A Dream Lifestyle - Gail & Wayne's story

For the past seven years Wayne my man and I have been fortunate enough to be able to organise our life to spend at least half our time living in a little village called Vittorito in the heart of Italy.Two hours 30 east of Roma and 30 minutes from the Adriatic in an area called the Valley Peligna, Abruzzo, in the Provence of L’Aquila.

It all began when my Father was dying: he gave me piece of paper with a woman’s name on it and said “If you ever go to Italy, could you find her and tell her I thought of her most of my life? But don’t tell your Mother.”

He was stationed in the north of Italy in WW2, part of Casa Kiwi.

At the age of 50 years we decided on a change of lifestyle and retrained as ESL Teachers.
We taught around the world for seven years part of this time was spent in Slovenia where we lived in the lovely city of Lujubljana which is close to the Italian border.  It was a great time - Austria for coffee, Italy for lunch.

I still had the piece of paper my father had given me.  The big decision, will I, won’t I? She lived in Trieste, quite close to where we were living.  I was sure I could find either her or her family as Italians are rather like homing pigeons and nearly always return to their roots.  On making enquiries we found where her family lived and walked up and down the road, but in the end decided to leave the past in the past.

On returning home to New Zealand my man suggested I may like to return to Italy to find a house for us to buy.  He was too busy to come and so I asked a friend if she was interested in coming along with me.

The theory was that as I had been a Designer in a past life I knew a good house when I saw one. We landed in Roma with virtually one sentence of Italian, “I want to buy a cheap house please.” Hired a car and began driving east towards the Adriatic, didn’t have a clue, just knew that we really wanted to live with Italians and not on the tourist trail.

On exiting one of the numerous tunnels we arrived in a beautiful valley, with patchwork colours of grapes, olives, oaks and vegetable gardens, with numerous villages dotted high and low, there was still a little snow on the Appenines.

Thinking that this could be where we wanted to be we found somewhere to stay in the small Roman city of Sulmona. This area has 17 ski fields and 3 national parks.

After some searching we were shown a property in Vittorito pop 900, agricultural with some soul.  The house has 5 floors including a donkey stable, hayloft and wine cellar, 400 years old, part of the Castle just behind. It needed work, but as far as I could see, not too much but then my man is good at this sort of thing. The outdoor living area is an old wine making area and there is a garden, sometimes at the end of the winter I think it’s rather too much to care for.

We have spent lovely times here and now run the house as a Bed and breakfast with options for Dinner and Aperitivo (wine and nibbles) This year has been very busy with many people coming and going, we have put a three night minimum on the stays and charge 30euros pp. bed and breakfast and 45euros pp for Dinner bed breakfast and Aperitivio.

We’ve found that during the hot days, those who come to stay are often tired, especially if they’ve been doing the rush around Italy thing. They often go out in the morning when its cooler, have lunch, out and come back ready for siesta. The Dinner option is good and sometimes we have the locals into cook. The food in this area is very simple, good quality and basically delicious.

We have a lovely winery in the village run by the family Pietrontoni- its the oldest winery in Abruzzo. They produce a quality product and often look after our guests with wine tastings and visits to their ancient cellars.

There is a lot of history here and we know much of it.  The next village to us is Corfinio, the old Roman Capital of Italy.  The locals drove the Romans out; it was where the word 'Italia' was first spoken.

There are many interesting historic sites to be visited and much history to learn.

We also sell houses in this area - there are quite a few New Zealanders in this valley.  The properties are very reasonable in comparison to other areas of Italy.  You can usually pick up a good house for around €50,000 to €65,000 in one of the villages. People offer them to us to find buyers for as we’ve been living here a while now.  There are no restrictions on New Zealanders buying.  We don’t work off a web site but off our data base.

We are choosey about the type of property we put out and very often people just buy off photos. I sometimes walk around a property with my computer and client on skype to give them a feel for the house.

We also have bricklayers, builders, electricians etc for any work that’s required. We have a good reputation for being straight and honest and have good references.

If you are interested in looking at property and wish to be added to our data base for houses just email us on italianhousefinder@hotmail.com 

There is a man from Wellington who returns to stay with us every year, he’s a walker, we call him the Yeti.  He’s just been to stay again and every day he disappears up into the Appennines and the National parks, he says “it’s the very best walking”, and he’s walked in many countries around the world.  Even though its right in the centre of Europe, there are no people, he says "it’s spectacular.”  Next year during the months of May June and July, he’s planning on bringing small groups into this area for three or four day walking tours.  If anyone is interested just email me and I can forward on your interest.

There are many things that make us chuckle here.

The other day there was a knock on the door. Standing there was a gorgeous Italian male, tall (these are rare) dark and very good looking.  In his hand he had a bunch of yellow flowers. I thought how romantic, only in Italy. Then I recognised them as zucchini flowers.  Guess what, he wanted me to stuff them with a little cheese, batter them and deep fry them for him.

Dreams shattered again.

There is always a coffee and a story to be found here. The word cappuccino itself has some history, when the Italians drove the Turks out of Italy, the Turks left behind some beans and the Italians didn’t really know what they were for.  One young man discovered that if you ground them and added hot water, they made a strong bitter little drink which gave a buzz.  He began the first bar in Italy.  One day a Monk came along and asked if he could try this drink, he said “it’s very bitter - can you please add some milk?”  The Monks habit is the colour of coffee and milk and his habit is called a cappuccio, hence the word cappuccino, well so the story goes.

Arrivederci from Via Sanrocco, Vittorito