Bonjour Reader,

Marseille gets the press. Nice gets the photos. Toulon — the Mediterranean port between them — quietly holds onto €182K apartments, a daily Provençal market, and a harbor view that doesn't quit.

From My Corner of the World

Last week I played in a charity golf tournament. We won.

Now, before you start picturing me in a green jacket — I am not the reason we won. We had one guy hitting his driver beautifully. Another guy on top of his wedge game. I sank a few big putts. And one guy who did a little of everything, but mostly drank beer (a critical role on any team, frankly).

Here's what I keep thinking about: nobody on that team could have won alone. Each of us was missing something. Together, we covered the course.

That's exactly what the Fast Track is, May 10–14.

You'll have me, Ben Small, and Suzi handling the expert side — visas, taxes, locations. You'll hear from real American expats who already made the move. And you'll be in a group with other people doing exactly what you're doing — cheering each other on through the parts that feel hard.

You can absolutely do this alone. People do.

But it's a lot more fun (and a lot easier) with a team.

📍 Hidden Gem

Toulon, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur

Most Americans skip Toulon.

They fly into Nice. They take the train to Marseille. They snap photos in Cassis. Toulon sits between all of that, on the largest natural harbor in Mediterranean France — and somehow stays off the postcard.

Their loss.

Toulon is the prefecture of the Var, halfway between Marseille and Saint-Tropez on the southern coast. It's a real working city — France's primary Mediterranean naval base, a university town, a fully equipped public hospital. Not a postcard village. The pace is calmer than any of that sounds.

Train Station Test: Gare de Toulon sits a ten-minute walk from the old town. Direct TGV to Paris in about 4 hours. Marseille in 45 minutes. Nice in 1hr50.

Landmarks & local flavor: The Cours Lafayette market is the heart of it — a long, plane-tree-lined market street where Provençal life spills out six mornings a week (closed Mondays, because France). Olives, melons, tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, fresh fish from a port that's been doing this since the Romans.

Mont Faron rises straight behind the city. A téléphérique lifts you 584 meters up for a view of the harbor that does not feel real. Hike down if you still trust your knees.

The Vieille Ville is mostly pedestrian — narrow streets, ochre walls, bistros tucked into corners. The Naval Museum sits at the port. The Opéra de Toulon is the second-largest in France after Paris, which is the kind of fact Toulon almost forgets to mention.

Get outside: The Sentier du Littoral coastal path threads east from Le Mourillon (Toulon's beach neighborhood) along sand-and-pebble coves toward Cap Brun and beyond — the kind of walk where you stop because something is too pretty, not because you're tired.

The Véloroute Littorale traces the Var coast right through Toulon — ride east toward Hyères and the Île de Porquerolles ferry, or west toward La Seyne-sur-Mer and the calanques.

Mont Faron has a network of marked Var hiking trails through Mediterranean pine forest, with views back over the harbor and out to the Îles d'Hyères. The kind of "I went for a walk before lunch" walk that ends up being your favorite memory of the week.

Accessibility + day-to-day vibe: The old town is genuinely walkable. Cours Lafayette handles most of your weekly food. Pharmacies and bakeries on every other corner. The Mistral wind blows here. Locals shrug and put on a sweater. Newcomers eventually learn to do the same.

Affordability: This is the part that surprises Americans.

Toulon is meaningfully more affordable than Nice, Cannes, or Marseille's nicer arrondissements. Renovated 1- and 2-bedroom apartments in the city center commonly sit between €150K and €250K. Less central neighborhoods are cheaper still.

The honest caveat: Toulon has rougher patches like any port city. The historic center has been steadily redeveloped over the last decade, and the area around the port and Cours Lafayette is now lovely. Rule of thumb — visit before you buy, and ask local agents which streets they'd live on themselves.

📜 Taxes + Visa + Healthcare

The Two Things the Tax Treaty Doesn't Protect

The US-France tax treaty is generous to American retirees. Social Security, US Government pensions, traditional and Roth IRAs, US-source rental income — most of the big stuff is taxable only in the United States, with France stepping aside (Articles 18, 19, and 24 do most of the heavy lifting).

