Catch Up Time

Our Sicilian Home

It has been about seven weeks since Nick and I got back from Sicily.  We hit the ground running here and this is the first chance I have had to really do any writing for the blog.  So, those of you waiting for updates on our Sicilian home, my apologies.

August 24^th, after we arrived back in Canada we got the email we were waiting for.  Joe, our terrifically helpful realtor, sent us the word:

I was going to write to you this morning to tell you the good news that we signed the deeds on Thursday afternoon…  Congratulations!   Joe

Celebrating the purchase of our house with Joe our realtor (in the middle)
and Scott our contractor (on the right) the day we left Cianciana.  Nick is on the left.

And then September 6^th we got word from Scott, our equally terrific contractor/renovator saying that the work was underway.  Of course, the path of renovation never runs completely smoothly. 

…there has been a small glitch in that it has rained this week quite heavily and has unveiled that the terrace in front of the kitchen has some severe leaks through to the room below…

and

… we have been having some problems with the neighbour who is complaining that damp rising from the wall between your garage and his kitchen is ruining his kitchen. He would like to put the problem right between you…

Fortunately, the solutions to the problems have proven to be fairly easy and not too expensive – certainly not compared to the glitches we had when we renovated our Canadian house!  The leak was fixed by removing the tiles from the terrazza, laying a waterproof membrane and re-tiling with new tiles.  About 800 euros well spent.

As for the neighbour’s kitchen…our ground floor walls had been covered with a horrible vinyl wall covering that we had wanted to get rid of anyhow. 

Our ground floor.  All of these walls are now down and are stripped back to the stone.

Scott removed all the wall covering and then the render (probably plaster) on top of the stone walls.  What will most likely happen next is to let the walls dry over time and see if this improves the situation with the neighbour’s kitchen.  If not, then there is some treatment that can be done to the stone that will help take care of the damp.  I must say that when Scott emailed us with a “damp problem”, I was a bit terrified.  In Vancouver and on Vancouver Island, “damp” is associated with “leaky condo syndrome”, which frequently costs the owners tens of thousands of dollars.  But the removal of the rendering added only 150 euros to our bill.  With luck, that’s all we will have to do and we will be left with a ground floor that has beautiful exposed stone.

In the meantime, Scott sent us pictures of how the kitchen will look...

...and today we heard that he is removing the asbestos roof from the storage room on the terrazza and replacing it with a new and non-cancer causing roof.

The storage room on our top terrazza.

We picked a new colour and new tiles for the outside of the house.  Before we left Cianciana, we walked around the town and looked at colours and tiles that other people had used.  The house is on a narrow street so we thought a bright colour would be better.

Our house will look like this on the outside.

All in all, work is progressing well and we are counting the days until we land in Sicily again in 274 days (but who’s counting!)

COUNTDOWN TIMER WIDGET

Cianciana Life: Saturday Evening – Espresso and Ferraris

In the evening, after we have changed from our pool wear, we do our passagiata or walkabout.  Every evening there are hundreds of people walking about, however tonight it seems that more than half the town is out.  Young girls dressed in their very best – stiletto heels balancing on cobblestones, hair and make-up perfect, they look very much as if they attending a film or art gallery opening rather than the requisite evening walkabout in a small Sicilian town.  Young men, hair precisely quaffed into a faux-hawk, crisp and clean polo shirts with the collars turned up.  They eye the girls who pretend they don’t see them but giggle anyways.  Old men sit on the benches outside the social club, discussing the problems of the world – young people, politics, employment – finding solutions that only they will hear.  Visitors – expats and ex-Ciancianese alike, wander and admire the buildings, and discuss what a terrific place this is.  Occasionally you see a husband and wife walking arm in arm.  This is an influence of the large expat community – it is most definitely not a regular occurrence amongst the older Sicilians. Once we reach the centre of town we see why so many people are out and about.  The Ferrari club from Ribera (a larger nearby city) has come to Cianciana.  The roads have been blocked off to regular traffic and the drivers are giving the local kids (mostly boys) rides up and down the town, engines roaring and tires spinning.  

