It’s contract-signing time and we’re driving down. I say we but wife does the driving while I assume the mantle of the far heavier navigating responsibility. (I don’t drive as I take the drinking part of ‘drink driving’ very seriously. I did once take a driving test but as I calculated it would be safer to hit a stationary car on my left rather than one moving towards me on my right, my tendency to commandeer the pavement robbed me of vital points) We make a relatively early start as we’re only stopping one night en route. Arriving at Dover without mishap, we take the Sea France ferry to Calais – eat your heart out, Eurotunnel – and having enjoyed an overpriced and over-caloried breakfast, hit the motorway with a vengeance. By 6pm we’re at Nuits St. George and half an hour later checking into a pleasant little hotel in Beaune. We’ve covered 480 miles and thrown a substantial number of euros into motorway baskets. Superb meal but surely the wine could be cheaper – I can see the raw material growing outside the window.
By 6pm the following day we’re at our destination. We’ve covered 915 miles. I’ve arranged to meet the owner of charming apartment in a pretty square in Dolceaqua. I don’t, however, know what she looks like and the square is packed with people enjoying a children’s choir. Having unsuccessfully propositioned several women of undoubted probity, I am rescued by the lady herself. A drink at a nearby café is suggested and I retrieve wife from the car.
Dolceaqua is picturesque and the apartment high up in the centro storico. (who says I don’t speak the lingo?). We dine and sup well that evening, particularly enjoying the local Rossesse di Dolceaqua, reputedly a favourite wine of Napoleon, presumably Bonaparte rather than Solo.
The next day we meet up with our new best friend, Vittorio, and after a delightful lunch in San Remo, where we are joined by Eliana, the local representative of the UK –based estate agency and, perhaps, the most helpful, attentive individual we have ever met, we walk towards destiny and the notario’s office. (Refer to my first two blogs, dated 20th and 28th July for a fascinating account of this meeting.)
Now we have an official contract. The house is ours. How do we celebrate? What about a trip to Genoa and the wonders of Ikea! I hate shopping. I hate shopping for anything. Wife loves shopping. Wife loves shopping for practically anything. Do you see a potential problem here? After a long and tedious motorway journey, we see Ikea but we can’t get to it. Tempers fray a little but after a couple more circuits of industrial Genoa we are there. (Sometime later) Having ordered beds, sofas, wardrobes, tables and a myriad variety of other items, we linger a little longer to enjoy a hot Ikean beverage. Idly I peruse the rather lengthy receipt. It doesn’t take even me long to realise that the young assistant, (Italian perfect, English rubbish), has got significant elements of our order wrong. As the entire order is to be delivered to the house in our absence in a month’s time, can you imagine the drama of getting the wrong items replaced when we do turn up? Well can you? We track down the assistant and point out the error of his ways.
A day or two later it’s time to go home. But now we have two homes. We’ve enjoyed strolling round our Italian property. We’ve arranged for the Italy-based estate agent to ensure safe delivery of the Ikea order and to let us know when it happens. Then we can plan our first stay under our own roof. The journey back is uneventful and we even manage to achieve some non-motorway driving. By 10 pm the next day we’re home, warmly greeted by cat, post, telephone messages and email. Our Golf has done us proud and there’s a total of nearly 2,800 extra miles on the clock.
Does the furniture arrive? Are we informed? When will son get a proper mention? Didn’t I tell you not to mention ivy? Tune in again next week? No. We’re off to Italy!
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
who put 'ur' in liguria?
We’re back in England. (Don’t the raindrops look pretty as the wind smashes them against the window?) Our reckonitre, reconoitere, wrecknoitre, reconnaissance trip to Liguria is judged a success. We love the area, the prospect of cheap flights, the manageable car journey. And we’ve seen a house we all like. It’s too big, too expensive, too old but, hey, you only live once, unless it’s next time that I come back as a sophisticated Greek god with a 12 handicap.
The house in question came via an Italian estate agent based in the UK who splits commission with the relevant agency in Italy. (This is an advertisement-free blog but if you’re looking for a home in Italy, you’d probably google ‘homes in Italy’ wouldn’t you.) My loving wife suggests I put in a really low offer and see the reaction. I do just that and to shorten a long story, eventually agree a figure nearer my offer than the original asking price. If I’d known what was to come, I would have cancelled my glee.
