My husband and I are New Yorkers

I have a few friends who have moved to Italy with their dog.  They came over on the Queen Mary so that their dog did not have to fly in the airplane hold.  Of course if your dog is small enough to fit under the air plane seat in front of you, even better.    The other thing about the Queen Mary is that you can take as many suitcases as you like so you can avoid the costs of using a shipper, assuming you plan to ship belongings.Sorry I can't give you any advice about the visa matter as I have not had to go that route but I have been told that staff can be difficult.    Good luck with your move!

Apply for your Elective Residence Visa 3 months before your move. In your Elective Visa application packet you will need to show proof of income. IE: Social Security and statements of your other assets. You will need to have a deed for property, or a lease for a property that will cover the entire year of the ER Visa. You will need to show that you have private health insurance that will cover you in Italy for the entire you of the ER Visa. Also you need to include a letter explaining why you want to make a move to Italy. Try very hard to make a personal connection. Simply saying you love the culture and want to learn the language will likely just cause them to shrug and say - So, just take a vacation. 

What would you recommend we say in our statement that would help us? We will be totally retired, have been in Sicily or Italy every year for the last 5, Trapani for a month last year, wil have. a easily covered life with SS and assets so have no urge or reason to work.

Do you know people in Italy? In our letter we talked about an exchange student we had 20 years before, and how we had remained friends, and had come to visit him and his family, and we even went to his wedding. Through this connection, we learned how Italians value family and traditions, and how we had been welcomed and been treated like family. In this way we were illustrating not how we wanted to learn about the culture, but that what we had already learned we found to be of value and wanted to include it in our life.

Tell them it's the best country in the world and the food and wine are fantastic..! Oh and if you add your mum always wanted to live there, that will go down well. Personally I would tell them the truth.