How we ended up in Italy.

We didn’t actually choose Italy - It chose us.

To get to where we are presently are now in life, I need to explain the background on how we arrived at making the decision to make our life changing move to Puglia, Southern Italy - I’ll try not to bore you too much with the details but it goes a little like this -

Back in November 2014 we were sick and tired of living in the rat race, getting up day after day just to work to pay bills and survive the game everyone else is playing, So we decided enough was enough, we sold everything we possessed, bought a Catamaran and set off into the sunset to sail the World.

We would have left earlier if I’d had my way but we waited until the youngest child was 18 before we cast off into the sunset for what was to be the best five years off our lives thus far.

We left our home port of Hull in East Yorkshire on the 21st November 2014 - I can’t say it was without doubts, worry or uncertainty but without knowing what lay ahead it turned out to be the best decision we had ever made in our lives.

We sailed South to Ramsgate and stayed there until the following June before heading across the English Channel and hopping down the coast of France, across Biscay to Northern Spain, then Portugal across to the Canaries and eventually later in the November of 2015 we crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean where we spent the next four years cruising up and down between Trinidad and the the Virgin Islands taking in every island along the way.

We knew Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Lucia, Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Antigua, Monseratte, Nevis and St Kitts, St Martin, Eustacia, Saba, Sint Maarten, The British Virgin Islands and The USVI like back of our hands and absolutely loved our time cruising up and down all these islands for three and a half years meeting some amazing people who will part of our lives for years to come, but after such a long time aboard doing basically the same thing day after day we needed a change of scenery. In January 2019 we headed North to the Bahamas via The Spanish Virgins, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic before ending up in Marsh Harbor in the Abacos where after 5 years living aboard we decided we needed some land time and decided to put the boat up for sale - we didn’t think for one minute we’d get a buyer but the boat was in immaculate condition and sold the first week to a guy who bought it completely blind via a recommendation of a mutual friend.

So in June last year 2019 we found ourselves with no boat and homeless and wondered what we should do next.

We had both wanted to do a road trip across the U.S so our next crazy move was to buy a Dodge (it turned out more Dodgy than Dodge but that’s another story).
We called her the ‘Mystery Machine’ but ‘Misery Machine’ would have been more apt. After driving from West Palm Beach, Miami up through the States we picked her up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and spent the next 4 weeks travelling all over the East Coast of the U.S from the Yupper to Niagra Falls, Maine, New York State, Long Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and then back to Michigan where we sold her back to the guy we bought her from.

We then hired a Dodge Charger and spent the next few weeks doing ‘Route 66‘ from Chicago, Illinois all the way to the finish in California. Then just to finish up the journey we had a few weeks with friends in Bakersfield and Sacramento just chilling out and enjoying ourselves - but it was time to make a decision on what we should do next in life !

Having been in the restaurant game for many years before we set off, we were offered the opportunity of a half share in a new place in Antigua and we were more or less resigned to the fact that we should return to work for a few years and build up the retirement kitty once again - thankfully at the last minute we saw sense and decided it wasn’t for us, the place didn’t even last 3 months unfortunately so we were a bit more than lucky to say the least.

We flew back to the UK and we were staying with a friend in Faversham, Kent who owned a place in Malaga, Spain which he very kindly offered us to take a break and do a little chilling out before we decided what to do next, but whilst checking out flights to Spain we saw a 10 day return to Brindisi from Gatwick for a ridiculously low price so opted to try out Southern Italy Instead.

We had no intention of buying anything whatsoever but after just two days we had found a property and the wife had fallen in love with the place, who could blame her, Italy is stunning, it has more history than you will ever be able to digest and without a doubt has the best architecture in the whole World - the food is amazing, the women are beautiful and the wine is to die for !

It was without a doubt, it was simply fate that brought us here and it just felt right.

In my next post I’ll explain the buying process as we encountered it and what to do and what not to do if I had to do it all again. I hope it’s not been to long winded for you to follow the story so far but I thought it best to share how we arrived in this amazing place and introduce ourselves and what we are about. To follow our journey simply subscribe to our blog and enjoy the journey

Mark & Tracey