5 Retirement Havens in Europe for Less than $100,000

Not everyone is cut out for life in the tropics or the developing world. Some people considering retirement overseas would opt for Europe if that were a realistic and affordable option, and it can be. In the current climate of crisis, economies, markets, and values are down as they have not been in decades in some of Europe's most appealing places to spend time and retire.
Here are five of the Old World's most tempting retirement havens where you could own a retirement home of your own for less than $100,000:
ThinkstockEuro Bargain #1: The medieval town of Penne (think pasta) in Abruzzo, Italy is only 30 minutes from the Adriatic Sea and an international airport. Here you could buy a two-bedroom apartment of about 1,000 square feet for 50,000 euro (about $65,000). This could serve as your ideal base for discovering this region of Italy that is as beautiful and historic as Tuscany but less discovered and therefore less expensive. A hillside townhouse would put you within walking distance of the market square, restaurants, and shops.

ThinkstockEuro Bargain #2: The French town of Estagel is 30 minutes from the Mediterranean Sea outside Perpignan. On offer is a two-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot, loft-style apartment, ready to move into for 68,000 euro (about $88,000). The in-town location would mean you wouldn't have to invest in transportation of your own.




ThinkstockEuro Bargain #3: The town of Youghal is on the border between Country Cork and Country Waterford, Ireland. On the strand of this picturesque seaside town, you can buy a modern one-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot apartment for 49,000 euro (about $64,000) that would put you within walking distance of the beach.




ThinkstockEuro Bargain #4: In Spain, the number of properties available right now for less than $100,000, including in this country's most appealing corners, is great. One quaint option is a one-bedroom apartment in Jerez de la Frontera near Cadiz. The completely updated property sits on a small courtyard with shops nearby. The Atlantic Ocean is 30 minutes away, and the historic fortified city of Cadiz is just 40 minutes from Jerez. The list price is 69,000 euro (about $90,000). As this is a bank foreclosure, special financing options are possible.

ThinkstockEuro Bargain #5: In the coastal town of Santa Maria in Lagos, Portugal you could buy a furnished two-bedroom apartment in a modern building for 75,000 euro (about $97,000) within walking distance of the ocean. You'd even have a bit of a sea view.

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The Man With a Million Acres

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  The Wall Street Journal/Bill Murphree - Mr. Kelley says it wasn't his goal to become one of the country's biggest landowners. 'I grew up on a farm and that's about as good an explanation as there is,' he said …more 

