November 17th marked our first official year in France! The same day, ironically, I received the receipt for my Carte de Sejour – meaning my long term residency visa is being processed❤️ On the other hand, while Bob got enrolled in the healthcare system by early summer, I only recently received my paperwork to finalize my Carte Vitale. For some folks it goes quickly, for others it can take over a year or more which apparently appears to be the case with me. We also received the renewal for our car insurance, realizing that yeah, it really was a year ago when we landed in France and managed to get our lovely Renault within a few weeks. Within another month we had found our dream home. Yes, we know time slips away while you are busy doing life things, but this last year seems to have gone by really really fast.
Looking back, one of the biggest challenges, aside from dealing with the legendary French administration and language barriers, was the lack of predictability; we had been on the move since the beginning of 2022, not knowing where we were going to eventually wind up, except that it would be somewhere in the Dordogne. We were confronted with a constant stream of challenges; for Americans it can be daunting as you aren’t prepared for the banking and driving license issues – there’s some mention of these issues in the “playbook” but those are mostly relegated to Facebook groups that can be fraught with misinformation. Many times we felt like we were in a B-rated movie where everything came through, frantically, at the last minute – I mean everything like – you can’t close on your house until the money is transferred but you can easily miss the deadline due to the banks taking days and days to get you your money😅
Granted, our experience is not exactly “A Year in Provence,” but there are definitely certain sentiments that echo that ideal and make it all worth it: The lovely countryside (I would argue the area we live in is equally as stunning as Provence, but not as touristed or otherwise known by Americans), the ancient beaux villages, incomparable cheese, wine and spirits and frankly, we have found the French to be quite lovely people. Due to the lassez faire culture, we have been forced to wind down and adapt, into an alien “whatever” or “it’s France” 🤷♀️way of thinking which is a far cry from the American New-York-minute mentality.
It takes time.
One of the other challenges was finding contractors who could help us with the upgrades to our La Maison. The stories you read in all the books are true, with the Facebook pages recounting stories of paying money to contractors and then they no-show for months or simply disappear altogether.
We lucked out on a great British firm based in France for our general home improvements to include: Solar panels, partitioning off the gite (the reconverted barn) so we can have a home gym and “woman cave.” We added a water softener as the water is so hard here, we have been chipping calcification residue off our small appliances; we have a black kitchen sink – this does not bode well with the current water situation. And thankfully we had split air conditioning installed so we can endure increasingly hotter summers; people who have been here for 20-30 years have never seen this region of France get so hot – it would rarely breach 90 degrees.
We also added an underground water tank and an extra water “but” to capture rain for the garden areas; climate change brought us an unseasonably warm fall – into the upper 80’s well into October – that was then followed by unprecedented rains and flooding in the north.
Our pool that is still awaiting a retaining wall thankfully did not become a mud bath. The rain was so biblical, the surrounding unfinished trenches started to fill up at an alarming rate causing the mud wall on the north side to collapse into the trench itself, thus making matters worse. Fortunately our fabulous pool installers foresaw this calamity and had installed a drainage system so the overflow runs down the lower part of the property. It creates a bit of a marsh and the frogs are in paradise.
Yet, there is so much mud that Bob went to the local dechetterie to get compost (yes they have free wood compost in these places). That way we can walk around the property without gaining inches of height – just cleaning your boots of the wet clay becomes a Herculean task. We are looking forward to next year when the landscaping will be complete!!
And…then there were the stink bugs. What we didn’t know is that this invasive species loves to propagate amongst the sunflowers. While we were enjoying la la land, they were happily proliferating amongst the acres and acres of flowers that besides providing necessary oil, are also a major tourist attraction. In September, when the flowers had been harvested, we were flooded by hoards of escapees that set up house in every crevice they could find. We reinforced the window screens with tape and created a Tupperware “piscine” where they were offered free swimming lessons.
Add to that, it was well into the 60’s until mid-November, which is unprecedented like every other weather event it seems. This has confused some of the flowers and insects who should have been in hibernation by now. We found ourselves actually looking forward to a cold, dry fall and winter so we could get some reprieve as even the mosquitoes were still active! Granted it’s annoying, but it was nothing compared to some of the insects we encountered in Canada and the Southern U.S.
We decided to take a break from our “endless” transitioning with a trip to Normandy by way of a few UNESCO sites. You can read up on the Normandy experience in my previous blog:
Our first stop was the rather impressive Chateau de Chambord – we have been to many of the castles scattered around our region, yet they are more like fortifications perching atop cliffs; grand in scale where you imagine dragons knocking around in secret underground caverns. Chateau Chambord is a unique filigree of architecture – a lovely revelation in curiosity; grandiose but not too gaudy. The massive oil paintings, some with royalty portrayed as sultans, remind us that this is a place worthy of kings. Otherwise the scale was spared in favor of a more intricate nature – at sea level. Here, as I wandered up the double helix staircases and through the paneled rooms, I felt surrounded by epitome of french refinement.
I originally mistook some of the spires for Russian, then when I thumbed through the book at the gift shop it suddenly hit me, of course, the architecture was inspired by grand east-Indian palaces, or what are referred to as mahals, as in the Taj Mahal. This created a rather evocative playground; what child-like imagination was let loose to invent the mazes of rooms and double helix staircases much to the delight of the likes of Marie Antoinette. The original architect is unknown, the records were destroyed, yet the inspiration for this fantastical edifice has been traced back to Leonardo DaVinci; such intrigue! This ah-ha moment, like any DaVinci puzzle, makes the experience even more provocative.
