Settling In

To all our faithful,

We are in the process of what everyone refers to as “settling in.” People ask us if we are “settled in.” I am sure we are not “settled in,” but I am confident that we are in the process. I am not sure one ever quite finishes “settling in,” certainly not in two months.

We keep reminding ourselves that we have never been to Lecce. Last year, in Toulouse, we had visited the town for 3 days the previous year and had gotten a sense of how things were laid out. Here, it is “all new.” We got a little tour on our first day with Floriana, our agent for the apartment, along with a machinegun set of instructions from the owner, all in Italian. However, much of that day is a blur, so we have been making our way slowly. Some of the difficulty is in how the town is situated geographically. There is a main square, Piazza Saint‘Oronzo, named after the patron saint of the city.


This piazza is not far from our apartment, sort of to the northwest. It is a primary gathering spot for people and always seems to have tours and bands of school children parading through it.


The apartment is really ideally located in the old, historic section of the city. However, the center of town in terms of shopping and commercial activity is south of that main square, again not very far from us. There are many high end stores and our primary supermercato (supermarket ) is located there. It is a very easy walk.

We have made several forays to the market. It offers most all of what one would need, but there are also some wonderful delicatessens, so I am sure we will be spreading our meager dollars around.

Most of Thursday was trying to figure out the heat. The apartment is a stone cave! Truly! We have one window, upstairs in the bedroom and it has a several barriers to the admittance of light! . Here is the bedroom, viewed from the one window


There is a skylight in the rather spacious shower, but there are no windows downstairs, as you might be able to tell.


I have a sense that a bear might be a little claustrophobic! Anyway, we did get the heat thing worked out. Turns out you must have the hot water heater on to work the heat. It makes absolute sense, since the heating comes from a series of modern radiators. But it took us a while to put all the pieces together and it was a nippy first night. Now we crank it up, get it warm and the place really holds the heat.

Drinking has been a little more expensive here. We have yet to locate the “½ litre-of-wine-for-5 euro” place. The wine is very good and so far we have visited 3 distinct wine bars that each have given us very nice glasses of wine. Price is not too bad, about 4 euro per glass, but it lacks the ability to stretch it out for two hours of gazing as we did in Toulouse.

We did meet a nice little gal at one bar this afternoon. Amazing girl. Looked Irish, thought she was Italian, turns out to be from the Czech Republic!


It is truly becoming a global village.

Also we wandered about today looking for a few more additions to the apartment. It is a place that is obviously owned by a man. There are so many little conveniences missing. We found a flea market today and got placemats, a couple of tea-towels and a hot pad. They seem like essentials and yet they were nowhere to be found. We did finally locate the teaspoons, but for a while we thought they would be our next purchase. Ah, well, life is good and we are beginning to “settle in.”

More to come, I am sure,

Ed and Polley