It is time for another visit and somewhere nearer the house to stay. There’s one hotel in the chosen village. (Look I’m not going to mention the village’s name so that when I eventually chat about internecine bakery wars and the like, I won’t risk a firebombed car – and there’s a story I will be telling!). The hotel is rather bland but boasts both a magnificent view down the valley to the sea and a manager who’s a better cook than hostess. We are to meet the vendor who, we understand, has used the house as a holiday home, at the Italian estate agency. That’s not the Italian estate agent based in the UK – oh, do keep up! The vendor is there, the estate agent is there and a jean-suited, striking-looking individual with shoulder length grey hair. He speaks excellent English and why not, as he is the vendor’s translator and ‘gofer’. After preliminary chat we decide to walk to the house. The vendor appears not to know the way. Funny? At the house we have the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with all the rooms, which spread themselves over three floors. At the top level there’s a whispered conversation between vendor and estate agent. Later she tells us that the vendor was hoping she hadn’t mentioned a large storeroom as part of the property as he was planning to sell it off separately to the next-door apartment. (I neither like nor trust this man). Wife has taken the opportunity to chat to the gofer, the aged Ringo Starr lookalike whom we’ll call Vittorio. He volunteers to be our helper in Liguria and do we need help! We don’t speak the language and we have to sort out utilities, a new kitchen and a great deal more.
The official visit is over. I shake hands with the vendor, counting my fingers afterwards, and we fix a date for the formal contract signing with the notario.
As we’ve been given a key, my wife and I spend the next couple of days making an inventory of what we need in terms of furniture and furnishings. We discover there’s an Ikea – don’t you just love flatpacks – a two hour drive away in Genoa. It looks like the house is ours but we won’t get excited until the contract is in our hands. We raise a tentative toast at a local hostelry where the litre carafes of red are better and cheaper than a glass at home.
What’s the vendor’s real story? Is it time for us to drive down? Why didn’t daughter come with us? How come we haven’t mentioned the son? Don’t talk to me about ivy.Next week?
The house in question came via an Italian estate agent based in the UK who splits commission with the relevant agency in Italy. (This is an advertisement-free blog but if you’re looking for a home in Italy, you’d probably google ‘homes in Italy’ wouldn’t you.) My loving wife suggests I put in a really low offer and see the reaction. I do just that and to shorten a long story, eventually agree a figure nearer my offer than the original asking price. If I’d known what was to come, I would have cancelled my glee.
It is time for another visit and somewhere nearer the house to stay. There’s one hotel in the chosen village. (Look I’m not going to mention the village’s name so that when I eventually chat about internecine bakery wars and the like, I won’t risk a firebombed car – and there’s a story I will be telling!). The hotel is rather bland but boasts both a magnificent view down the valley to the sea and a manager who’s a better cook than hostess. We are to meet the vendor who, we understand, has used the house as a holiday home, at the Italian estate agency. That’s not the Italian estate agent based in the UK – oh, do keep up! The vendor is there, the estate agent is there and a jean-suited, striking-looking individual with shoulder length grey hair. He speaks excellent English and why not, as he is the vendor’s translator and ‘gofer’. After preliminary chat we decide to walk to the house. The vendor appears not to know the way. Funny? At the house we have the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with all the rooms, which spread themselves over three floors. At the top level there’s a whispered conversation between vendor and estate agent. Later she tells us that the vendor was hoping she hadn’t mentioned a large storeroom as part of the property as he was planning to sell it off separately to the next-door apartment. (I neither like nor trust this man). Wife has taken the opportunity to chat to the gofer, the aged Ringo Starr lookalike whom we’ll call Vittorio. He volunteers to be our helper in Liguria and do we need help! We don’t speak the language and we have to sort out utilities, a new kitchen and a great deal more.
The official visit is over. I shake hands with the vendor, counting my fingers afterwards, and we fix a date for the formal contract signing with the notario.
As we’ve been given a key, my wife and I spend the next couple of days making an inventory of what we need in terms of furniture and furnishings. We discover there’s an Ikea – don’t you just love flatpacks – a two hour drive away in Genoa. It looks like the house is ours but we won’t get excited until the contract is in our hands. We raise a tentative toast at a local hostelry where the litre carafes of red are better and cheaper than a glass at home.
