Monopoli by night

Just a quick one today to share with you (a couple of very bad photos that barely do it justice but perhaps give a sense of atmosphere of) the delights of Monopoli at night.

Monopoli's a fairly unassuming coastal town.  It doesn't tend to feature on must-see guides to Puglia or have any great claim to fame, but to those of you of romantic disposition, none of that will matter.  Head into the centro storico (old town) and you will find high walls complete with historic cannons, cosy restaurants, a sandy beach and any number of corners that when turned will yield the surprise of an incredible ancient building.  Yes, this is where my new Italian home is and I love it!

Wander the intimate winding cobbled streets, take in the beautiful architecture and the sound of the sea and let your troubles melt away...

Monopoli Cathedral

Piazza outside Monopoli Cathedral

How not to make a salad!

Yesterday, I did what friends told me couldn't be done in my new hometown - picked a bad restaurant!  It was one I've admired many times when walking round the centro storico, with its impossibly grand front doors, triple height rooms and sophisticated lighting scheme so I thought I'd treat myself, figuring it was mid-week so they'd hopefully let me in, even wearing jeans and without a reservation.

I was greeted and shown to a table, too late to realise there was a projector screening a giant football match onto one of the walls and speakers spouting the commentary in every corner!  I appeared to have walked into the only sports bar in Puglia!  Inside were just the young man who had greeted me and his friends, all loudly cheering on the football!  The DJ booth and inadequate toilet facilties in this otherwise refined building all re-inforced that this was a man space!  Still, I was here now and too British to get up and walk out so I chose a salad and pledged to use the time to find design inspiration for my new house.

My food arrived and I'm not one for photographing my meals so I hope my description will do it justice: white bowl heaped full of chopped lettuce, small cubes of cheese and slices of cured meat - so far so satisfactory.  On top of this were (not sure how to put this) "deposits" of squeezy cheese!

I have never seen a restaurant in UK use squeezy cheese in a salad.  I imagine you'd have to work hard even in America, the home of squeezy cheese, to find a restaurant who thought it was okay to use squeezy cheese in a salad.  But here in Puglia, famed for its organic, home-grown produce, this restaurant has squeezy cheese!  I picked my way around it but unfortunately one of squeezy cheese's qualities is its ability to "smush" into gaps and stick to everything it touches.

I felt queasy at the thought of it all evening and my dream involved huge spots being squeezed and white gunk coming out in long continuous stripes a la squeezy cheese!  Ugh!  This ragazza is traumatized!

P.S.  A quick google of squeeze cheese and the urban dictionary definition adds a little something extra to this subject.  This was not the squeeze cheese deposited on my salad - I hope!

What lies beneath - uncovering the structure of an Italian centro storico home.

Having never seen a centuries-old Italian house stripped back before, I wasn't sure what the structure would look like: it felt naive to think it could be solid stone through and through!

In UK, if you take up the carpets and pull down the ceiling you'll very likely have wooden floorboards below and wooden joists above as seen in these photos from the UK project I'm running just now.

Wooden joists and roof supports

Wooden joists and floorboards

Not so in Italy.  While UK plumbers lift a few floorboards to put new pipework in, Puglian plumbers dig channels in the concrete!  Here's some pics of the new showerrooms for the holiday apartments:

New shower

New toilet and bidet

New sink

 The old stone flooring's been taken up on the first floor and there's no floorboards there either.

New sandpit in the living room!

The mezzanine level has been rebuilt without any boards.

Unsupported stairs in this photo make me really nervous!

Never fear,  Signore silver fox builder's here!

So far, I have found just one tiny piece of wood: the lintel over an internal door within a load-bearing wall.  Not sure whether it was likely to be part of of the original structure.

Door in the marshmallow pink bedroom!

It'll soon be tiled over as part of the new en suite so here's a pic for prosperity!

Is this the only piece of wood in the entire structure?!

So is this contrast due to the materials in plentiful supply - wood in UK, stone in Puglia - or is the lack of wood in this Puglian house due to the greater risk of fires in the hotter climate?  Any other theories?

Does it absolutely always have to be safety first?!

I'm having a dilemma: a quandary of aesthetics vs practicality.

It is not unusual in Italian homes to see open staircases, where you could, if a little careless, fall over the edge!  They increase the sense of space, they look better and you can get furniture up them much more easily without the restriction of 2 walls.  So there is just the itty bitty problem of potentially falling off!

Open stairs don't contravene building regs or health and safety regulations in Italy like they do in UK, but the look on my friend's face when I brought the subject up was as if I'd put her child's name in the draw for the Hunger Games!  It's one thing to potentially alienate the family market from my 2 holiday apartments, but I really don't want to stop my friends with kids from coming to stay.

