Buona giornata a tutti,
( Clare's car was left behind in Portugal, as we preferred to travel from Portugal to Italy by public transport and we weren't sure the old thing would be up for another 3 country trip. I mentioned this previously in back in italia after three months). Our main reason to rent a car was to drive to areas that Clare likes and thinks I might like and to possibly find the house of our dreams.
The day before yesterday, we drove towards a property that Clare set her eyes on a handful of years ago and that she talked about with me, several times.
Upon arrival - we decided to just drive there without making an appointment with the owner/contact person, cause we like to follow our intuition/do things spontaneously - we discovered some things around the house, as well as a mailbox and a camera/anti theft system near the door, which made Clare think that the house had actually been sold.
And it had, we discovered later, after Clare had reached out to the sister of the owner and got this confirmed.
I lost a couple of 100 words, while writing this post due to a bug and/or internet issues, so am gonna make this a shorter post than intended, with more pictures than words.
We drove through a bunch of cute villages and little towns and enjoyed the view(s)...
...even though it was quite a hazy day, with not the cleanest of skies...
...it was still pretty enough...
Way prettier in fact, than these photos make it seem to be.
We also enjoyed a couple of nice stops, where we enjoyed drinks, food and our favorite board game, as of later, abalone go.
The motor of the rental car stalled twice on a li'l railroad track. Luckily for us, the track didn't seem to be in use...
And, yesterday, at night, on our way back home, we almost crashed into a big dog that suddenly showed up in our car's headlights.
This led to us missing a turn, on a mountain road, and later having to turn around, after first calming down to take a pee in the forest and eat an apple.
All in all, our life is pretty exciting. Right now, Clare is making us some nice dinner after a day of a bit of excess in a local bar. We pretty much needed a day of respite/rest after two intense days of house hunting so we will be more rested again, tomorrow.
For further reading on our search for land/a house, I suggest reading 
For now, I will end this with a picture of a home we decided not to house sit, even though it looked pretty intriguing (from the outside). A friend of Clare's inherited it from his parents but decided not to live there as he prefers the big city.
It was fun to walk around though and get a feel of it, as well as some inspiration.
TO BE CONVINUED...