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 […]
One of my favourite weekends, back in West Didsbury, was the one when we ventured out into the garden, for the first time in the year, to start that post-winter/pre-spring clean up. When the weather felt deceptively spring-like and the air felt a little bit different. And that weekend was usually in March or April, […]
I’ve never really been green-fingered. I’m very impatient when growing anything from seed, as I want results right NOW. When I want a riot of colour in my garden, I want it immediately, but I know it takes longer for seeds to germinate and bulbs to push themselves up through the spring soil. Although I […]
If you’re remotely interested in the tales of our house renovation, or maybe fancy a bit of a break out in Istria, we’d love you to give us a follow over on Twitter. If you’re not that interested in the story of the house etc, but like to travel – and stay – in nice […]
Although our house is quite old – we think parts of it are over 200 years old – and is quite traditional in structural style to many of the stone houses in Istria, we are determined to stamp a contemporary feel on it. Apart from The Well Room where the floor is stone flags (therefore […]
Quick backstory if you don’t know our story. June 2016 – visited Croatia on holiday (Zadar). Loved it. July 2016 – saw a house online for sale in Istria, northern Croatia. Flew out on impulse, loved it. August 2016 – put our West Didsbury house 0n the market and made an offer on the Istria […]
In the house we’ve bought in Istria, we have two bathrooms. Sounds like a bit of a luxury, doesn’t it? But, both are very small and both are poorly laid out. The house had previously only been used in the summer, and more recently, less frequently, so not a great deal of attention had been […]
During December we left the house in the hands of Misko and Sergio, the plan being for them to get as much of the dirty work done in the kitchen as possibe while we were away. Although they kept in contact regularly and sent photos of progress, we quickly realised that they weren’t going to […]