½ûÂþÌìÌÃ

Well currently I live in Berkshire but that's because I can't get the sale of my house here completed ........... it's a real nightmare and I am going mad

Why Puglia? Because we fell in love with it seven years ago when we went on holiday. At that time we considered a holiday home but the cheapy airlines weren't going there.

Love the people, the language, the wine, the food, the history, the scenery. The fact that we can stumble over the language and the locals will help not laugh (at least not in our faces, I lived in France for a while and found them very condescending to us happless Brits). The fact that I can go into a hairdressers with my husband and with the help of a phrase book and stumbling ½ûÂþÌìÌà help him get the best haircut he has ever had in his life.

The climate, did I mention the climate (never mind the fact that it has been raining a lot lately, you need rain as well as sun to make things grow).

The fact that at 52 I can afford to retire and live comfortably in a country I love - if I stay in the UK I'll be working until 70.

Sun, food, wine, laid back attitude - for me la dolce vita, la bella vita

I'm not a celebrity - just get me out of here (UK) and home to Puglia

Like most other Brits we'd never heard of Abruzzo before but one winter's night I was bored and on the internet ....found an agent in Pescara then I was hooked.

Abruzzo to me just about has it all.It's easy to get to from the UK and once there very easy to travel in with excellent roads and superb public transport. Rome and Naples are a couple of hours away by bus or train and if the winter snows get us down we can always dash down the Autostrada to Puglia ( we may also do this if we need a toilet).

Our first 'viewing trip' was hilarious involving rally driving stunts along mountain roads, house viewing in the pitch dark, strange roadside restaurants with plastic tableclothes and no menus where we were amazed to be charged just 14 euros for the best lunch I've ever eaten. To top this all off we flew back on the day of the pope's funeral and Pescara Airport was in chaos with women fainting all over the place and fights breaking out!

But this didn't put us off at all and I spent 2 weeks in Abruzzo looking around(my partner was getting work ready for an exhibition so I was alone) I met some great peolpe, like Mario just out of Uni who told me all about the wildlife in the parks and introduced me to public transport abruzzo style,the vendors of the house we are buying who wanted to explain that it was a church originally and showed me the old carvings on the stones.The scouts from the agents who were terrifically patient as I rubbished one house after another.

I'm reallly looking forward to next year when we can spend time in our house and discover the region in depth.I want to do that spectacular walk down to the bottom of the gorge in Caramanico and get up to the high mountains to walk the old sheep paths and come across a lonley hermitage or even an abandoned village left to the eagles.I want to find that museum in Chieti which has won all the awards and then perhaps at the end of the day sit on a deserted beach watching the sun go down over the Adriatic.Oh and I almost forgot I want to shop, shop, shop.....Pescara has the most fab shops and I haven't even begun on Rome!

Pic of Sulmona -Ovid's birthplace

The search started when I decided I could'nt afford to retire yet in the UK, my partner is retired and we had decided we wanted to spent more time together whether relaxing or working on some enjoyable project. My partner is ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ, having lived in the UK for about 40 years and never spent any of her adult life in her native country other than holidays, we have both seen quite a lot of Italy and decided to retire there.
Anna comes from a town in the shadow of Vesuvio a few miles from naples, a lot of her family still live there and we visit quite often. We had our hearts set on a property with a bit of land so that we can grow a lot of our own fruit and veg etc. The Amalfi coast and below are very beautiful but expensive for what we wanted, we did'nt want to further south because of the heat, we have been up north but decided not quite what we wanted, so we tossed up between Le Marche and Abruzzo for our first property hunting trip, Abruzzo won.
We spent a week and a half looking at properties and decided on this house just south of Tollo, Anna's brother and his wife travelled up from Naples to spend a few days with us, they had never been there before and remarked how beautiful it was, we all spent quite a few hours lazing on the beach and swimming at Silva Marina.
This was in June, and after deciding on the house we wanted to check out how far from the beach etc. we started off from Ortona on the coast, drove for 15 minutes to the house and then another 45 minutes through the National park up to the ski resort at Passo Lanciano, athough it was June it had snowed on the mountains, 60 minutes from swimming in the Adriatico to playing snowballs in the mountains it can't get much better.
Other reasons included not too close nor too far from relatives (bound to get visitors from down south) closeness of Rome if anything happened to the budget airlines (can fly from Rome to Bristol at the moment).
There also seems to be a lack of UK tourists in the the area at the moment which will have to help my ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ.
We are looking forward to the village markets, festivals and general visiting of all places beautiful.
We also look forward to meeting the other lucky people on this forum who either have or are buying in this beautiful area.
Just as a parting shot to those of you in Puglia, if you love your area as much as we do ours then I'm happy for you, but beware we may turn up for your summer party.