Later, they park their Ferraris, mostly cherry red, on Corso Vittorio Emmanuel outside one of the larger bars in Cianciana.  The Ciancianese (and the expats as well) flock around these machines and take pictures.  Nick and I are not immune to the excitement and we take our pictures with these powerful cars as well.  On an island with an unemployment rate at 25%, I wonder how so many people in such a small town can afford a Ferrari.  Unsure, I guess that the answer may lie in the ancient houses.  Very few of these houses have mortgages.  They have been passed from grandparents to parents to children.  With no rent or mortgage to pay, it is perhaps easier to live if one is under employed or unemployed.  This is simply conjecture on my part.  I really don’t know the answer.

Later we wander back in the direction of our favourite bar.  One of our newly made friends, Gaetano, stops us.  Are we going to stay for the music?  It is supposed to start at 9:30 – in 15 minutes.  There will be a live band and dancing.  Sit, sit!  Have a caffe’!  We join Gaetano at one of the tables set out on the street.  He buys us each il caffe’, an espresso, and we sit and chat about Cianciana in the summer.  Gaetano was born in Cianciana.  Now he lives alone – no wife or children, but his sister lives here too.  He tells us about the clock tower – built in 1908 – and how life here has changed over the years.  

He tells us how in the summer, people stay out until two or three in the morning and the bar doesn’t close until 4am.  We chat for nearly two hours but there is no music.  The instruments are set up and from time to time someone – presumably musicians – come to fiddle with the set up but no music plays.  Finally, we take our leave of Gaetano.  

My eyelids are growing heavy.  I obviously don’t have the stamina of the Ciancianese.  As we walk home I hear thunder roll and see lightening flash off in the distance.  Once in the house, we sit at the kitchen table to drink a glass of water before we go to bed.  In the distance we can hear the music start.  A rock version of Volare.  Later in the night I wake, cold for the first time since we arrived here.  It is raining – hard.  The water drums on the terracotta tiles outside our window.  I listen to the sound until it sooths me back to sleep.

Cianciana Life: Saturday Afternoon – Return from Santo Stefano di Quisquina and the Summer Pool Club

Before we leave the forest of Quisquina, we sit in the car, air-conditioning cranked to full, and drink the now warm water that we brought with us.  The peaches are warm too, but the warmth brings out the sweetness and the flavour.  When I close my eyes the peaches seem to taste of the tan and orange hills that are ubiquitous throughout this part of Sicily.  Having forgotten to bring a knife, we bite into the cucumber and pass it back and forth.  

Even though the cucumber has been sitting in the warm car, it still tastes of the cool earth and freshens our mouths after the sweetness of the peaches.  We reluctantly leave the pine forest and drive the two or three minutes into the town of Santo Stefano.  We need to make one more stop before heading home.  Gelato.  We stop at a little sports bar.  These bars, besides selling beer, wine and a variety of hard liquor, also sell panini, pizza, and the beautiful thing that is gelato.  Nick gets his gelato in a cup but I ask for mine in a brioche.  What a wonderful idea to take the sweet freshness that is gelato or granita (sherbet), slicing open a sweet bun and scooping it in.  This is heaven.  We sit watching formula one car-racing coming from Germany on the bar’s television.  This is the first television we have seen in a week and, while I enjoy it while we delight in our gelato, I am not reluctant to leave it behind when we leave the bar.

By the time we return home it is 1:00 pm.  The streets are virtually empty and the shops are all closed.  It is the beginning of the hottest part of a very hot day – the sign above the farmacia says that the temperature has hit 37°.  Not the hottest day we have encountered but today there is no breeze on the now quiet street making it feel like the hottest.  Time to nap.  In her book, Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes says that these few hours – approximately 1:00 – 4:00 – are prime time for television, and the hours when most babies are conceived.  It is also when many people nap and Nick and I, every day, make use of this time to sleep through the worst of the heat. 

