So, we’d arrived in Istria and hired a car, with the intention of finding the house we’d spotted online. Armed with a map and sat-nav we set off, climbing higher and higher up into the Istrian hills. Although it was July, it was quite cool and a overcast, but we could still see the potential of this part of the world, as hilltop village after hilltop village rolled past us. The roads were wide and cut through fields and meadows – and no traffic jams! Unfortunately, we got hopelessly lost. We just seemed to be driving around in circles as we’d repeatedly pass the same landmarks, but just never catch a glimpse of the house, which we knew from the online details, should be visible from the road. We were just about to give up, when suddenly, there it was, to the right of us. Thank goodness this had been another occasion when, despite the signs, we didn’t give up…

We were able to poke around quite a bit outside and the more we investigated, the more we just knew that this was the house. The village – Pici – was small, but it was clear that lots of renovation work was going on with lots of the properties and we knew that this one would go quickly. The mobile phone number on the painted For Sale sign was different to the one we’d been ringing, so we gave this a go – and it was answered by the brother of the people selling. They were apparently on holiday in the States so not answering calls or emails – and in their absence, he agreed to come over to the house the next day and show us around inside. Giving us a bit more time to explore outside…

There’s a story attached to the dwelling above, which we hope will eventually become part of our story, but more of that in a future blog…