Saluti
Dave & Anna

We took our children to Italy over 18 years ago and we dreamed, without thinking that it would ever come true, that one day we would own a home in Italy.
Many years later when we were able to think about buying a place in Italy we did not know which region.. So we looked on the Internet as I suppose others have, we decided or rather price helped us to decide it was the south for us. Still not thinking that it would actually happen we narrowed the choice to Calabria and Puglia.
Ground rules were laid for purchasing, no decisions made on the first trip, must have electricity, bathroom, not too much land, be not more than half an hour to the sea, just need a quick coat of paint and we’d move in. The first region to visit Puglia it would be Calabria next, and of we wouldn’t buy a trullo not practical too small and quirky.
So off we set, and we were just entranced by the area of Puglia we visited, the kindness of the people and the way they welcomed us was so genuine.
We have been very lucky the friends we made on that first visit and they are still very good friends now. We’ve welcomed the birth of the first grandchild of the couple from whom we bought the house. The first day at school for the grandchild of a neighbour, we have included in wonderful summer parties, been bowling with friends and their children on Sunday afternoons and so much more. We thought we would be buying a house to chill out in and we do but in a very different way than we thought. We enjoy and are very flattered by the way people have accepted us. The way in which they teach us to cook, have patience with our lack of ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ, show us how to prune lemon trees and much much more.
Oh and the house we bought on the first trip, it did have electricity, it didn’t have a bathroom or a kitchen, it has 8647 square mtrs of land with 60 olive trees, it is about half an hour from the sea, and it needed totally renovating – there are two buildings and one of them is a trulli, and yes the builder and his family are firm friends. I am concerned about pollution and crime but when I’m working in England I look at a picture of our little trulli that was taken on a summers evening with our children their spouses and our friends and their children laughing as they balanced on the cones to squeeze in the snap – it just makes me home sick.

What a nice idea this thread was after all the bitching!
We looked at houses in Le Marche, and Tuscany but fell in love with the Appenines on the way thru.
This part of Italy is treated like Tuscany's poor relation, often overlooked as its just over the border and most people head for Tuscany first.
Not much tourism here (yet!) and not many English speakers ( which is one of the reasons for settling here)
Its a beautiful region, very rural, quiet, and unspoilt with lovely people, amazing food a well balanced climate,and even after 18 months of living here I am still overwhelmed by the place.
Every day you see something different, last winter I was woken one morning at 6am to see a pair of wolves in the neighbours field, they had come to lower ground because of the snow on the mountain but unfortunately I scared them off trying to get a photo.
In the summer we saw some fantastic snakes in our garden, the colours are amazing, The deer are regulars and sometimes we get a whole family of wild boar coming down the drive. (who needs a telly!)
I realize some people would be scared by this kind of stuff but most of these animals are more scared of us than we are of them, and as long as you keep a safe distance its fine.
We have 3 kids and the things they have experienced since coming here you could'nt begin to list.
I love my part of Italy but intend to travel round and see lots more starting next year, so far of the bits I have seen none of it has been bad!!

Twenty years ago as a spotty teenager I spent a few days in Liguria as part of the compulsory pre-university Transalpino tour. I loved it then and vowed to one day return. Needless to say in the intervening years I visited other European countries, the Caribbean and Africa. Many of these places I liked but I never came home thinking "I want to live there" (except Ireland, but that's another story!). In the summer of 2004 I finally fulfilled my promise and returned with my family to Liguria. We stayed in a restored rustico in an agriturismo just outside the village of Dolcedo about 7 km inland from Imperia. Before we had finished our week's holiday I said to my wife "if we are going to have another house anywhere then this is the place". Why?

Was it the stunning drive along the coast with the clear blue sea on one side and the mountains on the other?

Was it the beautiful villages clinging to the hillside surrounded by the terraced olive groves? Valloria with it's doors all painted by artists (what English village would allow that to happen?) or Bussana Vecchia, the earthquake village abandoned for decades and now an artists 'commune'?

Was it the fantastic climate - not searing heat in the Summer and mild in the Winter?

Was it the incredibly friendly people who frankly didn't care whether you were there or not (no false smiles 'cos they weren't desparate for the tourists) but wanted to make your stay enjoyable because they were proud of their village?

Was it the fact that with three teenagers and an 18 month old every restaurant we went in was pleased to see us, made us feel welcome and almost didn't notice us amongst all the ½ûÂþÌìÌà families that were there (not a single supposedly "child friendly" themed pub in site thank God!)?

Was it the fact that we didn't here a single English voice the whole week and we were forced to try to communicate in almost non-existent ½ûÂþÌìÌà (a bit better now!) and not one single person treated us with disdain?

Well all of these things helped but when we got back home and started the process of looking for a house in the area and flying backwards and forwards on househunting trips in all seasons and then finally in the summer of this year finding the place we wanted and even now when it seems to be taking an age to sort out the paperwork, one thing kept coming back into my head.

In the rustico we had stayed in there was a frame on one wall that contained an extract from a book about the people of the area in the 1800's. It told about the blood, sweat, tears and love of taking the barren, unfriendly hillsides and cultivating the olive groves, terracing the land and building mile upon mile of stone walls primarily to survive but also to give their descendants a land and an inheritance in which they could be proud. And I felt priveleged: first, to have experienced it; now, to have a chance to live amongst it for at least a few weeks a year; and, hopefully in the not too distant future, to be a part of it.

Oh, and the food is exquisite:)

Thanks for starting this Post Elaine....it is like a breath of fresh air.....keep 'em coming !!!!:)