For most of the twentieth century, sleeping in the afternoon was something a certain kind of American filed under the very old, the very young, and the frankly lazy. Then, in 2007, a large study out of Greece handed the afternoon nap a cardiology defense, and the people who had been quietly napping all along …

For a single retiree, €1,200 a month, around $1,400, does not sound like much. In most of the United States it would barely cover rent, and in the fashionable corners of Spain, the Costa del Sol or central Madrid, it would leave you counting carefully. But Spain is a large and unevenly priced country, and …

For a growing number of American retirees, the reason for leaving is not the weather or the food or the romance of Europe. It is the healthcare. After a working life spent fearing medical bills, and facing retirement with Medicare premiums, supplement plans, deductibles and the ever-present dread of a catastrophic diagnosis, many older Americans …

Two people need to get from Paris to Lyon on the same morning. The tourist books a flight, because a flight is what you book when two cities feel far apart and an hour in the air sounds faster than anything on the ground. The local books the train without a second thought. On this …

You have walked all morning through the Roman heat, and the Spanish Steps rise in front of you, a hundred and thirty-odd travertine steps sweeping up toward a church, sun-warmed and inviting. So you do the natural thing and sit down to rest. Within moments a police officer with a whistle is heading your way, …

The car is reserved, the confirmation is printed, and the family is standing at the rental counter in Florence with the luggage and a plan for Tuscany. Then the agent asks for the International Driving Permit, the American does not have one, and the whole plan stalls at the desk while everyone works out what …

Walk into a modest restaurant in a Spanish town at half past one on a weekday, and you can eat three courses, with bread and a drink included, for around €14, roughly $15. A starter, a main, and a dessert, cooked that morning, brought to your table by someone who has done it ten thousand …

The paperwork to fly a dog from the United States to Europe is not complicated, and it is not especially expensive. Three documents and roughly $450 in vet and endorsement fees cover it, and a healthy adult dog from the United States faces no quarantine and no blood test on arrival. On paper it is …

A Spanish family meal does not end when the food does. The plates are cleared, or half cleared, and everyone stays. The talk keeps going, coffee appears, maybe a small glass of something, and an hour later the same people are still at the same table, in no hurry to be anywhere else. A lunch …

A woman in her early sixties stands at her apartment door in Lucca. She has been here for 26 months. She is going home to Pittsburgh. She is not unusual. Most American women over 58 who move to Italy do this. The return is rarely about Italy. It is about specific structural factors that the …

Picture a French school canteen at lunchtime. A child carries a tray toward a table with a plate of veal stew or a piece of roast fish on it, and reaches, out of habit, for the ketchup. There is no pump, no squeeze bottle, no little sachet waiting on the counter. The ketchup is not …

On a side street off a Roman piazza, a curved iron spout pours a steady arc of cold water into a drain, and has been doing so, day and night, for longer than anyone walking past has been alive. It never shuts off. The water is clean, it is free, and it is the same …