During Covid, I would often hear about some crazy impulse purchase my friends had made. Chalk it up to damn-it-if‑I’m‑going-to-die-I-might-as-well-get-what‑I’ve-always-wanted spending. Roombas came up a lot. So did luxury food delivery services. Wildly expanded cable tv packages. And so on. My husband and I bought an apartment in Italy.
I scoured the Internet until I found the right place (Lecce, in the province of Puglia) and the right apartment (two bedrooms, two baths right in the center). We set up Zoom calls with the property management company to get all the paperwork started. And when we were given the green light to travel again in the summer of 2021, we immediately flew to Naples and got ourselves to Lecce to see it in person. It was 110+ degrees, and we poured cold water over ourselves as we sat in the piazza and learned about the amazing baroque city and the rest of the Salento Peninsula.
It’s not just that property is cheap in Italy relative to the US (outside of the big cities). It’s that these smaller cities tug at your heartstrings. Once, when we admired an old gent’s incredibly complex ship models (which he made from book schematics and not model kits) on display in his framing shop, he took off his apron, closed the shop, and brought us to his apartment to see the “good” ones, plying us with his home-made mirtillo liqueur while he showed us around.
Plus, the way things were going politically in the US, Italy seemed like a great escape plan. A Plan B. Meanwhile, we could rent out our Lecce apartment and block the calendar out for when we wanted to use it, which we’ve done more than once.
Sure, there’s lots of red tape with everything in Italy and the country’s love of bureaucracy can drive you to drink. But the wine is good and cheap, so that’s a plus. If you can slow down and not bring the US with you too much, Italy is a great Plan B. Now, every time we arrive, our neighbors two doors down, who own the oldest enoteca (wine shop) in Lecce, all come running over, smothering us with kisses and calling us famiglia. For this, I can be packed in fifteen minutes.
