As the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic receded, we made plans to visit Tuscany for a month to start the search for an Italian holiday home. This was to be the first of a number of trips to different regions of northern Italy as we wanted to look at a few areas with a view to narrowing down the scope of our search when it came to buying at a future date.
We chose to start in Tuscany and base ourselves in Lucca as we had visited before and it seemed like a good base for exploring. When we were in our 20s, Martin’s parents had a house near Bagni di Lucca which we visited a few times. While we were pretty sure we wanted to buy somewhere a little less off the beaten track, we felt that Lucca would be a great starting point.
We had no intention to buy on this trip. In fact, we would only have the funds to do that once Martin’s pension kicked in when he got to 60 in June 2021. This trip was just to take the first steps in realising our dream of a second home in Italy by firming up what it was that we were looking for and where to concentrate future searches.
So we booked an Airbnb just outside the city walls of Lucca, the outbound and return ferries and a couple of hotels to break up the car journey. We made the bookings in mid-July for a trip from 24 August to 21 September. We knew there was a fair chance we’d have to cancel as there was no way to be certain of any plans at that time. Still, we took a punt and it paid off.