Gullible's Travels: The Other Place 08

Cisternino, Puglia, Italy. Sunday 03-September-2017.

We actually moved into the new apartment at the beginning of May 2017 having driven down from the UK with a car stuffed to the gunwales and arrived on May 4th. We are now living here for the summer having passed several milestones like first supper on the terrace and first dinner party.

The first two weeks were bonkers hectic rather like moving house while the builders are still working there. In fact that that is exactly what it was!

We arrived to find the heating engineer still working on the boiler and only one working bathroom so we could at least have a shower in the morning. There was still the other bathroom, the air-conditioning and the heating to be completed but we were not in such a rush for that. With one functional bathroom we could at least stay in the apartment and so spent our first night here, albeit surrounded by packing boxes.

We took advantage of the scaffolding to move several larger items in via the small terrace using the builder's winch including a fridge-freeze, a glass-topped table, and an Ikea sofa. Nail biting stuff to watch.

Up on the roof the mandatory water tank is now boxed in. The water supply can sometimes be turned off at night especially during the summer months hence this requirement. We boxed ours for aesthetic reasons although last winter a number of people had their tanks burst by the exceptionally low temperatures so there is a practical reason as well.

The railings for the roof terrace stairs and parapet wall were installed. There is a requirement for a minimum of one metre high railings round a roof top which we were more than happy to comply with - it's a long way down!

We had the plumbing and wiring for air-conditioning put in should we want it in the future and decided we wanted it now so went ahead while the works were still in progress. Given the heat wave this summer we are glad we did.