Category: Blog

We had a wonderful holiday revisiting parts of Tuscany we knew well and discovering places we’d never visited before. Of course we went to Bagni di Lucca and up to Benabbio to take a look at the house we had enjoyed so much in our twenties.

We also got to know Lucca so much better and both became convinced that this was the right area to focus future searches on. It’s so beautiful and full of history and culture.

We kept returning to Monte Carlo. The village was stunning and the food was excellent.

Life just seemed more normal than back home. Perhaps a touch too normal.

The apartment we had rented was a disaster! The idea was great: an apartment just outside the city walls so we could easily walk in to the hustle and bustle but have a peaceful place to stay. Peaceful my arse. We did not realise till we got there how close it was to the busy main road round the ramparts. It was so noisy we had to keep all the windows closed (and then needed noisy fans to keep cool) and we could not enjoy the outside space. There was a pond in the garden resulting in a veritable plague of biting insects which added to our misery.

We stuck with it for a few days as we’d paid for the whole stay up front, but in the end we decided we had to abandon ship if we were to salvage the holiday. We found another apartment one road back from the main ring road and it was like night and day. Disaster averted.

We made a fabulous choice of base for our holiday and search. Lucca is a beautiful and friendly city with ancient ramparts all the way round. We got reacquainted with the city and fell in love with it. We took regular walks on the ramparts which were most magical in the early evening when the sun was low and warm and golden.

I think we may have had a unique experience of Lucca in that summer as there were far fewer tourists than usual.

The gods smiled on us and we could stick to our plans. We loaded up the car and headed for Dover.

It felt liberating and exciting to be on the ferry heading for Europe.

The ferry was called Spirit of Britain which felt uncomfortably BREXIT like. The fact that the UK was leaving the EU would restrict future visits to the home we were off to find. Not the worst impact of BREXIT I’m sure, but a personal one.

Once we got to the mainland, we drove to Lucca in three days stopping off in Épernay (grand but rather soulless) and Annecy (beautiful by the lake).

Goodness me. The French motorway tolls were not cheap and the Mont Blanc tunnel from France to Italy was extortionate. We decided we’d try to go via Germany on the way back as their motorways are toll free.

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.