There seem to be many rentals available and my needs would be minimal – 1 person probably no cooking, etc, so I think I can easily find something reasonable. Do you think this is a good plan? Or do you feel strongly that I should do the official tour through the TV sales office.

2. Besides checking out the community as a whole, I would love to narrow down a couple of neighborhoods so that when I return from my trip I can limit my internet research – viewing homes, etc. to a handful of areas within TV. Does that make sense to you or is the neighborhood less important than focusing on the kind of home I would want in terms of size, price and layout (btw – layout is of extreme importance to me since DH likes to sleep early in a quiet bedroom and I like to stay up late on the couch with a noisy television (viva la difference). So again, my question - is narrowing neighborhoods down important and, if so, what are the questions I should be asking about the different areas.

3. Restaurants – while this is not the most important consideration since we are both avid cooks – I felt a little concern that those neighborhood-type restaurants that we are so use to are virtually non-existant in TV. It seems like most of the restaurants are chains or franchises. Reminds me of the Riverwalk in San Antonio – tons of restaurants but none of those home style types. Also, what about immediately outside of the TV community – are there restaurant in the surrounding areas or does one need to go to Ocala or Orlando?


4. As I stated we are both avid cooks – we will be able to continue finding a large cross section of produce, spices and other ethnic food ingredients? How about bakeries? I assume every type of service is available in the community. Again, not a major consideration (TG for the Internet) but just curious.


Thank you for any help you may provide

Barbara Kent