La dolce vita. The sweet life. To live a sweet life means something different to everyone. For some, it means living in a buzzing metropolis like New York City amidst museums and mayhem. For others, it means running a yoga retreat on a sandy beach in Costa Rica. And then there are people who can think of no sweeter life than living in the same town they were born in, surrounded by familiar faces.
This blog is about how we found our ‘dolce vita.’ Hint: It’s still a work-in-progress. About how just when you think you have it all figured out, you realize you know nothing at all. About having the courage to look at your life and say, “this isn’t working for me anymore”. And then commit to change.
It’s about realizing that even when you reach midlife, its never too late to shake it all up. To find your bliss. I want to inspire and encourage, to help you believe there is more out there. Much more. I hope by sharing our journey, the good and the bad, I can help you with yours. There is no perfect life. There is only the life that is right for you.
So what is your dolce vita?
Friday night brainstorming sessions
One of my favorite sayings is “wine cures everything”. Well maybe not everything but many a problem has been solved and a dream or two born over a bottle of wine shared with my husband Peter, or Piero as he is known to those near and dear.
Our Friday night brainstorming sessions began on a crippling cold Canadian winter night in January 2012. We always ended the work week with a delicious home-cooked dinner and a bottle of wine. We would often talk long into the night (okay sometimes a second bottle of wine was involved) about the kind of life we wanted to be living and how we could get there.
We just knew that something had to change. We both had busy careers in television that took us traveling all over the globe. We were grateful for our interesting work and the life it provided us. But something was missing. Our families were spread across the country and busy with their own lives.
Living in one of Canada’s biggest cities definitely had its perks but it did little to feed our souls. We rarely got together with friends. Everyone was too busy working. Plans were made and regularly canceled. It was definitely a ‘live to work’ lifestyle. And it was lonely. We wanted more. We dared to dream we could have more. We wanted off the treadmill.
Then one day, Peter came home after a long day at work and said, “I’ve had an epiphany. I realized today that the currency is my life is no longer money, it’s time. I think we should be where we want to be”.
We both knew that meant only one thing: Italy.
A Love Affair with Italy
We couldn’t shake the dream of living in Italy. We’ve had a long love affair with all things Italian. It came naturally to us. Peter’s parents grew up in northern Italy and spoke Italian as the primary language at home. My father’s parents and his brothers and sister were also born in Italy. Both Peter and I grew up with strong Italian traditions in our homes. We were destined to fall in love, with each other and Italy.
When we were dating, we returned again and again to Umbria, the lush, green heart of Italy. Back in 2008, we decided to take a leave of absence from our jobs and rent a stone cottage in the Umbrian countryside for one year.
One year to relish long, lingering lunches on our vine-covered terrace, roam the Umbrian countryside by motorbike and return for cocktails or aperitivo poolside.
We fell hard for the Italian lifestyle. The gentle and kind locals embraced us and as the months went by, we shed our stress and gained more than a few pounds. We had found our dolce vita.
And so it was after years of dating and our share of relationship ups and downs, one moonlit night on our Umbrian terrace, we decided to get married. Italy had seduced us.
Since we first met, we agreed if we were to marry it had to be in the enchanting floating city of Venice. So as our first year in Italy came to a close, we gathered with family and friends on a misty May morning on the Grand Canal in Venice and got married.
After the wedding, we were able to take more time off work and continue our Italian love affair for another year. I will be talking more about our two years in Italy throughout the blog, about how were were able to spend this time abroad and the trials and tribulations of getting married in Italy. Suffice it to say, it required more than a few glasses of prosecco and chocolate-filled croissants or cornetti to calm my foreigner nerves .
I will share more about those two years because they were so important. They were instrumental in shaping the course of our lives and led full circle to our Friday night brainstorming sessions years later. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Arrivederci Umbria
We all know the saying, ‘all good things must come to an end’. I don’t believe that but in the case of our Italian adventure, it was true. Work and other obligations were calling us back to Canada.
Peter had to tranquilize me to get me on the plane. I did not want to go ‘home’. I had never felt more at home than I did in Umbria. There is something spiritual about the beauty of the landscape and tranquility of life. I didn’t want to give it up.
From the moment we were back in Canada, I started to dream of how we could return to Italy. This time on a more permanent basis. In between busy months of working, we continued to take vacations in our now-beloved Umbria.
We especially fell in love with the area around beautiful Lago Trasimeno.
Our House in Umbria
They say you just know when something is right. That was certainly the case the fateful day we found our house in Umbria. We were at an annual festa in the medieval hill town of Paciano, listed as one of the most beautiful villages in Italy.
An elderly man at our table pointed out a private ‘for sale’ sign on a house directly in front of us in the historical center of town. We thought, “Why not? Let’s take a look”.
A walk through the plaster-peeling ground floor to the overgrown garden, revealed a golden valley of olive groves and sloping hills and an amazing view of Lago Trasimeno.
Peter and I exchanged a quick look. Four hours later, this happened…
Nine months after we began our wine-filled brainstorming sessions on how we could have a life in Italy, and we were officially home-owners of a 600-year-old medieval village house.
Over the next few years we transformed the house from a rustic retreat like this…
To this modern-meets-medieval home…
Along the way I made huge mistakes such as asking the contractor to repair a certain female body part rather than our roof. Mistakes even my poor Italian could not be forgiven for. That’s why this blog is going to include tips on renovating in Italy. To save you from similar disgrace.
Our house in Paciano was definitely a labor of love. Three years after work began, it was finally finished. We christened the house, ‘Casa Vistaverde’ and knew we were now home.
Changing your life is hard. You have to give up some things to gain others. We would have had more money, more security had we stayed. But what we’ve gained by following our hearts is invaluable.
Of course, we miss things about our former life and we certainly miss family and friends, although having a home in Italy seems to bring out the travel bug in people. We see more of them now than we did when we were in Toronto.
I hope knowing a bit about our story will inspire you to follow your dream life, whatever that means for you. And I hope you will stay with us along our journey as we continue to live our dolce vita.
A presto (See you soon)
Anna
[…] absolutely perfect and it was absolutely freezing. We very nearly met up with Anna, a local writer who blogs about Italy, and Paciano, and the ex pat life, in case you want to move there. Paciano was pure unadulterated charm; it was a roaring wood stove, […]