252 Lost count of what number I am....

Hi,

I'm Rachel, married to Andy, currently living in north London and working as a property lawyer. Our love affair with Italy began after our honeymoon in Rome 5 years ago. Living in London, we are "city people" and re-visited Rome on numerous occasions also Florence and Bologna before taking the plunge and spending a two week walking holiday in Umbria. That was it! We fell in love with the italian countryside. As the property market in London was booming we decided to invest some of our property-related gains in a holiday home in Italy - with a view to setting it all up whilst we are still on the "work-hard, play-hard" treadmill so that when we eventually had a family and had to tighten our belts our holidays would be taken care of. So far, so good; we bought an old farmhouse in Le Marche to restore and it is now finished and we are expecting our first child in October!

We would both love to move to our farmhouse permanently and are very jealous of all those of you out there who have already taken, or are in the process of taking, that step. The advice posted on the forum is on the whole extremely helpful and always seems very relevant to our experiences.

We love the food, the people, the way of life, the countryside (not necessarily in that order) and love to share it with our friends and family who, we believe, get so much more from Italy when they spend time away from hotels and tourist spots.

I am pleased to report that we were a "near-miss" on one of the "holiday home abroad" television programmes - and boy are we glad that we did miss out on our 15 minutes of fame!