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| Sunshine and Opportunity Await - 1/10/2021
Harlingen is a city that offers retirees the most bang for the buck! It is near enough to McAllen and Brownsville and all they offer. You get a wide variety of shopping and dining venues. In the valley there are three International Airports. You are close enough for a day trip to Mexico for fun. Less than an hour to South Padre Island. Many cultural places to visit. Parks, and golf is here, but they do not manage them well. We moved here in 2017. The climate is our favorite thing about the Harlingen area. Most of the time we have a Gulf breeze. Hot a bit, but not that bad. We have not turned the heat on yet in the last 11 months! Good medical, dental, and specialists can be found here. San Benito is a short drive from our home and we love that small town too. Lots of sunshine and opportunity awaits older people here. This is a cultural melting pot.
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| Not as Bland as You Might Think! - 11/7/2018
This area of the state of Texas is bland to most people from the East and northeast. However the community has everything you need at a price you can afford. Dining out is not a big deal, there is McAllen a little over 30 minutes away and Brownsville about 25 minutes away. Harlingen as the usual franchise foods and restaurants. The community has a lovely library, a little of this and that. You can volunteer at numerous places. If you are bored in Harlingen it is your fault. It is better air quality than most places in the USA. The cost of living rivals that of small town Boquete, Panama. Medical facilities are nearby and offer a wide range of specialties. Mexico is a short drive away. There is not worse crime here than there is in most small towns near cities. Harlingen's climate rivals Florida'. Three International airports within 40 miles range. Harlingen is only about 4 miles from town center. South Padre Island is only about 45 minutes away. Bird sanctuaries, wild life, wonderful; people with warm Latin charm all around. the only thing wrong is that it is so blue (Democrat) here! This city boasts the lowest cost of living in the USA. It is a must visit before going to a foreign country to find a cheap cost of living.
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| Great Place - 10/6/2017
Here is what you will not get in Harlingen: easy access to great museums and Michelin starred restaurants. However, there are things that counter it.
1) It is regularly rated among the 10 least expensive places to live in the USA.
2) Its main movie theater shows interesting classic films, operas on film, special events, as well as all the latest. The popcorn is excellent and the staff are very nice, and the theater is well maintained.
3) Brownsville is 30 minutes away for more shopping and film choices. Spanish cinema is easy to find here, by the way, on the big screens.
4) There are excellent places to eat. You have to search them out, but they are there. And, if you like fresh seafood, you are in luck.
5) McAllen, which has excellent restaurants and concerts and shopping is 30 minutes away.
6) Traffic that is mentioned here is ridiculously easy compared to any large city in the USA---SF, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, LA, NYC, Boston, etc. You are 30 minutes away, in Harlingen, from the two solid sized cities noted here---McAllen and Brownsville. In essence, these metropolitan areas, that are basically within an hour drive of each other, are around 300,000 people all together---to get anywhere in LA is an hour drive, you know (Harlingen is 60,000, Brownsville 170,000, McAllen 142000). Harlingen is 30 minutes from the other two, McAllen to Brownsville is an hour.
7) For those who need good medical care, San Antonio, with its quaternary health care systems, is 4 hours away---UTRGV just opened up a medical school 30 minutes from Harlingen, and that will ramp up soon.
8) Violent crime is low.
9) The summers are hot and humid, but the winters are fantastic and pleasant. In Harlingen, you are 45 minutes away from one of the best beaches in the USA, and in winter it is room temp during the day to walk the beach.
10) Ultimately, you need to ask yourself how often you go the opera, the great museums, etc. of a given city. If these are things you do regularly, maybe you need to live downtown in one of the 3 biggest cities in the USA, or SF or Seattle. If not, save that for vacation, and live in an inexpensive place where it snows as often as the Cubs win the World Series. We are farther South than LA. We have airports that are easy to use and will easily connect you to big cities for vacations. The people are friendly, there are no state income taxes, and it is very cheap to live here.
I have lived 30 minutes from Harlingen for 2 years and go to the city about 10 times a month. I love it greatly. I also like Brownsville. Very pleasant places to live and retire.
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| Nice, relaxing place to be - 12/23/2006
Harlingen is 40 mins from South Padre Island whis was recently rated the 5th best beach in the continental US. It's clean (the beach and the water) and it's almost never crowded.
People are nice, helpful. In Harlingen it's 70% Hispanic. Cost of living is cheap.
CLimate is subtropical, hot, dry summers with humidity. In winter it freezes only maybe every 10yrs. It's comparable to south Florida, but we get most of our rain in the wintertime and fall, but we get about half of the amount.
You get a Southwestern feel mixed with the tropics. SO if you can't make up your mind, you can get both. And only here.
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