May 05th, 2017

Just gonna finish up the week here by sharing some news about my cute little town of Venice Florida.  The consumer research website, GoodCall.com just ranked Venice  the Number 2 place in Florida and Number 14 in the entire USA as the best place to retire.  Woohoo!

The Florida city in first place is Naples and just by the way, again according the GoodCall, as compared to Naples, Venice has a lower cost of living, lower crime rate and a few more sunny days :)

Now Venice Island, where we live, is only a small subset of the City of Venice most of which is off-island,.  And the entirety of Venice (which includes the island) currently has a population of only a bit more than 22 thousand people, which is not a lot as cities go.  But the off-island part is still growing, so that number will get bigger. 

Since the GoodCall ranking is specifically talking about a place to retire, I assumed that the greatest portion of the population would be over 65 years old, like I was thinking 80%, maybe even more. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that  you, like me, associate Florida primarily with the group of people that might be considered, geriatric.  That would be wrong.  It's only about half of the population. Which I actually find very encouraging.  I like a city that has a nice mix of people, all ages and a wide diversity of backgrounds and interests.  How boring would a place be that was  exclusionary! Bah.  I will admit, however, that I enjoy being considered one of the "young folks" around here.

Now if you are talking just overall "Best Places to Live" in this country,  Sarasota Florida which is just 30 minutes north of us ranked #21 on that list for 2017.  Tampa, which is about an hour and  a half north hit the #35 spot and Orlando, (two hours east) is #40 on that list.  All of those cities are much larger and more metropolitan than little Venice.  Venice has a small town feeling, even though it's a city.  Sarasota, Tampa and Orlando have definitely hit the "Bigs".  So a lot of it is dependent on if you are a big city person or a small town person.  I absolutely fall in the small town category.  But it's nice to be so close to big cities to take advantage of what they have to offer, when it strikes our fancy and then come back home to the island where it's quieter.

Anyway, Congrats to the adorable little city of Venice.  Clearly we made a good choice!  Nice to know.