Looking for Home

Whenever I travel, I find myself asking the same question. I might be sitting in a small square in a town in Italy, standing on a beach on a Greek island, walking through a fishing village, or finding myself surrounded by mountains and nature, and a thought quietly appears:

Could I live here? Not for a year. Not as a holiday. Not as an escape. Could this be the place where I spend the rest of my life?

It is a question I have carried with me for many years. Wherever I go, I find myself imagining what life would be like if I stayed. I am drawn to a way of life that feels more natural, more human, and more connected to the things that matter.

The location matters.

I am drawn to the sea, to mountains, to fishing villages, and to places where nature still shapes the rhythm of daily life. I am looking for somewhere quieter, slower, and rooted in a sense of place that feels grounded rather than constructed, but I have also come to realise something more complicated. The very beauty that draws me in is often the same thing that changes a place over time. Social media seems determined to show me videos about one euro houses in Sicily, hidden villages in Greece, forgotten towns in Portugal, and the next undiscovered paradise. The message is always the same.

Buy now! Get in before everyone else. Turn it into an Airbnb. Create passive income. Build a property portfolio abroad. What strikes me is how quickly the conversation moves from the beauty of a place to the value that can be extracted from it.

A village is no longer a community. It becomes an opportunity. A home is no longer a home. It becomes an investment. Yet when I imagine these places, I am not thinking in those terms at all. I imagine morning walks through quiet streets. Local cafés where people recognise each other. Fishing boats returning at dawn. Mountain paths that are walked more than they are photographed. A life shaped by presence rather than promotion. The irony is that many of these places are attractive precisely because they feel untouched by the pressures of modern life. They are slower, quieter, and more human. They still carry a sense of continuity that is difficult to find elsewhere, and yet, inevitably, the attention arrives. The hidden gem becomes a destination. The destination becomes a market. The market becomes an industry, and slowly, the thing that made the place special begins to shift.

I saw versions of this growing up. Wealthier people from the cities discovered beautiful parts of Norfolk, Devon, and Cornwall. Houses became holiday homes. Property prices rose. Villages that had once been living communities became increasingly seasonal. The buildings remained, but something of the life changed. Of course, the story is never simple. Some places genuinely need renewal. Many villages across southern Europe have faced decades of decline. Young people leave. Schools close. Houses stand empty. Without newcomers, some places may fade altogether but there is a difference between becoming part of a place and turning it into a product. There is a difference between belonging and extracting and there is a tension I cannot quite resolve because I am also drawn to beauty. To places that feel alive with landscape and light. To villages where the sea is close and the mountains are never far away. To places that feel like they still belong to themselves. I also find myself wondering whether such places can remain what they are.

Portofino is beautiful, but it is also a warning of sorts. A place where the beauty remains, but the everyday life that once sustained it has been reshaped by tourism and image. It becomes difficult to tell where the village ends and the performance begins and so the question becomes more uncertain.

Perhaps the places I dream of only exist for a moment, before they are discovered, photographed, and transformed or perhaps they still exist, but more quietly than the world allows them to remain. I still find myself asking the same question whenever I arrive somewhere special.

Could I live here?

Not because I want to own it.

Not because I want to turn it into something else.

But because, for a moment, I can imagine belonging to it before it changes into something I no longer recognise.