We have a house and a car!!

We have great news! The house in the hill in Azzate is going to be our permanent address here. We are so happy that we found something that met all of our requirements! The house is 3 years old, and it has great views of the surrounding hills and on clear days of the alps. We love the fact that the kitchen is finished! As it happens, in Italy is common that the tenant brings the kitchen along with other furniture!!! What???? Yes, many of the places we looked at had empty rooms where the kitchen was suppose to be... no sink, no stove, no refrigerator, no cabinets, no nothing! But our landlord knew that he was going to attract foreign tenants if he had a furnished kitchen, and it sure did!

We are moving on August 8th, but our surface shipment arrived to the port of Geneva today. Clearance in customs can take a while, which means that we are not going to have anything at the house but a couple of inflatable mattresses and a computer. We are heading to Ikea tomorrow to buy some dishes, towels, bed linens and a couple of closets (no closets are provided in most houses either!).

We are still waiting for the permesso to be able to apply to residency, to then, be able to buy my car. There is nothing else to do but wait. We have a new car (Fernando's) provided by the company, it is a station wagon, that will take us (including the dog) all over! It is quite a relief to have a permanent car.

Fernando has the second week of August off, Ferragosto is a national holiday, and we plan to take off like everybody else. We might go to Switzerland for 4 days, drive around and visit several cities; we might go to the beach, to the Italian riviera. We have no clear plan, but I don't think it matters when you just want to visit and see new things. I will sure write about it once we are back.