[Photos: House terrace, inside shots]
Woke up this morning a little worse for a sleepless night, but keen to work it all through. Thought the first thing to do was to do a wander around the town to revisit the two town properties, in order to get more of a feel for where they are. It seems a bit odd to New Zealanders that you could visit a place and not really have much of a clue as to where it is in relation to the rest of town, but because almost all the time you are in the town here, you can’t see anything to get your bearings on, it is very difficult to make sense of direction and height.
So off we went, starting by trying to find the first place. Not much luck, and ended up above the mill, where we had a bit of a nosey before heading down past the mill, along below the town and over the bridge to the other side to see if we could spot house 1 from opposite. No such luck, but did manage to find Les and Helen’s place. Back into town and on the second attempt, we spotted the little terrace from one of the squares. It was much higher up in the town than we had expected, only 3 or four levels below Piazza Marconi, and really very handy. We went down to view it from the outside, learning little other than it is quite close to the centre of town. By now we had to adjourn for a lunch break, the stress of house hunting taking its toll.
A bit of good luck after lunch. We bumped into Alessandra, the agent, and were able to pick up the key from her 10 minutes later to have a good look at the apartment by ourselves. Started with a trip to the top to check out the views, which were my biggest concern. I had thought them a bit average on first impression, but they were actually pretty good. A mix of roofs, views across to other houses, and the town and hills above, and the valley to one side. The apartment is a bit like home in that it is three stories, with the kitchen being at level 2.5, and the terrace over it at 3.5. Had our torches with us this time, so had a much better view of what is was all about.
There is no shortage of character. Most rooms have arched or double-arched ceilings, pillars with stone shelves partway up, niches all over the show, stones for balancing candles on and more. What would be the living room has some walls in nice stone which could be left exposed. The back rooms are certainly a bit gloomy, but with more white paint and plaster would be much improved. We don’t think it would make a great permanent home, but would certainly be good for the warmer 6 months of the year. I had worked out last night how the rooms could be used, and the trip through confirmed that they would all be fine.
In a way not what we wanted to know. It would have been so much easier if the view had been rubbish, or the walls all cracked and damp, or the rooms pokey. Fortunately or unfortunately, we find ourselves rather liking the place, and able to visualise its potential. Darn it! We must have spent 2 hours there, taking a good photographic record and a rough set of measurements based on the number of 200mm floor tiles each direction.
Feeling a bit lost, we headed back to town thinking we should look at more places, if for no other reason than to convince ourselves that there are no better options. Alessandra was closed up, so dropped the key off and went along the street to see the other agent, but he too had just closed. By a stroke of good luck, two doors away a geometra was working away in his new office, so popped in to see him. A geometra is a European vocation - a useful mix of project manager, architect, quantity surveyor, draughtsman and overseer. He can take an idea, draw it up, submit the plans to council, call tenders, arrange the contract, and oversee the work. For us foreigners, there couldn’t be a better mix of skills. Matteo Lanteri would be late 20s, speaks English pretty well, and was extremely helpful. He offered to do a survey for free, hoping to pick up work from us later on. Again, it might have been better if we hadn’t found him as the whole idea might have got too hard, but as it is he offered to pick up the keys from Alessandra in a few days so he could check out the building for us.
It’s beginning to feel as if everything is falling into place, and as I write this Karen is tossing and turning in bed with scary thoughts roaming around her brain. It all seems to be happening very fast, as we haven’t really got our heads round whether the whole thing is a pipedream, or something that we would get a lot out of. Looking at buying and temporarily living in Europe is after all one of the prime reasons for the way we set up this trip, and the places we chose to come to. But now there are real decisions to be made – we’re at the pointy end so to speak.
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