Nick and I wake at 3:00 to the sound of the clock tower.  It is still hot and we are sticky from the sweat in our sleep.  We had heard that there were two swimming pools in town and one we passed one our initial drive into town.  A swim seems like a perfect idea.  Back into the car with the air-conditioning on full, we drive about 4 minutes to the turn off marked by a small sign demurely saying “Summer Pool Club”.  We follow the bouncy dirt road until we reach a parking lot much less demurely decorated with large flags from many countries.  No Canadian flag.  We determine that when we return next summer, we will have to correct that deficit.  A wall of green fabric surrounds the pool.  We poke our heads over the cloth to see a beautiful, clean pool surrounded by deck chairs, tables and umbrellas.  To the side is a bar.  On the far side, the forever amazing views of the mountains and valleys created a beautiful backdrop.  This doesn’t just look like a pool – this is a resort. 

For a mere 3 euros each we enter the pool, change, shower, and done the requisite bathing caps (you can purchase them there for 1 euro) and jump into the pool.  It is perfect balance between warm and cool and we gratefully feel the warmth of the day drift away from our bodies.  We are the only ones at the pool other than an inordinately attractive pair of lifeguards.  Is this Baywatch, Sicilian-style?  We ask the female guard why there is no one else there.  She flashes a brilliant smile and shrugs. “It is the wind, and maybe a storm is coming.”  She waves in the direction of the clouds that are gathering in a corner of the sky.  She is right about the wind.  It has picked up and our umbrella is shaking, edge flipping up and down above us.  The wind is perfect – keeping us cool as it evaporates the water from our bodies.  I walk up to the bar and order a limonata, a refreshing lime drink, to share with Nick.  I comment on the lifeguard/bar keep’s tattoo – an interesting Asian design with a date underneath.  In a mixture of Italian and English he introduces himself as Robert Clark: he is so ultimately Sicilian looking and sounding that his name seems truly out of place, but I don’t feel like I should ask.  He explains that he runs the town’s Bushido School (we have seen the signs as we have walked through Cianciana) and was World Jiu-jitsu champion on the date beneath his tattoo.  I am suitably impressed and congratulate him.  It certainly explains his god-like physique. 

Nick and I lay in the sun for a lovely, relaxing hour with the pleasant sound of the flapping of the umbrella and the occasional shadow drifting past as clouds slowly continue to gather in the mountains lulling us to sleep.  The female lifeguard has left, returned with her 8-year-old daughter (my god!  How could that figure have produced a child?) and then left again.  Two other men have joined Robert Clark and the three sit at a table, sipping from cold bottles of beer and playing cards.  Not one other patron has entered the pool.  This is a perfect afternoon.

Cianciana Life: Saturday Morning – Visit to Santo Stefano di Quisquina

On Friday morning, just as we were thinking about calling Joe, our phone rang shrilly. (It always rings shrilly – I have to figure out how to change the ring tone!).  It was Joe asking us to come down to the My House office.  When we arrived Joe had a counter offer for us.  The owner was willing to settle on €27,000.  We agreed to that so the official contractual offer was made and signed, complete with a list of everything we wanted from the interior of the house (the main thing is the fridge) and we handed over a deposit of €1000 for My House to hold.  And now, again, we wait.  The owner lives in England and so he must agree to our list of what we want him to leave and the closing date and sign the contractual offer by July 26^th.  Then comes a whirlwind of paperwork and visits to the municipal office and their notary, and our bank for bank drafts to pay.  Then, on August 8^th the final signing is done and we fly home the next day, the owners of a home in Sicily.  But, in the meantime, we wait.

While we wait, I thought I would tell you about a typical day for us here in Cianciana.

Saturday morning I wake to the sound of voices – people calling to each other “Buon giorno!” and “Oggi e’ molto caldo (today is very hot!)” from their balconies – and the sound of the town clock ringing eight times – 8:00.  I can see the sun shining, already white hot, on the wall outside our bedroom window and the shadow of pigeons fluttering outside.  We climb out of bed.  Normally at this time we would be getting ready to head off to My House to do something or another about the house, but it is Saturday and they are closed.  So, instead we have decided to go to Santo Stefano di Quisquina to visit the grotto of Santa Rosalia, a very beloved saint in these parts and the muse for my second novel, which is nearing the completion of the first draft. (If you are interested in my first novel, Greenwich List, you can find it as an eBook on Amazon.com). 

