We Moved Into an Ancient Italian Village (Sicily)

Moving into our ancient Italian home located in a tiny hillside village only accessible by steps is certainly going to be a challenge. Join us as we begin to make our recently purchased Sicilian house a home. Good morning from a very sunny Sicily. We arrived yesterday to the city of Catania which we haven't actually spent much time in so we thought we would extend our stay here just a couple of days before heading over to our place and actually enjoy the city a little bit. We've been learning very fast that as our house is in the mountains and basically in the middle of nowhere it means that we have to take advantage every time we're in one of the major cities here because that's basically where all the shops are. Whenever we're traveling just in general we do like to stay in airbnbs but it's been really nice for us to do that here in Sicily because we can actually get some ideas with what we like and don't like for our house renovation. A good case in point is that we were just going to buy sort of new furniture from IKEA but now having come and stayed in some of these places you do get a little bit of inspiration for stuff that I never would have considered before. Now I'm not a connoisseur about what looks good but I feel like stuff like this looks really nice and would actually suit the vibe of our house. I think realistically we're not going to be thrifting all our furniture because we just haven't got the time or the skills to do that. Realistically it's going to be a mixture of secondhand stuff and probably some stuff from IKEA too. We've come to a flea market to get some inspiration and maybe even find some goodies to take back to our new house here with us. I imagine if we do buy anything we'll be coming back tomorrow with the hire car because I don't want to be lugging around all these plates around the city but it's so cool to come in here they seem to have anything that you would need in a house from books to to cushions and throws to plates to glasses all that kind of stuff so this is exactly what we were looking for. I absolutely love shops like that there's so many just weird things but it doesn't really necessarily feel like at the stage that we're at with our house that that is the right shop for us. Yeah I know you mean I feel like that will be such a nice shop to go to when we're ready to start doing like the soft furnishings and those finishing touches that make it feel more homely whereas now we kind of need the very bare basics when it comes to the furniture like beds for example. Yeah also with our house we can't just drive up to the house so I'm going to be the man lugging the stuff down these huge stairs into the house so I think probably now unfortunately I'm kind of in just Ikea mode which is a bit depressing because I want all the fun little things but it's just not the right time. Do the boring practical stuff first and then the fun stuff will come. I think the thing that we're struggling with with the house is that we can't do anything until we have professionals come in and do some stuff to the house. Our friends are about to have a baby so we don't want to lean on them either so we're going to do it all ourselves. To source the right people is going to take a bit of work yeah and a bit of time yes so be patient that's what we're trying to do it's hard because when we get stuck into a project like this we just want to get it done and get on with it. We're really just talking to ourselves here we're not talking to you you don't need to do anything you can be impatient if you want. So I think now the plan for the rest of the day is go and explore this beautiful city that we're in and then tomorrow we will be making our way to our house. Although that Catania is only the second biggest city in Sicily it's actually the top 10 biggest cities in all of Italy and the thing that Catania is very famous for is its seafood market which we've just come to and basically everywhere it seems to be the the main star of the show is the swordfish and if you're into fishing here you can actually catch swordfish from the shore which i think is quite rare and these bad boys are massive. Something we love about Catania is that it feels like it's not trying too hard yeah it's a bit rough around the edges but in a really beautiful way it actually reminds us of our time when we used to live in Asia it's got this kind of hectic Bangkok vibe I think there's a lot of cultures that have kind of infiltrated here over the years there's been a lot of invasions in Sicily and something that's really cool is it's kind of dark everywhere like the buildings are dark the floor is dark and I believe that's actually from the rock from Mount Etna that's looming over there are so many treasures here in Catania just as we're walking along the street you just look inside and then there's a Greek and Roman amphitheater when we come and do a trip out here in Sicily we kind of have a goal each time and one of the goals every single time is to explore loads of Sicily and every time we get caught up doing things for the house so what is going to constitute a success on this trip is if we can just get a bed maybe a little fridge a couple of essentials into the house the rest of the time we're just going to explore we're not going to try and put too much pressure to go and do too much with the house and instead we just want to continue to fall in love with Sicily this is so cool there's just houses surrounding this old amphitheater and I think this is a restaurant just behind talk about a restaurant with a view huh yeah and all the people living in these balconies have that view I can't stress how lucky and honored I feel to own a tiny slice of this amazing island after many many years of travel not much kind of astounds me these days and this island just continues to do so my list of things that I want to go and see is just ever growing there's just something very very special about this island there's a reason why it's the most conquered island in history it's got very special energy to the place and if you haven't been I implore you to come what do you think of this place sick it's actually so cool and I think doing it at night it's really nice having it all lit up like this it's quite it's got quite a nice ambience about it and it's super quiet do you want to watch a lion fight a tiger yeah yeah okay well if you were back in the day you would be able to yeah what an awesome day I feel so full right now not in terms of pasta I'm also very full of pasta but I just feel full to the brim my soul feels full to the brim because this is just such a perfect day for me you were even crying tears of happiness I was there was this moment we walked into the square and there was this guy playing violin and it was beautiful and no one was like dancing and hugging me and I just felt so overwhelmed with gratitude it just burst out my eyeballs something that we've observed which probably isn't true to Italians but as outsiders feels real is that in England when you compare the rural areas to the cities like to London people have a reputation for being assholes and not being as nice as the country folk but here the people feel exactly the same than they do in the rural areas where we have our house just