So, we’d arrived in Istria and hired a car, with the intention of finding the house we’d spotted online. Armed with a map and sat-nav we set off, climbing higher and higher up into the Istrian hills. Although it was July, it was quite cool and a overcast, but we could still see the potential […]
So, we decided to take flights out to Istria and try and find the house we’d spotted online, but were getting still no responses from the sellers to our calls and emails. Bonkers? Yes, of course. But sometimes, you just get that feeling… Summer flights from Manchester to Pula were stupidly inexpensive – £60 return […]
It’s been a while since I posted about the new adventure that is the house in Istria. In fact, the last post just showed a photo of the keys and a glass of fizz… Yes, on Monday 5th December 2016, we signed all of the official paperwork, made the payment, and that was it. The […]
Opatija is located on the north eastern side of the Istrian peninsula, on the Adriatic coast. Opatija was the most fashionable seaside resort during the Austro-Hungarian Empire and many fine hotels, residences and houses were built there during that period. European royalty also stayed there then, as did famous celebrities such as the dancer Isadora […]
We do like to find unusual places to stay on our travels, and so on a recent trip to Rijeka, in Croatia, we were intrigued by Botel Marina – a unique boat hotel, moored in the marina, right in the city centre. The website describes it as a unique combination of “a boat with a […]
So, on Monday 5th December 2016, *this* happened. Meaning, it’s now all very real, indeed…
December is going to herald in some big changes! We fly out on 1st December to Bergamo in Northern Italy and pick up a car, which we’ll drive down to Istria. On Dec 2nd we apply for our Croatian Osobni Identifikacijski Broj numbers – ID numbers, similar to our NI numbers in the UK and […]
So, flights booked. We hope there’s no turning back now. Come the beginning of December, we hope the deal has been sealed. We hope that as well as those UK National Insurance numbers – which you *always* remember – we’ll also have Croatian ID, and the ownership of a Croatian farmhouse. We hope that the […]
Today – 9/11/16, a day which will forever be entwined with the US elections – is also the day we start getting serious about The Move. Yes, today we started investigating the Osobni Identifikacijski Broj, the personal identity numbers which will enable us to start the process of the purchase of The House. The number […]
So, this move isn’t your normal kind of every-day-house-move. You see, we’re selling up lock, stock and barrel and relocating abroad. To Croatia. A country we only visited for the first time in June! We still pinch ourselves, but there is definitely method in what seems madness… Moving to northern Italy has been a plan […]
Manchester > Bergamo > Lake Garda > Andalo > Istria > Zrenj… This was our journey last week to visit somewhere that we hope is going to become a new and exciting adventure. We could have taken a more direct route, using motorways and toll roads, but we decided to turn the journey into a mini […]
Somewhere, on that road from Livade to Buzet, is a beautiful stone farmhouse, hopefully waiting for some new owners…