What’s the vendor’s real story? Is it time for us to drive down? Why didn’t daughter come with us? How come we haven’t mentioned the son? Don’t talk to me about ivy.Next week?
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Bingo! Sorry, House!
Picture the scene…actually, I’m a day late with this blog so apologies to all my loyal readers, isn’t golf a ridiculous game…we’re in Western Liguria. That’s my wife, daughter and self, slowly falling in love with the area but rapidly not falling in love with terrible properties in attractive surroundings or attractive properties – you get the idea. The last estate agent to take us around, (and believe me she should be the last agent to take anybody anywhere), has shown us three totally unsuitable places but has one more up her sleeve.
The house we’re walking towards is in a pretty village, not ‘postcard pretty, this is where the tourist buses park’ but a real medieval village with real medieval villagers going about their daily lives. In the case of the men this appears to mean sitting outside the local café drinking and playing cards while the women scurry from shop to home laden with fresh pasta. We turn a corner and are walking past a large vine-covered building when the estate agent stops. ‘Here we are’ she announces in her best Brummie Italian accent. (it’s a long story not worth telling). She forces open a large wooden door and we step back in time. The house is over two hundred years old and is built into an original rock face. First impressions are of rough stone walls and ceilings, archways, large shuttered windows and, when the shutters are pulled back, one of the most impressive views I’ve ever seen. We look out across a vine-strewn valley towards the majestic Alps. Peaks and ridges appear to jostle for position like family members fighting to be at the front for the camera. We’re falling in love but
It’s a big but - that’ll do Jenkins Minor. The house is too big for what we need and what we were looking for. It actually consists of two houses knocked together. Effectively the kitchen is non-existent and the place is a tip. We wander outside. Opposite the house, across the narrow lane, is a large terrace with built-in barbecue. We ask to whom it belongs (I did English A level, you know). We’re told it is ours if we buy the house. Oh dear!
Daughter says ‘Buy it’. Wife says she likes it very much. I say tune in again next week.
The house we’re walking towards is in a pretty village, not ‘postcard pretty, this is where the tourist buses park’ but a real medieval village with real medieval villagers going about their daily lives. In the case of the men this appears to mean sitting outside the local café drinking and playing cards while the women scurry from shop to home laden with fresh pasta. We turn a corner and are walking past a large vine-covered building when the estate agent stops. ‘Here we are’ she announces in her best Brummie Italian accent. (it’s a long story not worth telling). She forces open a large wooden door and we step back in time. The house is over two hundred years old and is built into an original rock face. First impressions are of rough stone walls and ceilings, archways, large shuttered windows and, when the shutters are pulled back, one of the most impressive views I’ve ever seen. We look out across a vine-strewn valley towards the majestic Alps. Peaks and ridges appear to jostle for position like family members fighting to be at the front for the camera. We’re falling in love but
It’s a big but - that’ll do Jenkins Minor. The house is too big for what we need and what we were looking for. It actually consists of two houses knocked together. Effectively the kitchen is non-existent and the place is a tip. We wander outside. Opposite the house, across the narrow lane, is a large terrace with built-in barbecue. We ask to whom it belongs (I did English A level, you know). We’re told it is ours if we buy the house. Oh dear!
Daughter says ‘Buy it’. Wife says she likes it very much. I say tune in again next week.
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
A proper peep at property
My wife took me out for a drink – summat funny going on – and then demanded, nicely, whether I intended to drift into retirement or do something with my remaining years. As one proposed option was moving house (‘What, further away from the golf course?) I had to think fast. And that’s why we came to be looking for a second home in Italy. That’s not a second home in Italy, rather a second home, comma, in Italy. I can, and frequently do, spend several hours a day at the computer. (Isn’t tetris addictive?). We wanted a low maintenance property, that we could just lock up and forget about. No garden. No land. But where? We’d enjoyed several Italian holidays and liked Tuscany, Umbria, the Amalfi coast, (remind me to tell you the tale of our highway robbery) but I wanted to discover somewhere new and preferably cheap. I gave serious computer time to Calabria and then to Le Marche. Both had attractions in terms of being relatively unspoilt with low prices to match but both were not the easiest places to reach. I won’t detail other negatives, in part because my feet don’t look good in concrete.