He's from Kentucky, makes his own bourbon, drives a Ford pickup—and flies in a private plane.
These are some of the few details that have emerged about Brad Kelley, 55, a deeply private billionaire who made his fortune in the discount cigarette business. Mr. Kelley, whose hobbies include breeding rare, exotic animals, very rarely gives interviews. He doesn't tweet or use email.
Brad Kelley's Iron Mountain Ranch (Bill Murphree)He is also one of the largest private landowners in the country, spending by his own account hundreds of millions of dollars on about a million acres—or about 1,600 square miles. The state of Rhode Island, by comparison, has a land area of 1,215 square miles. According to the Land Report 100, which tracks land ownership, Mr. Kelley is the fourth-largest private landowner by acres in the U.S., just behind Liberty Media Chairman John Malone, media mogul Ted Turner and the Emmerson family, headed by timber magnate Archie Aldis Emmerson.
Mr. Kelley says it wasn't his goal to become one of the country's biggest landowners. "I grew up on a farm and that's about as good an explanation as there is," he says in an interview. "Land is something I know. It's something I have an affinity for. It becomes part of your DNA."
It has also become an increasingly popular investment in uncertain financial times. Some investors see land as a hedge against inflation, and low global interest rates have made land cheaper to buy. Higher world food prices and an anticipation of a recovery in the housing market have bankers pitching land as one of the few places to get real returns on an asset whose underlying value continues to rise. "It's a nonperishable commodity and it's as good a place as any to put my money," Mr. Kelley says. "It's better than derivatives."
Dennis Moon, head of the Specialty Asset Management team at U.S. Trust, the private-banking division of Bank of America (BAC), says land appeals to people as an investment they can easily understand. His clients have more than doubled their direct investments in irrigated farmland—land that produces crops like corn, soybean and wheat—over the past year to about $175 million, earning a net yield of some 4% a year. Others are more cautious, warning that the high rate of growth could mean the market is in a bubble, the risks being volatility in agricultural commodity prices, farmland values and farm production costs.
Ranches, which are Mr. Kelley's specialty, don't tend to yield much of an annual return. Instead, their value is in the underlying appreciation of the land: According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the national average value of U.S. ranchland rose 12% compared with five years earlier; in Texas, it is up 30% compared with five years ago. Investors make cash on ranches when they are subdivided and sold to developers or as "trophy ranches," where the wealthy can fish and hunt.
Texas oil baron T. Boone Pickens describes his strategy with ranches as "simple: Change the use of the land." He recently joined six other investors in a new ranch fund called Sporting Ranch Capital. The plan, says the fund's manager Jay Ellis, is to buy 12 to 15 premier ranches in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon and Idaho, fix them up and then resell them as "trophy sporting ranches." In August, the fund made its first purchase—a 760-acre ranch in Colorado with a 2.6-mile fishing stream and five lakes—for about $6 million in cash; the fund hopes to put it back on the market in 2014 for over $10 million.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Mr. Turner first got into buying ranches in 1987 for the fly fishing and stress relief. "I fell in love with the West; the wide-open spaces, the wildlife and beautiful landscapes. I knew immediately that I wanted more land—and lots of it," he says in an email. But he also tries to make his ranch operations—most often raising bison—profitable. "We always consider investment value in addition to opportunities for recreation and conservation when we look at property," he says.
Mr. Kelley's ranch strategy is different. He looks for good deals on cattle ranches in out-of-the-way places he thinks are undervalued, and holds on to them. He likes to buy adjoining parcels because it's more efficient to operate a ranch in large blocks and because it tends to be easier to buy property when it's right next door: He already knows what he's buying and what the seller is like. And he doesn't develop the land he buys: "We don't try to inject our way of doing things on other folks," he says. In this way, he has pieced together existing cattle ranches in remote parts of Texas, Florida and New Mexico.
Once he has bought the land, Mr. Kelley does what some ranchers call "resting." He keeps the cattle operations running, almost always leasing the land back to the previous owner, who already knows how to run the existing operation. Mr. Kelley says his operations break even. Several farmers and ranchers who work on land owned by Mr. Kelley didn't respond to requests for interviews.
The value of Mr. Kelley's land investments is difficult to calculate. "When he started buying ranches here, we all thought he was crazy," says Johnny Carpenter, an Alpine, Texas, real-estate agent who sold Mr. Kelley about half a dozen ranches in West Texas over a five-year period. Since then, the value of the land Mr. Kelley owns in those areas, known to be scenic with views of mountains, has doubled, Mr. Carpenter says. Chip Cole, a ranch broker in San Angelo, Texas, who was involved in the sale of about 15 ranches to Mr. Kelley, says prices doubled in 2005 and 2006. In 2008, sales volume dried up, making estimating current values more difficult, though Mr. Cole suspects values have softened. Few things make Mr. Kelley bristle more than being called a land speculator. He argues that he has sold about 15% of his total holdings over the past three decades; combined with the land he has bought, that's an aggregate turnover of less than half a percent, most of it for management reasons. "We take great pride in improving our property," he says, adding that he replaces and upgrades dozens of miles of fences annually and keeps water and wells running.
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5 unexpectedly romantic U.S. cities

Minneapolis's Stone Arch Bridge is made for romantic strolls. (Photo: Meet Minneapolis, Scott Larson, MNDOT, and …

Sure, we leave our hearts in San Francisco, and we want to be a part of it, New York New York. Romance easily blooms in cities that can boast the Golden Gate Bridge or the top of the Empire State Building. But take a closer look, and you will find special places for memory-making moments all over America. 

Minneapolis
For natural beauty with a big-city vibe

Minneapolis, with its booming big-city feel, combined with its 180 parks, 22 lakes, and 80 miles of bike paths and trails, is a perfect destination for couples who want a mix of sophistication and time alone with nature. Book a room at the 24-room Nicollet Island Inn, on an island in the Mississippi. Its romance package is lovely, and you can venture out to stroll through pretty neighborhoods lined with Victorian homes.  The city’s Chain of Lakes offer abundant opportunities for romantic strolls complete with skyline views. Choose pretty Lake of the Isles, with lots of privacy-promoting nooks and crannies, for a late summer, early fall picnic. Go for drinks in the speakeasy-themed bar called Prohibition, at the hip Minneapolis W Foshay. Contact the Hitching Company for a horse-drawn carriage ride along the riverfront, along cobblestone streets and across the Stone Arch Bridge. In winter, cozy blankets are provided. On a less sophisticated note, you can take the light rail to the Mall of America, to get married in the “Chapel of Love,” or renew your wedding vows on the mall’s roller coaster.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame offers big-time nostalgia. (Photo: Courtesy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and … 
Cleveland, Ohio
For rock 'n' roll nostalgia and more

