Greece and Italy - 2025/26 – Moving to Greece or Italy

First of all, we are both EU citizens, so maybe some of the information contained in this chapter might not be relevant for some. Being EU citizens means that we have freedom of movement to live anywhere in the European Union, gotta love the EU (did I mention the free roaming???). Well, we’ve been living in Portugal for 10 and a half years now, we’re both Portuguese citizens and we love this country and all it has to offer. Six years ago we bought a lovely little centenary house in a charming historic village and renovated it to make it our own. We met incredibly generous, warm people and we made wonderful friends, we felt absolutely welcomed and enjoyed every minute of it. But if you follow us, you’ll very likely know how restless we are, and suddenly, we seriously feel like a change of scenery has been calling to us in a very loud and clear voice. Since we married we have lived in Brazil (for a year), then in Australia for 12 years, then back in Brazil for 5 years, then backpacking through 35 countries for almost 3 years, then back to Brazil for another 2 years and finally we moved to Portugal for almost 11 years (tired yet?). So yeah we feel it’s time to shake things up and move again. Also, due to the recent spike in house prices in Portugal, both Greece and Italy suddenly seem more affordable.

We’ve always dreamt of one day living in Greece or Italy and then so we thought, “why not now? What are we waiting for?”. The entire process, from our decision to actually arriving in Greece took approximately 6 weeks, we listed our house, sold our car and most of our furniture, packed one wall full of boxes for the things we wanted to keep and caught up with our lovely friends before we left. We haven’t had to deal with things like closing bank accounts and cancelling utilities as yet as they’re on direct debit and things need to be kept running till the house is sold.

We leave Portugal on the 3rd of December 2025, flying from Lisbon to Athens, drop in at the EuropeCar counter in Athens Airport to pick up our car (7 euros a day plus 3 for private insurance as we’ve hired it for a month), and drive to our apartment Cozy House 2 in Vrachati, in the Peloponnese region near Corinth. As we booked it for a month and it’s winter time, were paying 535 euros. The apartment is basic but comfortable and very close to the beach. Vrachati is also very close to the incredible wine region of Nemea, an ancient 6,000 year old wine producing region, and a couple of stunning, unmissable archaeological sites, Acrocorinth and Heraion, Perachora (more on the links below). Our love history with Greece has been long and intense, Paul started coming to Greece even before we met and my first visit was in 2010 when we stayed just on Naxos island for 3 months. Yeah, it’s love at first sight indeed. Paul is pretty fluent in Greek, I’ve been learning for a few months now but Greek is definitely not an easy language to master by any means.

We spend a few days looking at property around the Peloponnese but we don’t really feel the love. We’ve ruled out the islands due to weather and isolation during the winter. Also, meanwhile, Greece has been voted the best place to retire in 2026, so we really needed to make a swift move if we want to stay ahead of the pack as we saw what happened in the Portuguese property market after Portugal was voted the best place to retire for a few consecutive years. Suddenly we’re feeling the pressure to buy quickly and really don’t want to make such an important decision under pressure, that’s so not us. So, alternating between utter panic and total bliss and having left behind our lovely village life and friends we make an executive decision and decide to move to Italy instead. Again, the joys of being an EU citizen are endless!

https://www.visitgreece.gr/mainland/peloponnese/nemea/

https://www.visitgreece.gr/blog/travel-tips/1453/uncover-ancient-corinth-and-acrocorinth-in-the-peloponnese/

https://www.visitgreece.gr/experiences/culture/archaeological-sites-and-monuments/archaeological-site-of-heraion/

Vrachati Corinth (37)

Vrachati Corinth (41)

Vrachati Corinth (38)

Vrachati Corinth (13)

Vrachati Corinth (4)

Vrachati Corinth (17)

Vrachati Corinth (21)

Vrachati Corinth (36)

Vrachati Corinth (1)

Vrachati Corinth (30)

Acrocorinth (6)

Acrocorinth (3)

Acrocorinth (10)

Acrocorinth (12)

Acrocorinth (2)

Heraion Perachora (3)

Heraion Perachora (9)

Heraion Perachora (2)

We leave Greece on the 22nd of December 2025, fly to a place called Katowice in Poland (for some reason it’s our 3rd time in Katowice, go figure) and then fly on to Catania, Sicily. It’s our third time in Catania and we decided to come here as car rental prices are through the roof over the Festive Season so it makes sense to come to one of our favourite places to spend Xmas and New Year waiting for car prices to go back to normal. Anyway, almost every car you see in Catania is either dented or scratched due to the traffic and narrow streets. We want to take a break over the holidays (when no-one works anyway) in a city we know so well, eat in familiar places, go for a run and long walks along the beach in the morning and explore the absolutely incredible local markets, some of the best fresh produce we’ve ever seen. So we rent a lovely apartment (Le Ciminiere Home, 54 euros per day) for 11 days and enjoy this real slice of Italiana until the New Year arrives.

Catania (12)

Catania (17)

Catania (20)

Catania (29)

Catania (1)

Catania (13)

Catania (6)

Catania (27)

Of course now we have to discuss “the case for Italy”, or why we’ve decided to live in Italy. First of all, we’ve also been checking out the property market in Italy and we know it’s very attractive at the moment. From the 1 euro House Scheme to a lot of affordable houses, both renovated or to be renovated, there’s a place for everybody under the Southern Italian sun. Also, many Italian villages are offering lots of different projects aiming at attracting new residents, both workers with young families and retirees as they’re trying hard to revitalise their towns. There’s also a new, seriously attractive Flat Tax Scheme of 7% to attract retirees to move to certain regions, mostly in the South, to towns with less than 20,000 inhabitants (we’re coming from a Portuguese village with about 500 residents, so no worries there). We both speak Italian, once again Paul is more fluent as he also lived here when he was younger, but I’ve been learning for over 2 years now and can definitely get by. Also, infrastructure in Italy, mostly public transportation (trains, metro and buses) is excellent and flights and car rentals are really cheap and easy, so friends can visit us more often and vice-versa. It’s also closer to Portugal and to our beloved Spain and, last but not least, we’ll be much closer to Greece and can visit whenever our hearts wish to do so. Yeah, so you can see that it wasn’t a very difficult decision to make once we considered all of the above. We immensely enjoy our days in Catania, the weather is absolutely incredible and even mighty My Etna doesn’t disappoint, erupting just a few days before the New Year so powerfully they almost had to close air space traffic. We also use our time wisely planning our next move which is to explore the southern region of Calabria. Watch this page, wishing you a Happy & Healthy New Year and thank you for following us.