Life has been pretty nice here in the Florida panhandle. An opportunity presented itself to support construction management efforts in northwest Florida so we moved to near Pensacola from Charlotte, North Carolina back in September 2019. When we first moved away from our home state of California we thought we’d do 18 months in Washington, DC and then move back to Los Angeles. But fate had other ideas and now we’ve been on the East Coast of the country for over 11 years. After living in greater DC for 4 years we decided to give North Carolina a try. Charlotte had been home for almost 6 years but we were ready for a change. On a recent episode of the NBC sitcom “Superstore” California was jokingly described as “A pretentious Florida” so I guess you could say we are enjoying “an unpretentious California” quite a bit. We have oranges, sunshine, beaches and Mickey Mouse so it’s practically home. The humidity is of a scale I was not prepared for and life is pretty slow paced, more so than North Carolina, but really other than that I have enjoyed it quite a bit. There are still seasons here and winter was, while not NC cold, still brisk. Typically it does not snow here. The beaches are striking with powdery white sand and emerald green waters. Our house is about a half hour or so from the beach which is closer than we have ever lived to a beach. And we frequently drive across dramatic bays and rivers. Pensacola is the largest city near us but it is still much smaller than Charlotte. On the plus side we are about 2 1/2 hours closer to Disney World! Overall we have enjoyed our time here and looking forward to the future.
