Arrived and moved in. The apartment exceeds all expectations. It's roomier then the photos from afar showed, and it's quiet, cute and well, yes, in need of TLC to make it into a home, but we'll get there for certain.   I, of course, on morning one went to the local bar, Yvonne's for my morning doppio espresso. Right on the main piazza by the lighthouse, less than a minute from my door, it's definitely THE spot. Everyone in town seemed to be here this morning sitting in the covered outside area while the Autumn rain poured down. The contingent of local old guys (my goal is to join one day), the local cops, expatriate rock star looking guy, even our waiter from yesterday's pranzo. The whole ton shows up for coffee and conversation. Turns out my lingue Italiano is rusty and determining which type of crema in my cornetto became a major motion picture production  Yvonne speaks little to no English and my Italiano was sputtering from jetlag and nerves. Our waiter fro...

 The morning finally came when we awoke sluggy headed to face our first day in-country - conveniently in a lovely hotel in Rome we've stayed out a few times.  9Hotel Cesari; a very old hotel smack dab in the middle of the Centro Storico, walkable in minutes to the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Campo Fiori, Fontana di Trevi. Very much an on purpose action as sort of way to float down comfortably from the fog of jet lag before we head south to San Cataldo/Lecce and the sea.  If you read any snippets from my previous blog, pre pandemic Becoming Roman  you'll know I like lists, so here you go.  What seems different than 2019 we we did a few months in Rome (gawd, I love remote working) in the most interesting and beautiful city in the world? Chage, in the Eternal City?  It happens. 1. Ristoranti and cafe life.  We like coffee and of course that was our first goal, so we headed down a few blocks to a really authentic, high volume coffee bar, one of the first real...

 A great question as to how we ended up here.  It wasn't by far the first place i looked.  I fell in love temporarily with at least four or five other properties.   From right in Lecce to all the way to the far southern coast.  We took the advice of our excellent agent in Salento looked far and wide and even had a couple of walk-throughs for structural warning signs and coziness factor.  Actually we started looking even before we had an agent. Here's how we found him. I'd found what I thought was my dream palace.  It was all the way down in the heel of the Italian boot; a small town called Morciano di Leuca,  just a 10 minute bike ride to the sea.  A two bedroom villa with everything on my list.  A garden, a charming kitchen, a rooftop terrace, and best of all an unfinished downstairs ripe for remodeling into a few more bedroom, media rooms, winemaking, whatever. Oh, I  see it's still for sale, dropped in price a bit as well....

Thus begins tales of our move to San Cataldo/Lecce,  Puglia fall of 2021 After 6 months of searching, falling in love, falling out of love,  hesitation, wise council, and then the "Eureka" of true love, We found the perfect place to call our own in the tiny beach town of San Cataldo ;  sitting right on the edge of the world looking out on the Adriatic sea, across the straits 100 chilometri or so to Albanian coastline, and around the corner to Greece. A tiny apartamento across the piazza from the beach and a 2,000 year old Roman pier, a remnant of it's glory days as a major import/export point for Emperor Hadrian's Rome.  Nowadays it's by degree a quiet beach town (out of season) bordering some national parkland, and miles, and miles, and miles of gorgeous coastline on bottom of the Achilles tendon of the Italian boot.   It's also only a 12 chilometri ride to Lecce, the Florence of Southern Italy, so when I grow tired of the fall/winter quiet or need to get ...