What can be more romantic than reliving special musical moments together? And where better to do that than at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum? The Beatles exhibit alone includes some 70 artifacts (stage outfits, hand-written musical arrangements). Also catch the Grateful Dead exhibit (through 2012), and many others, including Jimi Hendrix, U2, and the Doors. On a totally different musical note, catch the Cleveland Orchestra at the handsome Severance Hall. Finish a day of touring at Edgewater State Park, where you can picnic while you watch the sun slip down into Lake Erie. Perhaps enjoy a nightcap at the Velvet Tango Room, a modern-day “speakeasy” in the Tremont neighborhood. Shop for retro fashion, antiques, and bargains in Larchmere. Grab a tasty lunch, including some interesting Japanese fare, at Flying Cranes Café on nearby Shaker Square. Extend your trip a bit by a drive out to Put-in-Bay, on South Bass Island, north of Sandusky. Book rooms at the Vineyard Bed and Breakfast, a century-plus-old farmhouse set among lovely vines, and with its own private beach.

The Hotel Lanai is a cozily romantic spot to stay in Lanai City. (Photo: Courtesy of Hawaii CVB)

Lanai City, Lanai, Hawaii
For Old Hawaii away from the crowds

Sure Hawaii equals romance. And this tiny island of Lanai, recently purchased by Larry Ellison, takes you right to the romantic Hawaii of times past. This former Dole Pineapple company town (it isn’t remotely a city), is still home to a one-cell jail and to colorful wood-frame buildings that once housed field workers. It is a place where you can load up on superb Hawaiian coffee at the grocery store, and dine inexpensively at places like the Blue Ginger Café, which serves great Fried Saimin (okay it involves Spam, which isn’t that romantic.) Stay at the cozy 11-room Hotel Lanai, with its bright Hawaiian quilts, comfy wicker chairs, and gently whirring ceiling fans (rooms start at $99). Rent a Hummer or Jeep and drive the 12.8-mile Munro Trail, with its Norfolk pines, and views all the way to Maui and Molokai. Head to pretty Shipwreck Beach—you may be the only folks there—to look for the ancient petroglyphs and to watch turtles play. Explore the pretty Garden of the Gods, with its dramatic rock formations. (Note: If you start to crave high style, there are two Four Seasons hotels on Lanai, but that isn’t what the island is about.) Lanai is 45 minutes from Maui by boat.

Engage in some lovely time travel aboard this classic cruise ship. (Photo: Courtesy of the Queen Mary)

Long Beach, Calif.
For Old-World Glamour and Contemporary Romance

Yes, Long Beach is the second busiest container port in the United States, but it also has a wildly romantic side. Think graceful, palm-lined streets perfect for strolling, chic shops and inventive restaurants, and arguably the best aquarium in the United States (and yes, looking at flirtatious fish in wild tropical colors can be romantic). If proposing is on your mind, book a gondola (ask for one that did time in Venice), from Gondola Getaway. You can even arrange a proposal “message in a bottle,” as you float through the city’s Naples Islands. For major romance, however, head to the Cunard classic, The Queen Mary. In its glory days, when first class was ultra-posh, it carried everyone from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to Greta Garbo to Elizabeth Taylor and her poodles. Cunard’s pride and joy retired in Long Beach, and folks in search of romance should book dinner at Sir Winston’s. The lobster ravioli and rack of lamb are Cunard worthy, the wine list is inventive, and the city skyline views are lovely. Stroll the decks, admire the Art Deco wood paneling, and finish the evening in a comfy first-class stateroom.

Little Rock’s big city skyline belies its small-city feel. (Photo: ThinkStock)

Little Rock, Ark.
For small-city Fun with a presidential flair

The William J. Clinton Library and Museum should top your to-do list, to give you the opportunity to remember when, to get a sense of what life in the White House was like during that era, and to see what sort of gifts Presidents get: Bill received an Elvis at the Piano Cookie Jar and a music box that plays “How Great Thou Art,” among a host of other gifts. Take an old-fashioned trolley ride through downtown. Explore the River Market (the perfect place to pick up lunch), and wander through the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden, on the banks of the Arkansas River. Take a walk along the Arkansas River Trail, with pretty downtown views. See what might be on at the Riverfront Amhpitheater. Arrive early at the posh, Victorian-style Empress of LIttle Rock Hotel, for a couple’s massage, some downtime in the garden, and maybe a carriage ride along tree-lined streets and past the Governor’s Mansion. Enjoy dinner at nearby Ciao Italian for traditional fare and good wines, or choose the hip, just-opened, Art Deco 1620 Savoy. If the night is young, head back to the Market District for jazz or a piano bar.

