The adventure resumes

I'm firing up this blog again because we are heading back to Italy tomorrow with plans to buy an apartment. Since I've talked of little else but this Italian business for the past many months I thought I'd use "Quanto? Tanto!" as a way of keeping interested friends and relations informed as to this next phase of our Italian adventure.

Readers who still possess some synaptic shreds of memory will recall earlier posts here detailing Danny's fantasy of buying a little villa on the Adriatic coast. They may also remember how said fantasy collapsed once we got there this past July and confronted the reality of the place--the garbage, the beaches studded with construction waste, and, not least, its wildly inconvenient distance from our home base in California. I thought the kibosh had been firmly put on Italian home ownership, but I'd forgotten what an unstoppable force my dear husband can be once he decides he really, really wants something.

As soon as we got home from our Italian sojourn, he began looking on line for Italian properties within our modest price range that would meet my requirements--the things I'd decided a place had to offer before I'd even consider letting him buy us a house there.

First, it had to be easily accessible to a major airport--no flying for 12 or 18 hours and then driving over mountains for 6 hours more. Second, it had to be an urban enough environment that we could meet our basic needs for food and other necessities without having to drive. (We are both poor drivers and age is not improving our reflexes, our vision, or our judgment.) We agreed it should probably be an apartment, rather than a house, since we wouldn't be there more than a few months a year and already have one garden we can't keep up with. Finally, it had to be someplace I'd actually want to spend time in. I remained skeptical that anyplace we could afford would meet these requirements.

After several rather grim weeks during which I rejected all the hill towns and Roman suburbs Danny proposed, he surprised me by saying, "Well, what about an apartment in Fidenza?" And I surprised myself by realizing I found that idea extremely appealing.

Fidenza's central piazza 

Now Fidenza is the place where we started our Italian trip this summer---you can read all about it in the early posts. It's a Northern Italian town of 24,000 or so where our old friends live, a town we've visited many times and thoroughly enjoyed. Suddenly this madcap scheme didn't seem quite so crazy. If we bought something in Fidenza, we'd know someone there; we'd know the town, at least a little; if we got into any kind of trouble, there were people--wonderful people--we could turn to for help and counsel.

Moreover, Fidenza is a rail hub that's an hour by train from Milan, and where you can catch a train to Bologna (75 minutes), Parma (10 minutes), Rome (3.5 hours), Orvieto (5 hours), or just about anyplace else you'd like to go. And the part of Fidenza we're interested in is a short walk from the railway station, and from some of our favorite gelaterias, butchers, and cheesemongers in town. Before I knew it, I was crowding in next to Danny at the computer looking at photos of apartments for sale.

More, much more, about that in coming posts. For now I am going to cut this short because Danny and I are flying to Milan tomorrow morning, and then taking the train to Fidenza, and will commence looking at apartments in person as soon as we arrive. Stay tuned and wish us luck!