A busy summer of visiting family and friends has meant a busy time in between visits, doing what we can do ourselves to make our house as comfortable as possible for guests. Some things we just can’t tackle ourselves – new kitchen, new bathrooms, new stairs, new boundary wall – and frustratingly, we are reliant […]
In a few days time, we go on holiday. Our holiday this year will be a bit different, as we’re flying back into Manchester to visit family and friends. Returning to the city that has been our home for so many years, has made us reflect a little bit on the last five months – […]
One of the the things that excites us massively about now living in northern Croatia, is our proximity to so far undiscovered islands, very close to home. Greece has alway been our favoured destination of island exploration and we’ve never really given the Croatian islands a second thought. Until now… We’ve extensively explored the Istrian […]
We are surrounded by some of the most beautiful towns and villages imaginable. Many are perched, precariously, on top of high hills, clinging on for dear life, as they will have done for many, many years. But one town that has intrigued us for a long time, is Hum – according to the Guiness Book […]
It’s nearly four months since we arrived, shortly followed by every single thing we owned in the world, in our new home, in northern Istria. It’s been a whirlwind four months, filled with new places, new friends, bureaucracy, incredible weather, amazing food, new languages – and getting to grips with a stone farmhouse, parts of […]
We’ve got our first guests staying with us at the moment, friends from West Didsbury. It’s been brilliant to have people we know here and to be able to communicate, once again, without having to speak in Esperanto. In fact, being able to speak without thinking. Without having to compute in your head what might […]
I think my series of blogs about things which cause us confusion, will go on for some years to come. Because, at the moment, just about everything is causing us to be be confused 😉 We are muddling through, with the help of new found friends, the internet & just generally having to deal with […]
We’ve never had huge outdoor spaces anywhere that we’ve lived previously. In our last house in West Didsbury, we managed to create quite a funky little haven, out of scaffold planks. But it was still a bit of a tight squeeze and although we loved it, we never had a feeling of space. Well, we’re […]
The House, until we bought it, had been empty for quite a long time. It had been used as a family holiday home, but was in need of an immediate injection of warmth and a bit of TLC. Although we do have renovation plans, these are a bit further down the line as we work […]
Our last cause for confusion centred around the Croatian banking system, which admittedly is getting a little less confusing as we just keep returning to the bank. We’re sure that one day all will slot into place and we’ll be glad of the multiple bank accounts we seem to be acquiring. But banking has led […]
One of the things that we have discovered on our travels, is that flexibility can often mean being able to stay in places that would normally be otherwise a bit too pricey to justify an off-the-cuff trip. We’re very lucky that our circumstances allow us to be flexible and so we’re always on the look-out […]
Since being out in Istria, we have realised that we took so, so many things for granted in England. Of course, having lived in England for 50+ years, you do get used to things – and boy, did we often complain about how things worked. Or didn’t work. But, when you plunge yourself into a […]