I'm not going to spoil the episode, obviously, but seriously, never did we imagine, John and I, that we would be featured on the British TV show, a Place in the Sun. We had a super tiny budget with really big dreams...
I remember telling John that I'd applied to the show, and we both kind of laughed about it. He asked what I'd put as the budget, and I said "The actual budget, of course!" To which he responded to me with something like, well, that's us out of the running then.
Still, a couple of years passed and I think it's fair to say that we'd both forgotten about it. Not so much about Italy though. We spent some time travelling there in 2022.
We started off in Milan, which was big and grand. We spent Halloween, exploring the Duomo of Milan. A cathedral with mighty architecture, and a gorgeous piazza, where we ate a delicious, although very expensive Carbonara! We also enjoyed a beautiful bottle of wine together. I've always loved the Autumn season you see, so I really wanted to captured Autumn in Italy, I thought it would be great to get some shots for the blog!
After exploring the charming city, we decided to move down the coast to somewhere a little less city, and a bit more budget friendly. What we were really looking for, was something that was steeped in tradition and a little less touristy! We wanted to experience that real Italian life that we were dreaming of.
Eventually, we stumbled across a sleepy little town called San Vito in the Abruzzo province. The people here were so friendly, although they couldn't work out why we were there out of season. November is not the time to stay by the sea, they kept saying, but to us it felt warm. We do live in Newcastle after all, in the North East of England. Not wearing a coat in the winter is kind of our forte.
Still, we couldn't resist the charm of this place and decided to explore more of Abruzzo. It was filled with Traditional little houses and Trabocchi, which are little fishing huts (pictured above). The food we tried here was just a different quality, compared to what we were used to back at home. We were even invited to a traditional 5 course meal of Abruzzo, despite us only knowing very basic Italian!
I'm not sure if you could call it love at first sight, but I think it was. For John, he'd dreamed of leaving England for many years and felt a connection to Italy. I feel like every time I visit this little province, I fall for it even more. As a content creator, I know I'd never get bored of this place, so I was all for it. If John wanted to move there, I was going to support him.
John struggles with mental health issues, which unfortunately ran in his family. He lost his mother to suicide at a very early age. He struggles deeply with depression, as do I, in fact, I think depression is fairly common these days.
Mental health issues can be truly debilitating and sometimes devastating. Unfortunately, there is stigma that still surrounds such things, but I've always loved to challenge the status quo! While some small minded people may not understand depression, we have still overcome it, and fought to stay happy every day.
When we travel, I can see the difference that the healthy lifestyle makes to John and his overall wellbeing, the better diet and the bigger amounts of sunshine, even the salty sea air is beneficial for people with asthma. Generally, the improvement to both of us is just uncanny! It's amazing how a change in place can have such an effect on you.
So when we got back from Italy, John would continue to send me pictures of houses he'd seen for sale in Italy online. As I have a young child and a teenage son, I wouldn't be able to make the move permanently, but a holiday home there, somewhere we could escape too when life got too much, seemed more alluring by the day.
You can imagine my surprise then, when I got that call from the popular TV show, asking us to star on the series. They had an opening in Italy and despite our small budget, and unusual circumstances of a potential long distance relationship, they really wanted towork with us!
We totally couldn't believe it. It was like our dream was being turned into a something real! We started to think, could we actually make this a reality? So off we flew to our favourite region Abruzzo, to meet the amazing film crew who would be working with us. We were kept completely in the dark when it came to the locations, we weren't even allowed to view the property until the cameras were set up. What you're watching is our real reaction to everything. We'd given them a few areas we liked, but we had no idea where they'd selected.
We were also worried about our budget, it was considerably smaller than the usual budgets featured on the show. I really didn't want a renovation. The thought of having to do lots of building work and working around Italy's conservation laws, seemed like a nightmare. Plus, I was worried about the stress of it all and the effect it would have on John's mental health. So I asked for somewhere we could move into, right away, with minimal amounts of work needed, but this really seemed unlikely with our budget!
Our house hunt took us on a mind bending experience, literally. What we asked for and wanted, turned out to be something totally different to what we thought we wanted. We were able to cover such a vast search of the region and see some awesome places in the process.
Anyway, I guess I'll leave the rest until the show has aired, but honestly, I can't thank a Place in the Sun enough for all they did for us. Not only did we laugh a lot, we also made memories we'll never forget and hopefully some friends too! The staff really were amazing and got to know us so that they could find us the right property!
We put an offer in anyway, and eek (see the show for more), but now we have the journey of the actual buying process, and what that is like. So we want to share all that we learn on this journey here on this blog, so we can hopefully inspire others to do the same! Brexit won't stop us!
With love,
John & Sophie
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Hi Sophie I hope you're well,has the episode been pulled I check to see each week it's never there?