Washed and dressed, we stop at the Frutta e Verdura (fruit and vegetable) shop to pick up some peaches and a cucumber that doesn’t look like any cucumber I have ever seen.  It is the size and shape of a large lemon but is pale green in colour and it is sweeter than any of the standard cukes we can find back home.  

We carry our purchases along with a bottle of water (absolutely necessary in Sicily in the summer) and walk down the street to where we parked our car.  Santo Stefano di Quisquina is about 30 minutes from Cianciana and is a lovely, clean little town as is Alessandro della Rocca, which we pass through on our way.  Jaczck, one of our new expat friends who lives off and on in Cianciana, has told us that the towns in the Platani Valley (the Platani River runs nearby) have taken their cue from Cianciana as our newly adopted little town has found some great success with foreign tourists and investors due to the cleanliness and friendliness of the town.  We drive out of Santo Stefano and turn off onto a road that runs through an indigenous pine forest.  We garner curious stares from some workers clearing underbrush from the trees, presumably to prevent fires in this extreme dry heat, and wind our way up the road to a parking lot at the top of the hill.  At one end of the deserted parking lot we find a lovely, demure statue of Santa Rosalia. 

The story of La Santuzza, the affectionately given nickname for Santa Rosalia, meaning the little saint, is a fascinating one.  She was born in the 11^th century in Palermo, the daughter of Sinabaldi, a Norman nobleman.  She was, in her early teens, to be married to another rich nobleman most probably to consolidate her father’s wealth and power.  Instead of consenting to marry, she ran away to the forest of Quisquina where she ensconced herself in a tiny cave.  She lived in this cave, eating what she could gather from the forest around her, for several years after which she returned to Palermo where she lived and then died in a cave on the nearby Mount Peregrino.  Approximately 500 years later, Palermo was in the grip of the Black Death. Rosalia appeared in a dream to a woman living in Palermo, telling the woman where her bones could be found.  The woman shared her dream and Rosalia’s bones were collected and carried through the streets of Palermo.  No sooner had that been accomplished then the Black Death completely disappeared from Palermo. 

After the miracle of La Santuzza, a hermitage was built and an order of hermits was established to live there.  We were able to tour the hermitage but sadly, pictures were not permitted inside.  The hermitage is a large stone building and once we left the hot midday sun on the outside and entered the hermitage, it felt like we had entered an air-conditioned building, but this was not the case.  The stone in summer holds in the cool air, making it a very comfortable temperature.  Our guide, however, explained that this stone insulation continues to hold in the cold in the winter making it a very cold building.  The hermits each had a narrow cell to themselves with a bed made up of an iron and wire frame and a straw mattress.  The windows faced north and had no covering over it – no glass, no shutters.  Very cold in the wintertime.  The hermitage was filled with artifacts, some dating back to the 1700s when the hermitage was established.  The order of hermits was ended in the 1920s and the last of the hermits lived out their lives there.  The very last hermit, Fillipo Cacciatore, lived probably 20 years on his own and died at the age of 96 in 1985.  It was at that time that the hermitage was made into a museum with the exception of a small chapel and a small but very lovely church, which is being prepared for a wedding the day as our tour guide explains the artwork to us. 

The last place she takes us to is the small mausoleum.  We enter from the heat outside to a cool dark room and we find ourselves surrounded by skeletons and bones with skulls peering down at us from above.  Our guide explains that these are the bones and skeletons of the hermits that died while living at the hermitage.  The hermits would lower the bodies through a trap door in the floor of the church and then carry them to this room.  At one end of the room is an oven large enough to lay a body in.  The hermits would burn the bodies with aromatic herbs just long enough to dry them out without burning away the ligaments and sinew that held the bones together.  The bodies would then be placed upright in a depression in the wall.  Those that were not still held together were placed in a crypt below the floor.  The skulls were removed and placed along a shelf perhaps two – three feet above eye level.  In doing this, the hermits were reminded every day that death faced them and how important it was to live a pious life in order to reap their rewards after death.

