2018...The adventure starts...

We had been searching for months, looking for a house to buy - scouring the internet, and visiting houses - we had seen over 20 houses over the years and we were starting to get discouraged. The process of buying a house in Italy was very different to how it was in the USA where my sisters-in-law seemed to be able to buy a house in a 24 hour period! One evening my husband was once again searching websites and came upon what looked like a semi abandoned house. It showed a mix of photos of inside and out, but the description wasn't too clear on whether it was one house or several apartments in a house. I had dreamed of having a house with different roof levels and a front entry porch, things that maybe were not too common here. This house had both. It also had a pool, which really was stunning in the photos, even if we could tell the photos were old. It really looked like our dream house, but we really thought there was no way it could be ours...but maybe we could just go and look at it! It could do no harm. We were curious!

So in the middle of winter, back in February 2018, we visited the house for the first time. We discovered a pool that was green, a dormant garden, and 4 small apartments in an old renovated Italian farmhouse that had been transformed into an agriturismo many years earlier. The owners had then simply closed the doors after one busy summer, and left everything; furniture, linen, crockery, cutlery and more! It had been abandoned for around 10 years. After seeing it that first time, we felt an excitement and could envision the beauty of it and the life that could be brought back to such a place. We had never, EVER thought of running holiday apartment rentals, but suddenly this idea didn't seem too far fetched now that we had discovered this gem. It was a way for us to be able to buy the house and challenge ourselves!

So on one cold February day, our adventure started and we were excited!