Hi again! Hope you haven't forgotten about us.....It has been a crazy few weeks, we got the keys for the house then headed back to the UK for four weeks to make arrangements for transporting our furniture out here and to see friends and family. Then we went to Chicago for a week to visit my friend which will probably be our last holiday for a few years, or at least until we earn some money! Now we are back 'home' well kind of....I will explain more!!!


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After a hectic four weeks in the UK...where we managed to upset many friends and family, mostly due to the fact that they couldn't understand why we were only seeing them for a day or two during our stay! After we managed to clock a total of 2000 miles in only 3 weeks of the trip during all our visit you can probably understand why! I never realised that having loved ones in different counties can make your life so difficult and so tiring!

So after a week of shopping, bars, shopping...shopping...shopping we land back in 'Bella Italia' and are greeted at the airport by Salvatore (our 76 year old friend) who insists that he will drive us the hour trip from Bari airport to Ostuni! Ohhhhh my...what an experience and can I say 'never again!'. Salvatore managed to drive (at night) veering from one lane to the other on a dual carriageway whilst lighting a cigarette with both hands off the steering wheel! When we eventually arrive back in only 50 minutes we find out that our furniture (in England) will now take an extra four weeks to arrive here in Puglia! So with only the clothes in our suitcase from Chicago and a house which is not really habitable we are once again homeless... but after a quick phone call to our friend Titti, she arranges for us to stay in one of her apartments in Ostuni old town.

When we eventually get through to our furniture removal man he informs us that on collecting the furniture from our storage unit (which he looked at first) the amount of furniture we have is too heavy to go on the original half a load trip with another mans furniture and now has to go as a load on its own...so not only will it be double the amount but it will not arrive until four weeks!!! After a weeks stay in Titti's apartment which she insists we don't have to pay for we manage to rent a villa only three doors away from our friends Giorgio and Graziana in Villanova. Villanova is a little fishing port not far from Ostuni and the villa we are renting is only a few meters from the sea! Talking of Graziana she is most disappointed...she works at a beautiful Massaria (a small hotel) in Martina Franca and one of her guests from America enquired where in England she was from. On replying that she was infact Italian and not English the lady was extremely confused and said ‘I’m sure you are from England you have a very strong West Midland’s accent!’. Graziana was very upset and said ‘surely I have an Oxfordshire accent?’ but the lady said definitely not. So my strong Walsall accent has finally reached the Southern Italian shores, you can take the girl out of Walsall but you can’t take Walsall out of the girl!!

We set to work on our new property with only a chisel and hammer each as all of our tools are in the van which is still in England! So we manage to knock an internal wall down with our limited tools, tackle the vineyard which needed pruning...we are ‘blagging’ it here, I am by no means a gardener and haven't got a clue what you do with a vineyard and how to look after it...but after looking at neighbouring vineyards we have a rough idea and set to work.
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After our second day of working on the house we decide to take a break from it all and take a stroll down one of the neighbouring lanes. Now I know that in the warmer climate you are going to find a few lizards and maybe even snakes (little snakes). Lizards I can cope with, but snakes? After four years of visiting Puglia I have never seen a snake, that was until our walk. A ‘big‘, brown and green snake, sunbathing on a wall not far from our house (well at least slithering distance!) and that was it, the end of our relaxing walk!

Today we meet with a builder introduced to us by the Estate agent so next time we will give you the good or bad news on costs for renovation!!! Fingers crossed!
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