Sometimes things take a turn of events that you just didn’t anticipate. And this has happened to us. We’ve spent the best part of the last two and a half years renovating our stone house in Istria, from top to bottom and have almost, almost completed it. We’re on the final lap now. The new […]
We’ve spent a lot of time working on our windows. A lot of time. They had all obviously been hurriedly installed and only benefitted from one coat of paint, which by the time we got round to dealing with them, was faded and flaking. Some were in a much better state than others, but all […]
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 […]
We had originally planned to end our winter road trip in Ravenna, in Italy, spending four days at Alighieri Theatre Charming Suite but we felt that we had been on the road long enough, and so, in very nice communcations with Silvia, the owner, decided to postpone until later in the year. However, we also […]
We were up with the larks this morning – no mean feat as our builder popped by late last night to discuss some new ideas (wine & beer were involved) – and packing the car as we’ve never packed before. We’re not instinctively organised travellers. We can arrive on a beach with not a flip […]
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 […]
So, three months after we signed all of the legal documents for The House in the solictors’ office in Rijeka, we found ourselves, on 1st March 2017, heading from our stop-over in Zagreb, to the village of Zrenj in Istria. A very good friend of ours had helped us to organise the transportation of all […]
Fast forward a couple of months from the last blog, and Monday 5th December, saw us sitting in a solicitors’ office in Riejka, with the sellers, signing paperwork & taking possession of the keys to the house… Just five months after seeing it online for the very first time, the house was ours! The whole […]
Our second trip to The House, this time to view internally, was much less problematic direction-wise, as we were already becoming used to the Istrian roads. What had seemed like a very long journey and an isolated location the previous day, all of a sudden seemed a whole lot more accessible and whilst in a […]
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, 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 […]