Here the weather is getting warmer – last week there were even (Italian!) people sunbathing on the rocks by the Porta Vecchia beach! I love this time of year and have been enjoying putting away my winter clothes this weekend. … Continue reading
Villa delle Ginestre – sleeps 10 in 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
It works like this: Email your answers to the following questions to caroline@personalpuglia.com and we will enter you in our prize draw. There will be two draws – March 31st and April 25th. We will not use your email address for any purpose whatsoever unless you also sign up for our monthly newsletter. Continue reading
Buying a property with a sea view is a dream shared by many. If you are looking to buy in Puglia, however, where the clear turquoise sea enhances this view even further, there are a number of things you should … Continue reading
In May last year I booked a holiday villa for an Australian couple, who told me, once they had arrived, that they were also looking for a house to buy in the area. The challenge started there; everyone, including estate agents, moves rather slowly here unless pushed – and it took a few days to line up a selection of properties to view – with a bit of advance notice it would have been possible to arrange more viewings.
Once we started viewings it became clear to me that, in a lot of respects, Sue and Glenn were the ideal clients. Coming from a real estate background, they were able to see the potential in a selection of ‘unglamorous’ properties and ended up with a bargain, a four bedroomed villa, with a separate one bedroomed apartment, and spectacular views down over the valley. The location was also good, with a shop within walking distance, two pretty little towns within a 10 minute drive and the sea a further 10 minutes away. Continue reading
No matter that it has been summer here, by any normal standards, for weeks. Soon it will be SUMMER, and a whole succession of happenings take place: feast days, fairs, outdoors concerts and wonderful opportunities for people watching, as eveyone gets dressed up to the nines and parades around all evening!
We have listed public events below but, particularly around Ferragosto, there will be happenings everywhere and we will keep this list updated as there is a tendency here to publish things at the last moment. Continue reading
Boat trips
This is the first newsletter since the April one – apologies to all subscribers but we have been very busy organising all of our planned activities for the summer, and also I have been helping some people to find and buy a house, get quotes for the necessary work and so on. In both cases I have definitely come up against the less pleasurable aspects of life in the South of Italy, namely the need to do constant ‘salti mortali’ (death leaps) to overcome layer upon layer of bureaucracy, red tape, and a, shall we say, flexible, attitude to time keeping or the need to make any decisions whatsoever within a set time frame!
No matter, nothing that a quick trip to the beach every so often can’t resolve and some of the lovely visitors whose holidays we have organised in this period have provided definite moments of light relief! Continue reading
photo copyright Alex Edwards
One of the things I love about this area of Puglia is that each little town has it’s own character, it’s own dishes and even almost it’s own climate..”Locorotondo (literally round place,as the roads of the centro storico are laid out almost in concentric circles) is no exception.
The weather has been glorious here for the last couple of weeks and it is now warm enough to lie on the beach in a bikini though the water is still very cold. There have been a spate of last minute holiday requests from people desperate to get away from the lousy weather elsewhere but , although some have made it, the flights to Puglia often get more expensive at the last minute, rather than cheaper so, in an ideal world, you want to be booking at least three weeks ahead. Continue reading
I first started hearing about Bina Ristorante a while ago; the (Italian) word on the street was that it was refined and stylish and well worth a visit, with ‘e poi si mangia bene’- you also eat well, as an after thought. I didn’t feel compelled to rush over there. It is difficult to eat badly in Puglia, and Italians in general go crazy for anything new which ticks the ‘stylish’ box, whatever the current definition of stylish happens to be. Suffice it to say that the fairy story of the emperor’s new clothes is not widely known here, nor the expression ‘all that glisters is not gold’. Continue reading
After an early flourish Spring seemed to get discouraged and go away again, and I began to think that the Puglian motto ‘domani si pensa’ – tomorrow we will think about it – even applied to the weather.
But today is glorious; the sky is blue, the sea a sparkling turquoise and every scrap of spare land, even in town, is carpeted with wild flowers. Continue reading