We have at long last reached the final installment of my Austrian-Slovenian-Italian adventure. These are the tiny towns I stopped in for an hour or two each on my way to and from Santa Maddalena. All three of them were quite stunning:
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It’s ridiculous that it has taken me a year and a half to post these pictures, but then again, consider the year and a half it’s been. Or better yet, time travel back with me to simpler days, and consider the pre-pandemic bliss of a snowy stay in the Dolomites…
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It’s been so long since I was in Venice — almost a year and a half — that I had to jog my memory by reading the notes I jotted down on my phone at the time. They start with, “Venice = mission-driven with not enough time for the mission.” On second thought, that could describe my whole life. Here are some pictures.
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Four years ago I made a list of the places near and far that I most wanted to visit. At the time, I was coming out of a long student debt-induced travel lull, so I didn’t expect to cross much off the list very quickly. But I did – I lived in Senegal and I traveled to Burkina Faso, Cuba, Mexico City, and Tanzania.
That leaves a lot of places still on the list, hopefully for one day in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, other places have captured my imagination and taken precedence. Here is an update:
It started with this article, which described an initiative to sell houses in the Sardinian town of Ollolai for 1 Euro:
https://www.curbed.com/2018/1/31/16954322/ollolai-sardinia-1-euro-homes
…which led me to this website, with information in Italian about the sale:
https://casea1euro.it/ollolai-informazioni/
…which led me to realize that a. between my advanced French and rudimentary Spanish, I can decipher quite a bit of Italian, and that b. there are similar initiatives for other Italian towns, including one in Tuscany:
https://casea1euro.it/case-a-1-euro-a-montieri/
…which led me to realize that my destiny is to buy a 1 Euro house in breathtakingly stunning Montieri, spend $25,000 renovating it, and let the rest of my life fall into place around this one pivotal act.
…which led me to second-guess my ability to learn Italian and wonder whether there might not be a similar scheme in France, which led me to discover that yes, there is, but of course it’s in the dreary North:
https://www.thelocal.fr/20171006/your-chance-to-buy-a-house-in-france-for-a-euro-but-theres-a-catch
…which led me to google “cheap property South of France” and find this charming “fixer-upper:”
…which led me here:
https://www.prestigeproperty.co.uk/castles-for-sale-138/
From 1 Euro homes to 31 million Euro (price reduced!) French chateaux in under ten minutes.
talk foreign to me 