At this point we make ready to leave our guide and visit Santa Rosalia’s cave, but before we leave I ask her how researchers concluded that this particular grotto, or cave, was the one where Santa Rosalia lived for so many years.  She tells us that inside the cave one can see where she carved “EGO ROSALIA SINIBALDI QUISQUINÆ ET ROSARUM DOMINI FILIA AMORE DOMINI MEI JESU CHRISTI INI HOC ANTRO HABITARI DECREVI”.  Or in English, “I am Rosalia, Sinabaldo’s daughter, landlord of Quisquina and of the Mountain of the Roses, and I decided to live in this cave for the love of my Lord, Jesus Christ.” 

Nick and I approach the entrance to the cave.  It is abundantly clear that the statue in the parking lot of a very diminutive Santa Rosalia must be correct because the cave is truly tiny.  I can’t get farther in than the mouth of the second part of the cave and Nick has to crawl on his hands and knees to get in and see what is inside.  What a cold and difficult life she must have led here.

Eating Out in Cianciana – Cortile Halykos

One of the really welcome surprises in this tiny mountain village is the great choice in restaurants.  On our very first day in Cianciana, after a busy morning looking at houses, Nick and I wanted to find a place to get some food and talk about what we had seen.  After a couple of unsuccessful attempts at finding an open restaurant we asked two fellows just standing in the street.  They motioned for us to follow them in their car.  A short 6 or 7 blocks away, we found ourselves on Via Siracusa in front of Cortile Halykos, a restaurant and pizzeria owned by Andrea Giannone. 

His restaurant, like every other in town, was only open for dinner, but he welcomed us in and said he would make lunch for us even though he was closed.  From the outside, you would not realize that there was a restaurant behind the doors but inside!  Old stonewalls and a stone floor lead you uphill to an entrance marked by an ancient stone well.  Walking past the well you find yourself in an open-air garden courtyard.  Half a dozen tables sit here.  To the side is a stone archway, which leads to a covered area, again with half a dozen tables and the kitchen through a doorway on the side.  Again, through another archway and you find yourself in the last garden courtyard, surrounded by the omnipresent stonewalls.  Andrea served us wonderful spaghetti that day.  We were so surprised at his kindness and his desire to welcome us and also at the wonderful flavours of the spaghetti, I completely forgot to take notes.  Nick and I did, however, return a few days later, in order to try his pizza and deserts, which we had been told, were excellent.

We were not disappointed.  Nick ordered Eclissi di Luna (Eclipse of the Moon) – a pizza that came in three parts: one third was encased in pizza dough like a calzone, one third was pizza and one third was salad made of the vegetables, cheese and fish on the pizza.  This is a house specialty and was delicious (yes, I made Nick share a little!).  Its toppings included tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, parmesan, arugula, cilantro, bresaolo and flakes of a fish for which I don’t know the name.  I ordered the Madrilena.  It was a full pizza covered with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, wild mushrooms, smoked meat, sausage, and scamorza.  Again, delicious.  

The pizzas were large and filling but when we were tempted with the desert menu and were told by the smiling young man who served us that there were two desert specialties of the house, Nick and I gave in and tried them.  I had Cannolo con Ricottadi Pecolla – a cream puff filled with homemade cream made with ricotta that is a local treat.  The cream puff was then rolled in chocolate gelato and covered with chocolate sprinkles.  This was as close to rapture as I think a non-Catholic can come. 

Nick had the Crostata ai Frutti di Bosco, a cake covered with fresh berries. Between the layers of cake was the light and luscious cream filling.  Scrumptious doesn’t even start to describe it. 

The service is wonderful.  Apart from the pleasant young man who tempted us with the deserts, we were also served by Andrea’s wife whose name (please forgive me) has escaped my peri-menopausal mind.  She is a strikingly lovely woman who was very friendly, particularly when she discovered that we were renting an apartment from her aunt, Rosalia, another very friendly and helpful Ciancianese. 

If you make your way to Cianciana – or even close to Cianciana – Cortile Halykos is well worth a visit.  You will not be disappointed.