anywhere that you are in Sicily you have Sicilians whether they're city Sicilians or rural Sicilians they're all the same and they're all just the nicest loveliest human beings it definitely feels like people can learn a lot from the Italians and the Sicilians as they just feel really connected into what it's like to be human and they seem to value what from the outside appears to be the right things basically food and family there are two things that make us yeah but that's it for another wonderful day in Sicily we'll see you guys in the morning while we are here in Sicily we still need to remain connected for our work and relying on wi-fi at cafes or even at our airbnbs has actually caused us a lot of hassle in the past this is why we are super excited to have salee as today's video sponsor salee is a new e-sim service app from nord security and they are easily our favorite e-sim service that we've used salee helps us to save money on all of our trips because we don't have to worry about expensive roaming fees and we also don't have to worry about getting ripped off at the sim card stores that you find at your destination they also offer both global and regional plans so you can actually travel with the same plan even if you're going to multiple countries here's how it works you simply download the app choose yourself a plan and install the e-sim that's it it is super easy to use right now you can also get an exclusive 15 discount if you use the code travel beans when you check out so if you want to grab this discount now make sure to scan the qr code that's on the screen right now or follow our link that's down in the description below what better way to start the day than watch italians drive look at these guys they're mad do you mean what a way to look forward to picking up a higher car this time we are coming prepared and we have actually rented a bigger car than last time in the hope that it will help us squeeze just that little bit more from our shops from ikea back to the house something i didn't take into account is that we're planning to drive straight to ikea now buy our bed and a few other things i don't know why i didn't think of this but of course we have all our luggage i did not think of that no there's not actually any space to come and buy these things we're definitely gonna have to do at least a couple of runs but it's a four hour round trip so it's not just something we want to do lightly especially with noah and uh i was really excited to have a nice comfy bed in our house tonight but i do think that's gonna be possible across my mind i feel so stupid proper rookie mistake i mean luckily i do think we can move the majority of our luggage onto a passenger seat in here um or in like the foot wells and stuff like that so we could we'll just have to get creative it'll be like a real life version of texas it wouldn't be a travel beans video if there wasn't a little amount of stupidity as we seem to have made a living from our stupidity so here we go again after a little rejig it's not the worst we should be able to get a bed in here what do you think um i'm not well we got our bed but uh not feeling so confident it's gonna fit here before we celebrate too much it's um not ideal but it will do so does it work yeah yeah it's fine this would be a really good day to have an argument what did you just say to me this way right yes i mean we did it didn't we yeah high five it's funny when we bought the house i was like having these stairs down to the house and that's the only access for us there's gonna be no big deal i can deal with it but then actually as soon as the reality comes to it like now i'm definitely cursing it and i know i'm going to continue to curse it actually i think it's not so much the getting stuff in there it's going to be if we ever need to get stuff out of there that's when i'm really gonna hate this emma and i are notorious for forgetting stuff and just before we got here emma turns to me we haven't got the keys to the house no what i meant is i haven't got the keys luckily although we have very bad memories one of us usually catches the other one and on this occasion i've got the keys in an ideal world and what we planned was we were going to build the bed and stay there tonight but that has been a very very long day and it's getting dark and we do not have the energy unfortunately we've had to book somewhere down in the nearest town and we will attempt to stay here tomorrow night we are now rested and ready to get cracking on with this we have a sleeping baby in the other room so we have all the time to actually get stuck in i actually think this is the most excited i've been on the whole process it actually feels really real now so we've got all our goodies and i think once we've got a bed in here it will kind of feel like we've moved in yeah it definitely will feel like that and don't get me wrong there's still a bunch of other stuff that we want to get to make it more comfortable here but having a comfortable place to sleep we already have the bathroom and working shower and everything originally we were going to try and get some builders in to fix this mess but we also know with the kind of people that we have an obstacle or a hurdle in the way we just ignore it and it never goes away and we just don't do anything so we decided instead actually let's just put some stuff in here make it livable straight away exactly and then eventually we can just sort of cover it up and i say that this is going to be like this forever it will either be a rustic feature or be hidden by a wardrobe who would have thought that putting furniture together could be so boring i loved it did you not love it absolutely not there's got to be other people out there who like it i can't just be a freak i feel like assembling furniture is like lego for grown-ups and i love lego for me now the thing that i've been looking forward to so so much though is to open the mattress bag i'm kind of terrified yeah i'm actually knock us out i'm looking forward to the days when ai is really here so for example like push a button it goes no the complete opposite it's more like i have an image of opening it up and then it being like and then us like flying against the wall and breaking or go flying out of there and i just look forward to the time where i could just type in make alex fly out of the window and deep into the distance in a comical fashion it and they say the best things in life are free no just buy a house and then furnish it it might not look like anything to you but to us this symbolizes really the first ever home that we've look at the beans all grown up they sat on their bed in their home with their child sleeping next door with our baby next door in a random village in sicily who would have thought our lives would have turned out this way this is so cool just been where they sat just looking out you can see just out there is the village lots of birds flying around let us know what do you think we should get next as it's really starting to feel like home and feel that we're cooking now and if you enjoyed the video give it a big fat thumbs up and if you're interested in saley check the link down in the description below and nothing left to say but thank you so much for watching we'll see you next time and beans out