We are so lucky that we now live so close to some amazing places, and that it is now very easy to hop across the border if we fancy doing something in Italy or Slovenia. So, when we saw that Kraftwerk were playing in Ljubljana, having missed the chance to see them when they played […]
We are very excited that visits out here are being planned already for 2018 by family and friends. If you’d like to come out to Istria, here’s where we are currently: 18th – 22nd April – booked 22nd – 29th May – booked 29th May – 5th June TBC 30th June – 4th July – […]
When we bought the house in Istria, one of the things which sold it to us, was the size of the main bedroom. Compared to other bedrooms we’ve had, this was massive and with a lot of potential. Over the months, we’ve done bits and pieces to try and make it comfortable, as we work […]
Having lived in West Didsbury for a very long time, we certainly appreciate good restaurants. And now, having moved to Istria, and initially being a little concerned that we would have to forgo culinary delights, we are super impressed with what we’re finding on our doorstep. We don’t have the choice we had back in […]
Today has been a beautiful day, weather-wise. Yesterday, we had brilliant blue skies and sunshine all day, but man, was it cold! And, last night, when we returned home from a local restaurant, the inky-black sky was littered with sparkling stars, like we haven’t seen since the heady days of summer. Because we aren’t overlooked […]
It’s the weekend, but that doesn’t stop our builders. Give them their due, there’s some work ethic being displayed here! We *think* that the major drilling work might be over for this phase of the house renovation, so whilst Misko & Edin got on with the cabling and first plastering of the ceiling, we were […]
It’s been a while since I’ve recorded anything about the kitchen renovation, simply because nothing massive – or Instagram worthy 😉 – seems to have happened recently. But actually, a lot has happened and we are hopeful that the dirty, grimy work is now almost over. Or, at least until Silvano returns to dismantle the […]
Istria is known as Terra Magica. And it certainly is a land of magic, and traditions. As people whose lives are very much reliant on modern technology and the internet, it’s fascinating for us to see at such close quarters, old ways of life, still very much in evidence. Where we live, we are surrounded […]
When we bought the house, we asked the people we were buying from, what Istrian winters are like. “A bit like English summers” they told us – meaning damp and overcast. They hadn’t known snow for ten years – although to be fair, they weren’t here that often and we have had our fair share […]
The signs are all here this morning. The temperature has plummeted – it feels quite icy cold outside. The skies are leaden and heavy. The clouds are moving very, very quickly and the trees are beginning to bend and sway in the wind, which is becoming increasingly stronger. It can all only mean one thing […]
It’s going to be quite a few more weeks, we think, until we have anything that resembles a kitchen, never mind something as luscious as this above. In the meantime, we’re just going to have to continue muddling through the dust and the dirt and the grime – which we do try to keep on […]
Who’d have thought stairs could be so problematic? To be honest, I’ve never really given stairs a lot of thought, because they’re just…there. But our stairs need a lot of thinking about, because they’re pretty unusual. We have one set going upstairs from the living room, and another going down into what will become The […]