After Lynne Garell’s husband died of cancer, she told friends she was moving to France for a year. She needed a new adventure, she told them. She arrived in south-central France with a 12-month visa, a lease for an 800-euro-a month two-bedroom apartment in a village of 1,200 people, knowing no one.
Four years later, she’s still there and has decided to build an eco-friendly house. Check out an interview with Lynne about her retirement in southern France “I love it here,” the 63-year-old said of an area she describes as the “garden of France.” She’s taking French classes twice a week to improve her already-good language skills, has been jokingly dubbed “Madame le Fromage” by a local policewoman who was curious as to why an American had settled there (she joked that she loves cheese), and plans to apply for a 10-year visa in 2022. She blogs about her life in the Minervois region. Garell’s connection to France goes back a long way. At 22, fresh out of college, she traveled around Europe, including France, got engaged to her husband while the two were on a DIY bike tour of the Dordogne region (during the cheese course, she says!) and made several more trips with her husband from their home in Steamboat Springs, Colo., even after his cancer diagnosis. As she thought about where to live in France, she knew she wanted to head south for the sun and be in a place where she coul …