Cortile Halykos Ristorante e Pizzeria di Giannone Andrea

Via Siracusa, 20, Cianciana (AG)

338-314-2813 or 328-915-2784

Casa Giordano

We have made an offer on a house!  Joe Guida, our British-Ciancianese realtor, very patiently drove us around Cianciana on a dizzying tour of at least a dozen houses here and one in the nearby town of Burgio over the space of two days.  All of the houses blended together with the exception of three. 

Casa Stephano (asking price €28,000)

Casa Stephano is situated right next to one of the 4 churches in Cianciana and is on the main street of Corso Cinquemano Arcuri.  Three stories tall, it has perhaps the largest garage in the old part of Cianciana.  Two bedrooms and one bathroom – it has the potential to be made into a three bedroom two full bathroom home.  It has some lovely detail in the house however it has two downsides:

1.     While it does have a balcony, the view is limited – in a town with such a spectacular view, it does seem to be a waste to buy something that doesn’t make the most of it.

2.     Because it is on the main street and only 2 blocks from the main piazza, it is very noisy.  Cars, trucks and tractors go by at all hours of the day and night.  I should explain what I mean by tractors.  Imagine a typical John Deere type tractor from about 50 years ago.  Now, strip everything off it except the internal workings, the seat and the wheels.  Oh, and the muffler, especially strip off the muffler.  These tractors drive along this main street with regularity sounding much like how I would imagine a tank would sound travelling down the same street.  And the people.  Sicilians, it seems to me, have two volumes when they speak – normal and loud.  Certainly this is an exaggeration but not much of one.  As they walk back and forth along this main road to the piazza at night, they call “Buona sera!” to each other and have conversations that may be between someone on the street and another person on a balcony two stories up.  Loud is a necessity, especially when a tractor goes by.  Also, did I mention the church?  Twice a day, the bells chime insistently, calling the faithful to mass.  Each time the bell does not ring just once but several times at 9am and 9:15 and then again at 5:30 and 5:45pm.  You would imagine the sound of church bells to be musical and lovely – and they are, the first two or three times you hear them.  After several days of church bells they become somewhat less appealing (pun absolutely and entirely intended.)

Casa Cusumano (asking price €28,000)

It took us a couple of days to get into Casa Cusumano as the renters were in the process of moving out.  It sits at the top of the hill on the road to Palermo.  It is a three-story house with the back facing the hills and with a view of the sea from the top floor window and with the front facing the town.  As I mentioned, the house had been rented out and, sadly, had been looked after neither by the tenants nor the landlord, yet we could see so much potential in this house.  With some work (or rather a great deal of work as our British contractor Scott told us) it could be phenomenal.  A rooftop terrace added on would give 360-degree views.  It has a massive master bedroom with a balcony but the ensuite (could you really call the hole that is the bathroom an ensuite?) needed to be completely ripped out and started over.  The first floor has a double sized bedroom and a sitting room also with a balcony.  The kitchen would have to be ripped out and redone.  This, actually, isn’t really all that uncommon in Italy.  Homes are often sold with absolutely nothing left in them short of bathroom fixtures.  All kitchen appliances, countertops, cabinets, etc. are taken and the buyer is required to fit a new kitchen.  This is not such a costly undertaking as it would be in Canada as a new kitchen in Cianciana including appliances could cost as little as €2000.  It is a lot of work – about €27,000 including the VAT (value added tax).  The house itself would be stunning when finished but we would have paid probably €10,000 more than the house would be worth in the end.  Still, this house has caught our attention and we can’t completely dismiss it.

