Our Italian Adventure: How Long?

PART 3: I thought it might be of interest to share how we pulled off living in Italy for part of the year. I will post some steps we took. We are in Puglia until the end of September, then back again in the winter.

The title of this posting is: citizenship, Visa or Passport?

Step 1: Our first step was to decide how long we want to be in Italy initially. From our research, we discovered that, with a US passport, the formula is, more or less, 90 days in and then 90 days out.

Step 2: But should we want to stay longer what are our options? Since neither of us qualify for Italian citizenship, our next option was applying for a visa. Since I just recently retired, I could qualify for the elective visa, which we will look into in the future.

Step 3: How long? Our choice is to remain in Italy for part of the year and in California for the other part, due to our ties and obligations. But how long would we stay each time? This was the nagging question.

Step 4: Decisions. We decided to do a trial run of three months, a little shy of 90 days, as our initial stay. This seems wiser to us than a complete plunge. For this, we would only need our passports and not a visa.

Step 4: Future questions. We decided to take our life in Italy one step at a time. So far, our life here has been amazing. I may apply for a visa in the future, but for right now, coming on a passport for 90 days is a great beginning way to experience life here as a resident.

Watch for my book coming out later in the year: "Stories from Puglia: Two Californians in Southern Italy".

More next time.