If you're looking to buy a property in Istria - or anywhere in Europe for that matter - you may be very lucky, and still be able to pick up a bargain of a stone house. I say lucky, because house prices in Istria, even for abandoned houses, are steadily rising. But,...
It's not a secret that we're selling our renovated stone house in northern Istria. We are now ready for our next big adventure. We feel that Istria is very much home at the moment, and we haven't regretted doing what we did when we put our West Didsbury house up for...
It seems as if we have once again, shared our home and garden, with builders, for a considerable period of time. But we haven't really - it's only been four months - but we've been so keen and excited to get to the finishing line, that it just seems like we've lived...
So, finally, the whole of the front garden area - the piece we don't actually own, but care for and improve - and the concrete patio, are now covered in a thick layer of beautiful white pea gravel. Six cubic metres have been wheel-barrowed and distributed and raked...
Previously, we thought our house and garden were the best they could be, and were definitely ready to sell. But, they weren't. We weren't looking at our house through the eyes of a buyer. We were looking at it through our eyes, and of course, we thought it was the...
Having lived for six years now with the view out of our living room window being the small stone house we purchased from a neighbour, things are going to be looking very different, very soon. The vine...
the story of the little stone house When we bought our house in Istria six years ago, this little tumble down cottage sat to the rear of it. There are lots of properties like this scattered across Istria and Croatia. There are many reasons for the properties being...
We've realised that there is little point in trying to predict the weather in April in Istria. This our fourth April here and previously, we've had fierce Bura winds coming down from Slovenia. Torrential rain. Soaring temperatures. And this year, just to be different,...
As well as family and friends coming out to visit us in Istria, we now have the opportunity to meet up with people who come to Croatia on holiday. We still find this very exciting as we get the best of both worlds – entertaining and travelling. Good friends from...
2020, as everyone knows, was a pretty unbelievable year, all round. If someone had told me the following, in January 2020, I'd have thought they were daft: that we'd have to have official travel permits to drive to the supermarket that wearing a mask would become the...