A visual snapshot of Chateau de Chambord
The chateau is a bit off the beaten tourist track and was used during the war to house some of the great works of art from the Louvre such as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. An exhibit is dedicated to the courageous Rose Valland (think of the movie “Monuments Men”), who risked her life to save over 60,000 pieces of priceless art.
Well, Chateau de Chambord turned out to be an unexpected delight, it’s a helluva place that I wouldn’t mind poking around a bit more on a jaunt to, maybe Paris. The joy of living in Europe; I get to be a kid again.
The rain set in for the rest of the day and we were looking forward to tucking into a cozy room for the evening. We had booked a lovely hotel – it was more like a manor with those obscenely high ceilings you see in chateaus and posey Parisian apartments. Considering it was a reasonably priced accommodation we were well impressed. A simple dinner with a gin and tonic next to the fire topped off our evening.
After we completed our pilgrimage to Normandy to visit the stirring memorials, we headed for the legendary Mont St. Michel. As we toodled through the countryside I went into a zen-like state – I always take pleasure in this, and imagine if fortune provides, a convertible sports car on a summer day wouldn’t be out of the question; France shamelessly warrants this level of indulgence.
Then, from a misty distance, like you experience as you approach a large snow-capped mountain on a misty morning, Mont St. Michel slowly begins to reveal itself. It is more of a science-fiction fantasy experience as it appears as though it’s a disembodied citadel that’s floating above the surrounding delta.
We had snagged a hotel with a view and luckily, walking distance along the boardwalk to city. That was you can get an assortment of angles and include some roving sheep to add to the perfect backdrop.
We walked around much of the perimeter, watching groups of bare-footed tourists in what appeared to be arranged tours, wading through the mud; we weren’t so inclined to take part in that once-in-a-lifetime experience so stuck to the sandy bits. We arrived at the village complete with tourists shops and yes, even more shops and even more tourists. We hiked all the way to the top to explore the gravity-defying abbey and the surrounding bay – I felt like a seagull, sailing along an endless swirl of sand and sea, the curvature carved from the unrelenting shift of the ocean.
Then it began to rain, actually it was more like a deluge. We picked our way down the stone steps that soon turned into water falls. We stopped off for a welcome chocolat chaud, and thankfully, the storm subsided and sun burst through as if to say – “I was only joking.” 😎 Being from the Pacific Northwest, we had brought our Gore-Tex that got a workout that afternoon.
After hiking six or so miles, we rested up and then went down for dinner at the hotel; unless you were staying at the village in St. Michel there were few options this time of year. We entertained ourselves watching a Korean tour group navigate their way through a french meal.
The following day, we made our way down the Atlantic coast to La Rochelle and through the Bordeaux region. We arrived at our La Maison to find our solar panels completely installed and functioning along with a battery backup that added to the array of electronics being added to our “garage.” We are gradually divesting ourselves from the grid which will drastically reduce our electrical bills and we will also be less of a burden to the grid. Not to mention that we are also reducing our carbon footprint.
It was starting to feel more like autumn as the temperature finally started to recede along with the bugs. Thanksgiving was right around the corner and I had ordered Libby’s pumpkin off the “MyAmericanMarket” site so we could have a taste of home during the feast. Our guests included a mix of American, French, English, Irish and a New Zealander.
It was great to break out the good silverware and china to celebrate. What we didn’t anticipate was the size of the turkey that we ordered from a butcher (boucherie) that came in at a whopping 23 pounds. We were barely able to get it on the barbecue! We gathered around the charcuterie board that consisted of various forms of Foie Gras, hams and of course cheese. I had gotten a reasonably priced 1990 Sauternes, a lovely golden yellow dessert wine that enhanced the glow of the season; it was a hit and wound up being consumed before the evening was done.
Around 4:00 as we were indulging in Bob’s famous cheesecake and a traditional American Pumpkin Pie when the power went down. This drama was caused by one of the farmers running his tractor into a power pole in his field. The catastrophe occured just down the road from us so we could witness the carnage first hand.
As the light was fading, and though the candles were blazing around the house, we were running out of light sources and ideas on how to preserve the leftovers. We bid farewell to our guests and sealed up the remainder of our rather large feast, and transported it to the back terrace where it would stay adequately chilled overnight. This is a time we were thankful for the chilly season and yes – our new wood stove saved us from freezing …so much to be thankful for despite the setback🙏
While the estimate was that the power was supposed to be back on by 10:00 p.m. (sure…), our neighbor advised us that EDF had packed up for the night and would be back the next morning, basically stranding our neighborhood 🫣
I was rather shocked; in America the power companies are on 24/7.
🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️
The power finally came back on at 1:00ish the next day; we hailed its arrival reminding ourselves how dependent we are on electricity, that we had done our fair share of roughing it so not all is lost, and thankful all our frozen food hadn’t melted. Our neighbor assured us that this was an exceptional accident and otherwise the grid is pretty stable.
With our visas being processed to include the requisite appointment for fingerprinting and signature, we decided it would be prudent to stay local for Christmas this year. We have planned to spend the holiday in the fortress city of Carcassone…more to come on that adventure as we approach 2024!
Now…for a French moment:
Yes, they celebrate Halloween in France!
Getting our Steampunk vibe on!
FocalDreams 