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Top 5 hotels and resorts in the United States

No doubt there are plenty of nice hotels in the world, but when you go away, you don't just want nice—you want special, you want amazing, you want spectacular.

MORE AT CONDE NAST TRAVELER

• » The Top 100 Hotels in the World 
• » The Top 10 US Cities 

That's why every year, Condé Nast Traveler invites readers to vote for the most outstanding hotels and resorts they've visited. This year, we celebrate our 25th Annual Readers' Choice Awards with a record number of opinions: 46,476 to be exact.

And those combined votes have boiled down to a list that covers  the best places and properties anywhere on earth—including these top 10 right here in the U.S.

1. Waldorf Astoria Chicago
Readers' Choice Rating: 97.9

"From the decor to the service, this is one of the greatest hotels I’ve stayed in." The top-scoring Gold List property in the United States, this "oasis of luxury" (opened at the end of 2009) is in the Gold Coast neighborhood, steps from the lakefront.

Designed to emulate the grand hotels of Paris in the 1920s, it is set in a 60-story tower that has colonnades, spires, and a motor court. The "fantastic, spacious rooms," 10 per floor, have fireplaces, furnished terraces, Italian linens, and white Carrara marble bathrooms with soaking tubs.

"Staff make you feel welcome, like they’re really excited that you chose their hotel." "Epicurean paradises" include the European-style bistro Balsan and Ria, which focuses on sustainable local ingredients. "I’d like to move in—now."
 (Photo courtesy of Inn at Palmetto Bluff)

2. Inn at Palmetto Bluff
Bluffton, S.C.
Readers' Choice Rating: 97.2

"This will be the best inn you’ve ever stayed at," by the May River amid acres of forests and ancient freshwater rice fields. "Superb Southern-style service" comes from staff "who make you feel like you are the first ever guests."

Rustic cottages are "quiet, secluded, immaculate, and spacious," with screened porches, white-wood doorways, vaulted ceilings, fireplaces, wide pine-plank floors, and hipped metal roofs. "You can do everything—golf, fishing, horseback riding, and a spa are some of the activities—or nothing, and be blissfully happy either way." Alas, the food at the River House Restaurant is "only fair."(Photo courtesy of Auberge du Soleil)

3. Auberge du Soleil
Napa Valley, Calif.
Readers' Choice Rating: 97.1

This "outstanding luxury resort" is set on 33 acres of vineyards and olive groves—"the views are spectacular." "Sumptuous cottages" done in sun and earth tones have wood-burning fireplaces and refrigerators stocked with local wines and cheeses; bathrooms come with skylights and flat-screen TVs.

The "stunning restaurant" serves wine-country cuisine with French Mediterranean influences, and its terrace has heaters for dining out on cool evenings. Enjoy Italian ices and chilled towels at the pool and Reiki at La Pagode, an Asian-style pavilion. The hotel manager "takes care of business and addresses issues without breaking a sweat."
(Photo courtesy of 21c Museum Hotel)

4. 21c Museum Hotel
Louisville, Ky.
Readers' Choice Rating: 96.8

Created from abandoned tobacco and bourbon warehouses, and doubling as a contemporary art museum with more than 9,000 square feet of exhibition space, this property has reclaimed-wood floors, hand-blocked linen upholstery, exposed brickwork and timber trusses, and glass transoms.

"The art collection makes it such a fun place to stay." "Unique and creative" guest rooms have Herman Miller chairs, high ceilings, silver mint julep cups, 500-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, and rubber ducks in bathtubs.

Proof on Main’s menu is inspired by Italy and the American South, hence dishes like the sweet potato agnolotti, and a choice of over 50 Kentucky bourbons, several bottled exclusively for the hotel. "It’s an incredible place for such a small city."(Photo courtesy of Fearrington House)

5. Fearrington House
Pittsboro, N.C.
Readers' Choice Rating: 96.7

Located eight miles from Chapel Hill, this "charming place" was constructed in 1987 on an old dairy farm and takes its cues from the English and French countryside.

Winding redbrick pathways lead guests through "beautiful gardens" with native plants. Garnering a perfect score, accommodations are "the finest rooms anywhere," done in English country style with fireplaces, floral bedspreads, and 19th-century furniture. Turndown service includes truffles hand made by the hotel’s chocolatier. The restaurant’s contemporary American cuisine is "out-of-this-world good." The recently opened 4,000-square-foot day spa offers facials, massages, and wraps.

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