A quick google suggests that the biggest worry would be 1-2 year olds, but also brought up articles about parents moving away from child-proofing everything and instead teaching children how to explore safely.  Here's someone else's views on the same dilemma.

So, come on, help me out here!  I really need to hear what you think:

• How old are your kids and could they handle these stairs with ease?
• With what age kids would such staircases cease to be a worry?
• Would open stairs make you avoid the apartments altogether?
• How do you feel about these type of stairs as an adult?
• Is it just plain stupid to not have a handrail or barrier on stairs I'll be renting to Joe Public?!

"Look mum, no hands!"

How do you say "Grrrrrr!" in Italian?!

This week I have mostly been waiting for other people to do things they were meant to do weeks (and in some cases months) ago.  Unfortunately, we're not talking people owing me a fiver or returning borrowed DVDs.  Instead it's councils and their ridiculous bureaucracy getting in the way of common sense (and this is in UK, not Italy!), buyers of my house in UK not exchanging contracts weeks after the original deadline and an agent's guaranteed buyers for flats in my big UK project not processing in time.

The fact that they all involve money coming my way, money earmarked to fund the work on the new house where builders are waiting to be paid, increases my stress levels. Truth is, with 4 maxed-out credit cards, a bank loan and all savings drained, finances are beyond tight.  This is not the way I planned it!

But, where there's a will there's a way: thankfully managed to borrow some more money and a new agency have 12 viewings of the house in UK lined up this weekend despite it being Easter.

Foolhardy as I may sound, I'm sure it's going to be okay.

In the meantime, while refreshing my inbox for news and pestering my poor solicitor to make things happen, I have been under pressure to provide lighting schemes, electrical plans and kitchen layout for the new house. This ragazza likes kitchens with banks of tall larder units, long stretches of worktop and big breakfast bar islands to seat impromptu guests so you'll understand why its not straight forward planning this kitchen - windows in 3 walls, a staircase in the 4th and no right angles in sight!

No, not my most stress-free week!

P.S. Apologies if this seems a moany post.  The reality is that doing up properties anywhere involves large sums of money and a degree of uncertainty.  That's somewhat multiplied when in another country and language so it wouldn't be right to gloss over the scary stuff!  Definitely not for the faint-hearted!

You ask why I'm moving to Puglia?!

Today I'm leaving...

Palm trees and blue skies

And the warmth of the sun in my hair

...for sub-zero temperatures and another forecast for snow!  

It's nearly April!  Dai!  Basta!  (Come on!  Enough!) 

Surely the novelty of this white stuff is long gone!

Festa di San Giuseppe

Religion and family play a more important role in Italian life than they do in UK - this is especially true in the south.  I was delighted to learn more about both this week as 19th March was Festa di San Giuseppe (celebration of St Joseph's day).  I couldn't believe every day of the year has at least one saint associated with it and sometimes ten or more!  Some of these saints, and therefore their days, are more important than others and this varies from region to region, but Festa di San Giuseppe is a big one because Giuseppe (Joseph) was Jesus' father and so Italians celebrate it as the equivalent of our Father's Day.

The great thing about saints' days is that everyone baptised in Italy has one, as every child is named after a saint and you celebrate your day as a way to thank your saint for protecting you through the year.  Apparently you just have to go back a couple of generations and your saint's day was celebrated rather than your birthday.  But nowadays it is like a second birthday: kids get presents and take sweets into school for their classmates, extended family comes together for a big meal and people phone to wish you auguri! (a fantastic, catch-all word: congratulations! best wishes! good luck! depending on context).

Something else that comes into play here is the preservation and significance of names within families.  When I first learned that it is common practice to name your first born son after his paternal grandfather and your first born daughter after her paternal grandmother I couldn't help thinking how restrictive it was: what if you don't like the name?  (What if you can't stand the people you are naming your children after?!)  But seeing it in my friends' families (where everyone gets on!), it's clear it's a lovely way to honour the father's parents.  I imagine it's nice as a grandparent to see your mini-me namesake growing up: a designated legacy.  So celebrating a saint's day is perhaps also a time for the bonding of grandchild and grandparent or a time to share fond recollections if they have passed on.

This is a terribly wordy post so I will leave you now with one of the other great aspects that is special to St Joseph's Day: fire!  It's tradition for families and sometimes towns to light a massive falo' (bonfire) and being a bit of a small-time pyro I could have watched it all night!

The warmth on your face, the smell of the smoke, the crackle...love it!