Casa Giordano (asking price €30,000)

Casa Giordano is a 4-story (5 if you include the top terrace) house in the old part of Cianciana about 4 blocks from the main piazza.  Even though it is close to the piazza, it is on a quiet street and, much to our delight, we found that a very kindly older couple live next door.  The ground floor is not officially a garage, but the neighbours have told us that the current owner has used it that way, albeit with a very small car.  Once the car is inside the ground floor, it goes back far enough that another very small car could likely fit in behind it.  This house has bedrooms and sitting rooms and full bathrooms on the first and second floors and a huge kitchen on the third floor.  (Keep in mind that in Italy the floors are counted from the bottom as ground, first, second, third whereas in Canada we would say first, second, third, fourth).  There is some structural work that would have to be done but Scott assures us that it is not an expensive or difficult repair.  A kitchen would again have to be added and the roof on the storage room on the top terrazza would have to be replaced immediately as it is made of asbestos.  In fact, there is very little work that would have to be done as the house is in quite good shape.  What truly sells this house, however, are the two terrazza.  Yes, two.  There is a medium sized terrazza off the kitchen with a lovely view and some shade so even in the heat of the summer, it will be possible to sit outside and eat our meals.  From the kitchen’s terrazza there is a metal spiral staircase that goes up to the top terrazza.  Joe could not have orchestrated a better way to show this house if he had planned it himself.  The house itself has many nice features: high ceilings with lovely detailing, large bedrooms each with its own sitting room, bathrooms on every floor, garage, and massive kitchen with a terrazza.  All of these things make the house a nice choice, but climbing that last spiral staircase to the jaw-dropping 200-degree vista of Cianciana nestled in the surrounding green and golden hills gives this house something truly special.  Scott came through this house with us, as he did with the others, and gave us a rough estimate of about €8500 to complete all the work needing to be done.

Just a note on Joe and Scott: 

Nick and I feel we really have fallen on our feet here.  We met Joe, electronically at first, by searching for real estate in Sicily.  Joe has done such a good job at advertising Ciancianese real estate on English language websites, that when you search in English for inexpensive houses in Sicily you find, almost exclusively, property in Cianciana.  We contacted Joe about one of the houses he had listed (interestingly, it turned out to be not one of our top three).  We emailed back and forth a few times and I began to check to see if I could find information on Joe and the agency he works for, My House.  With just a little searching I discovered that My House is licensed and that every comment about Joe and My House on every expat forum I read was glowing and referred to how honest Joe is.  Finding a licensed realtor is extremely important when buying property in Italy as the unlicensed ones may not actually know the ins and outs of buying real estate when you are not a resident of Italy or not proficient in Italian.  Purchasing property in Italy can be fraught with pitfalls – houses may have numerous owners as they may have been passed down from the grandparents to the children and then to the grandchildren.  Every owner has to sign either in person or by proxy to agree to the sale.  If even one has not signed, the sale is not legal.   Yikes!   Joe has been wonderful so far.  He is knowledgeable and patient and has answered every question we have had.  He has also put us in touch with other Canadians in town, a nice perk.  His Sicilian is impeccable (or at least sounds so to my very untrained ears) and moves smoothly back and forth between English and Sicilian. 

Scott is a licensed and British trained tradesman/project manager.  He came to Cianciana five years ago to buy a house in order to renovate and then sell it.  He fell in love with Cianciana and has never left.  His work is done according to British standards, which is a real bonus as the Sicilian tradesmen here work according to Sicilian regulations.   These regulations are considerable more lax that one would find in Canada or northern Europe.  Scott introduced us to Thomas and Lillian, a Danish couple who plan to retire here for good.  They kindly invited us into their home to see the work Scott had done.  It was absolutely impeccable.  Their house, bright and airy, is the stuff of Better Homes and Gardens.  Thomas assured us that we couldn’t find a more trustworthy person to work on our home than Scott and this is certainly the impression he has given us.  After looking at these three houses, Scott sat down with us at Bar Antico Trieste for an espresso and to discuss our options.  Casa Stephano we discounted right away because of the noise.  Scott walked us through the work and costs and the pros and cons of the final two houses.  He did not at all try to steer us towards the house that would give him the most work.  Instead he gave us a very unbiased look at both. 

Our Decision

We were truly torn between Casa Giordano and Casa Cusumano.  Finally, we decided to make an offer on Casa Giordano with the plan that if we couldn’t get Casa Giordano then we would try for Casa Cusumano.  Thus, yesterday morning we went to Joe’s office and made an offer of €25,000.  And now we wait.