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.
A few red flags made me hesitant as the realtor said it needed some roof work so I decided to find a local structural engineer to give it a through look see. In my research I found the company, Salento With Love run by Davide Mengoli, a property agent, structural engineer, promotor of Puglia/Salento and all-around great person.
Needless to say, the roof needed a total redo among other issues with the old building. Davide steered me clear of this one. First clue that I found a good agent. Honesty. He could have taken my money and sold me a sore thumb of a building that I would need to sink considerable funds into just to make it habitable. But he didn't..
Over the course of three or four more months we looked at a half dozen other properties as Davide really got to know what was in my mind as to the perfect property.
And then we found it. A beach-side apartment in San Cataldo far less then a stone's throw from the sea in a sleepy (in the off season) little beach town looking out on the Adriatic sea. One bedroom, well almost a studio apartment, with a full kitchen, terranza and as mentioned right on the water after walking out of the little courtyard.
I'll just put one or two pics up now as we'll be there in exactly a week and we'll soon have a gazillion pics from our own perspective. But suffice to say, it's cozy and sweet, with a pescaria on the corner, bars, ristoranti, and il Mare just steps from our door.
And maybe best of all, the magnificent city of Lecce, the Firenze of the south only 12 chilometri away. Art, food, culture for those times when the silence of writing novels on the beach become overbearing. A nearly perfect location.
a presto mi amici!
Comments
Post a Comment