But the treaty was written in 1994. Two whole categories slip right through it:

1. Cryptocurrency

2. Securities not listed on a US exchange

Crypto first. France treats occasional crypto sales as miscellaneous gains taxed at the 30% PFU (Prélèvement Forfaitaire Unique — the flat tax). Professional crypto traders are taxed differently and more heavily. There's no treaty provision for digital assets — they didn't really exist when the treaty was last seriously updated.

Translation: if you sell crypto while a French tax resident, France will tax that gain. The US will too (welcome to citizenship-based taxation), but you'll claim a US foreign tax credit for the French tax you paid — which usually washes it out.

Now the trickier one — non-US securities. This phrase doesn't mean what most Americans assume.

It does not mean your Vanguard Total International ETF (VXUS), iShares Emerging Markets ETF (EEM), or any fund listed on a US exchange — even if those funds happen to own foreign companies. Those are still US-source securities. The treaty protects them.

It does mean a stock or ETF actually listed on a non-US exchange. A French ETF on Euronext. A UK investment trust on the LSE. A direct holding in a Japanese company on the Tokyo exchange.

France will tax those gains and dividends at 30% PFU. The US will tax them too — same foreign-tax-credit dance to avoid full double taxation.

One brutal warning from the US side: foreign-listed mutual funds and ETFs are almost always classified as PFICs (Passive Foreign Investment Companies). PFICs are a US tax nightmare — punitive rates and complex annual reporting on Form 8621. Most cross-border CPAs will tell you to either sell foreign-listed funds before becoming a French resident, or to stick to direct foreign stocks instead of pooled vehicles.

Practical implications: If you hold crypto, plan the timing and your cost basis carefully before becoming a French resident. If you hold non-US securities, talk to a US-based tax advisor familiar with PFIC rules before you move — and consider repositioning into US-listed equivalents while you still have the US tax address. Keep careful records. The French tax form expects detail.

This is general information, not personalized tax advice. Crypto rules in France have evolved fast — confirm current treatment with a French expert-comptable or a cross-border CPA before making decisions.

📺 France Must-Watch

Exploring Toulon Ville: Stunning French Riviera Walking Tour in 4K

Visit the World

A perfect companion to this week's Hidden Gem. The video is a slow, narration-free walking tour of Toulon's old town, the port, and the market — just the actual streets at the actual pace of someone who lives there.

If you're trying to picture what your morning might look like — coffee at a café table on Cours Lafayette, a stroll past the boats in the Vieille-Darse, the lift up Mont Faron on a Sunday afternoon — this is your audition for the role.

→ Watch Now

🏡 Real Estate Spotlight

€182,000 (~$213,500) — 58 m² 3-Room Apartment, Toulon City Center

A pedestrian street. Two bedrooms. An elevator. The port a five-minute walk away.

The price tag would buy you a cramped studio in a not-great part of Boston. Here it buys you a Haussmann-era apartment in a Mediterranean city center.

58.41 m² (about 630 sq ft). Third floor with elevator. Renovated in 2014. Bright living room with open kitchen, two bedrooms, separate WC, shower room, laundry area. "Crossing" layout — windows on opposite sides — which is the Mediterranean version of "good airflow without an air conditioner running 24/7." Balconettes for light, low co-ownership charges, energy class C / climate class A.

An optional 15+ m² attic space in the building lofts is available at extra cost — useful if you want a future office, storage, or a creative studio.

This is exactly the kind of listing that quietly proves the Côte d'Azur is not a single, uniformly expensive place. Move 60 km west of Cannes and the same kind of apartment comes in at a fraction of the price.

The catch is what we covered above — port-city Toulon is uneven block by block. Pedestrian street, near the law faculty and the SNCF, walking distance to the port — all green flags. Visit, walk the neighborhood at three different times of day, then decide.

→ View Property Details

Hit reply and tell me — what's the one thing about France retirement you keep getting stuck on? Visas? Taxes? Picking the right town? I read every reply.

That's it for this week. À bientôt, Tommy

PS — Cart for the Fast Track opens Monday, May 4. If you're on the fence, get on the waitlist now — you're not committing, you're just keeping your seat at the table. Save your spot →