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CNN
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With plenty of sunshine, beautiful beaches and a slow-paced lifestyle, it’s little wonder that Southern Italy is such a sought-after vacation destination, with most visitors looking back wistfully over their stay as they finally head home.
Unless, of course, they decide to stay for good.
That’s what happened to Michele Blackmon, a 68-year-old lifestyle consultant and former luxury realtor from Los Angeles, during a fateful trip to Italy’s Puglia region.
Enjoying a post-Covid excursion around the country in 2022, Blackmon stopped in the city of Lecce, located in the heel of Italy’s boot, at the recommendation of a friend. It was love at first sight. The Baroque “jewel” of Southern Italy, full of elegant palazzos and cozy piazzas, bewitched her.
“I had never traveled to the South of Italy, so on my way back to Florence after Covid, I took what I thought was a quick one-week holiday in Puglia,” Blackmon tells CNN. “I immediately fell in love with the Baroque architecture, the seasides and the organic lifestyle.”
And that was it. She decided to stay.
“I plan on living here as my retirement home, I’m definitely not going back to the US now,” she adds. “I am living my best life here in Puglia.”
After a two-week stay in a hotel in the old district of Lecce, Blackmon began looking for a more permanent place to live and the vacation slowly turned into something bigger.
Lecce, she says, turned out to be the love affair of her life. Blackmon proudly says she has given up the American Dream for the Italian Dream, even flying her Yorkshire terrier halfway around the world to be with her.
Her first apartment in Lecce, just 400 square feet with high white dome-shaped ceilings, cost her 350 euros (around $368) per month.
Recently, she moved into a bigger home — a mini palazzo with four bedrooms, office, side garden and roof terrace boasting views of the Duomo, for which Blackmon pays just 800 euros ($842) per month.
‘Florence of the South’
She says she loves Lecce’s authenticity, the beautiful architecture for which the city is dubbed the “Florence of the South,” and the easy access to organic eating due to it being surrounded by farmland.
“Puglia has a beautiful innocence about it. I might have discovered the fountain of youth,” she says.
“Do I miss my fancy car, weekly nail and hair appointments, big real estate commissions? Sometimes. However, at age 68, I am living my healthiest and best life in Southern Italy.”
Blackmon says she has now given up her lavish life back in Los Angeles, where she scouted for luxury properties for super-rich clients, for a simpler world where she feels self-fulfilled and happy. But she’s still helping others who want to join her in Italy.
“My passion for green, healthy, sustainable living has always been a priority for me. I want to inspire folks to live their best life and I now give advice to others who want to live the Italian dream,” she says.
Blackmon had previously gained experience of life in Northern Italy, all thanks to a Hollywood movie.
From 2003 until Covid struck, she regularly traveled between LA and Florence for work. She says her clientele consisted of celebrities and high net worth individuals who wanted to experience the Tuscan lifestyle after the romcom movie “Under the Tuscan Sun” premiered.
She says she made a living procuring properties, tailoring experiential tours and delivering “everything Tuscan” for her customers. Having spent so much time in Florence, she was already enamored with Italy, even renting an apartment for a spell in the city so that she had a place to stay during her work trips.
“I was in heaven. I ate and drank my way through the discovery of this magical paradise,” she says.
‘Dream team’
However, for Blackmon, Florence represented an extension of her lavish LA lifestyle, with the high prices to match. So, when she discovered Lecce that post-Covid summer, she was immediately charmed by its more down-to-earth vibe, as well as its beauty.
“Strolling the streets of Lecce the first night I felt like I was on a Hollywood stage set, perfect lighting accenting the details of the baroque architecture,” she says.
Now, having established her new life in Lecce, she says she’s still dabbling as a lifestyle consultant, helping foreigners who want to relocate to Southern Italy. She’s assembled a “dream team” of personally vetted attorneys, architects, interior designers, fashion designers, chefs, event planners and builders to assist.
Blackmon now confidently walks the shiny stone alleys of Lecce, accompanied by her dog Einstein, like a real local. After just two years and a lot of networking, she says she knows pretty much everyone in town and gets greeted with “ciao” everywhere she goes.
She likes to joke she’s now Lecce’s “second mayor.”
Blackmon, who has an elective residence visa based on passive income as a pensioner, says her mornings are spent shopping for veggies, fish and meat from local farmers at the open markets. She visits art openings and live jazz events, amid flows of “fabulous” organic local wines.
Now she has sights on creating her own wine after stumbling across a piece of land with a crumbling property and vineyard just outside Lecce.
“The gates opened and as I drove through the vineyard on both sides of the entry road revealing a 16th-century abandoned villa in need of renovation, on 3.3 hectares, with a peach orchard, I claimed it as mine. I placed an offer and named it after my mom, Villa Regina.”
Blackmon purchased the vineyard and building, which she plans to turn into a B&B, for €320,000 ($337.000).
Slower rhythms
More used to the fast-paced LA lifestyle, she says it’s taken time to adjust to the slower rhythms of Italy’s south.
In Lecce, the streets get filled with people only after 9 p.m. when kids, parents, grandparents, and entire extended families enjoy their evening stroll. Dinner, as per Southern Italian tradition, is never before 10 p.m.
“Me, I am the first person starving for dinner at 7:30,” she says. “I still haven’t gotten used to the late eating tradition, but going to dinner with Italians is such a wonderful event: no cell phones, great conversations and lots of courses consumed, bread, wine, dessert and grappa.”
She happily found that Lecce’s historical center is uniquely flat, no hills or stairs. Even though Blackmon had mastered the art of walking in high heels on uneven cobblestones in Florence, she says Lecce’s flatter stone streets are “much kinder.”
Lecce’s lower cost of living when compared to Florence is another plus point. Both leasing and purchasing properties are extremely affordable.
Although her Florentine adventure was what helped her to love Italy at first, it’s the pull of the country’s deep south that has persuaded her to put down roots there.
“I had to pinch myself every day,” she says of her time in Florence. In Lecce, she says she pinches herself several times a day. And she has no intention of setting foot back in the United States.