Living in Umbria

My husband and I lived in Umbria for the year of 2007 and loved every minute of it!  We lived in Orvieto on a winery for three months, traveled to Spain, Portugal, and then came back and spent a month in Sicily.  We moved to a small hilltown, Montefalco, and lived there until January, 2008, and returned to Seattle.  We kept a blog for that year along with massive amounts of photos taken by my professional photographer husband, John.  I did the writing of our weekly experiences and travels, and he kept a photojournal of it all.  We would love to share all of our experiences from buying our cell phone in Italy to sharing the holidays with our Italian landlady and all of our new Italian friends.  Our blog is La Nostra Vita in Umbria and we will return to Umbria, sadly only for a month, this year....but will begin the process of deciding where we will one day live for a much longer time.

Our life in Umbria was an incredible experience.  When we traveled to Italy for the first time, this was the area we fell in love with.  We spent a month renting a home in Orvieto and explored the area and asked ourselves if we could live in this area for a year and the answer was a resounding YES!

We studied Italian for one year before we moved to Italy.  We found that helped but immersing yourself in the culture with the people who live there is the best classroom for learning a new language.  People were eager to help us with our Italian and we learned so much more living the language.

Our Visa did not allow us to work officially but we found that bartering services for wine and other items worked out just fine.  My husband is a photographer and he took photos for people in exchange for things and I helped do some translation and marketing with small B&B owners who wanted to attract English speaking visitors.  It all worked out well for the most part.

We found our accomodations through friends' family homes and on-line. We found that on-line accomodations are not always what they appear to be and would not look for anything long-term when we return.  We ended up moving out of a place within two months of living in because it was not someplace we wanted to be but found a much better arrangement on our own. 

We found it easy to make friends and now have life long friends and family there.  If you extend yourself to people, they give back so much to you.  We would recommend going for a month if that is possible for you to do, living there, and experiencing life on a day-to-day.  Go to the markets, go to the towns and walk through them, in other words - live there and check it as if you lived there. Ask yourselves - could we live here each day?  If the answer is YES as it was for us, then you will know.

I hope this gives you a brief glimpse into our life in Umbria.

I wouldlike to move to Umbria  but just don't know where to start.I would like to move permanently.Any help would be welcomed.
Grazie

Hi jtone and welcome to Expat.com!

Could you please start a new thread on the forum for better effectiveness?

Thanks,
Harmonie.