Almost by accident I came across a place called Liguria,which I thought was one of those diseases that dared not speak its name. The more I googled, (they can’t touch you for it), the more it appealed. Hugging the coast just the other side of Monaco, it boasted beaches, hillside villages and two local airports, Nice and Genoa. It was also within a one night stopover car journey from Surrey. Time to take my wife out for a drink. The area appealed, particularly as she does all the driving while I work hard at the drinking, sorry map reading.
We gave more thought to what we wanted. Low maintenance was a given and very soon we added - must be in walking distance of a restaurant, bar and shop; must be in a village of Italians as opposed to an Italian village full of Brits; must be an easy drive from the coast. I contacted a few estate agents in Liguria and an Italian estate agent in England. Now it was time to have a look round. We narrowed our initial choice down to eight properties and booked a week’s B and B in a village in Western Liguria. Recently graduated daughter volunteered to join us – anything for a free holiday. Easy jet flight from Gatwick to Nice, (so that’s where they got the name from), picked up the hire car and in under two hours we’re in delightful Apricale.
Over the next few days we try to get to know the area and see our first shortlist of properties. A very mixed bag, almost as mixed as the bag of estate agents. We meet one in a square in Diano Marina. By the time he’s driven me to a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere, seemingly occupied by the Italian version of the Young Ones, I know most of his sorry life story. Forced to live in this part of Italy by a wife who has subsequently left him, destined to see his favourite football team sink ever lower in the Italian leagues, he glumly accepts the inevitable rejection of the property. Enthusiastically I rejoin wife and daughter who have followed us in the hire car, pausing only to mutter ‘Is there an Italian branch of the Samaritans?’ We are shown two properties by an Italian woman who gives estate agents a bad name. Languid to the point of torpor, supercilious to the height of arrogance, she sneers at our budget and shows us a shoebox masquerading as an apartment and a delightful house in a village abandoned by time and human presence. We’re beginning to feel a little despondent, cheered only by magnificent meals in stunning locations.
Will we return home empty-handed? Can we afford what we are looking for? Are there two c’s in fettuccine? Same time next week! (I’m trying to cut down on exclamation marks)
Almost by accident I came across a place called Liguria,which I thought was one of those diseases that dared not speak its name. The more I googled, (they can’t touch you for it), the more it appealed. Hugging the coast just the other side of Monaco, it boasted beaches, hillside villages and two local airports, Nice and Genoa. It was also within a one night stopover car journey from Surrey. Time to take my wife out for a drink. The area appealed, particularly as she does all the driving while I work hard at the drinking, sorry map reading.
We gave more thought to what we wanted. Low maintenance was a given and very soon we added - must be in walking distance of a restaurant, bar and shop; must be in a village of Italians as opposed to an Italian village full of Brits; must be an easy drive from the coast. I contacted a few estate agents in Liguria and an Italian estate agent in England. Now it was time to have a look round. We narrowed our initial choice down to eight properties and booked a week’s B and B in a village in Western Liguria. Recently graduated daughter volunteered to join us – anything for a free holiday. Easy jet flight from Gatwick to Nice, (so that’s where they got the name from), picked up the hire car and in under two hours we’re in delightful Apricale.
Over the next few days we try to get to know the area and see our first shortlist of properties. A very mixed bag, almost as mixed as the bag of estate agents. We meet one in a square in Diano Marina. By the time he’s driven me to a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere, seemingly occupied by the Italian version of the Young Ones, I know most of his sorry life story. Forced to live in this part of Italy by a wife who has subsequently left him, destined to see his favourite football team sink ever lower in the Italian leagues, he glumly accepts the inevitable rejection of the property. Enthusiastically I rejoin wife and daughter who have followed us in the hire car, pausing only to mutter ‘Is there an Italian branch of the Samaritans?’ We are shown two properties by an Italian woman who gives estate agents a bad name. Languid to the point of torpor, supercilious to the height of arrogance, she sneers at our budget and shows us a shoebox masquerading as an apartment and a delightful house in a village abandoned by time and human presence. We’re beginning to feel a little despondent, cheered only by magnificent meals in stunning locations.
Will we return home empty-handed? Can we afford what we are looking for? Are there two c’s in fettuccine? Same time next week! (I’m trying to cut down on exclamation marks)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)