Back home and following up on our to do list

Welcome back to our Baby Boomers Move to France blog. This is post number 14 of our weekly posts published every Sunday.

We had a great scouting trip and feel our trip was a success. This week EB will catch up on everything at work (although she did work some while we were away). We got home late Thursday night and slept in late Friday, but we didn’t want to leave Rosie and Artimis at the kennel too long.

Some of the “to do’s” for this week:

1. I will catch up on yard work
2. Follow up on our French address,
3. Follow up on our visas,
4. Follow up on our French bank account.
5. EB will catch up on work
6. Follow up on teardrop sale

I just want to give a shout out to Jet Blue. Both directions to and from France the planes were clean and legroom was good, the staff was excellent, and food was pretty good. It felt like we were in brand new planes. We had a total of 4 flights on this trip. Elizabeth and I agree, we would fly Jet Blue again. They are not a sponsor of this blog or anything like that, we just want to give credit where credit is due.

Also, while I’m thinking of it, I wanted to say that despite my bragging about how we travel light we still packed too much. We were planning on colder weather and rain, so that is sort of an excuse. Even with that in mind, we packed too much. Given the fact that our accommodations had clothes washers we could have packed a little less. Did I say we packed too much?

If you read one of our earlier posts, I shared our difficulty with the clothes washer while we were in Amboise, France last year. Although we thought it was a combo washer and dryer, it didn’t work out that way. We had to figure out the clothes drying process and hung our clothes to dry on the drying rack provided. On this trip we had the same situation. Clothes dryers are just not that common. Clothes drying racks are a real thing. Old fashioned outdoor clothes lines too. LOL

While on the subject of things that are different, none of the VRBO places where we stayed had a garbage disposal. I’m a big fan of in sink garbage disposals. We will have to get used to managing garbage differently than we do here. I’m thinking that maybe we will learn about composting. Since we don’t generate too many food scraps, I’m hoping that a composting project won’t be too big of a deal. Also, another difference is that most people do NOT have a truck come by and pick up their trash. You split up your waste into 1. Food waste 2. plastics and paper 3. bottles. All of which YOU are responsible for taking to community sites nearest you.

Then of course we will need to start growing herbs and vegies to use up our compost product. We haven’t even got to France and already have some projects. We will definitely want a place with room for a small garden.

Scouting trip

As I mentioned, Elizabeth and I feel like our scouting trip was a success. We saw some beautiful towns and villages that could be a fit for us. We settled on Bergerac as a good location for our home base and starting point. Bergerac has a small airport, a train station, and all of the amenities that we think we need fairly close to hand. It is relatively close to Bordeaux, which has a larger airport and a big train station with the high-speed train (TGV) available with direct routes to Paris and the SNCF trains from Bergerac. Rental housing in the area is reasonably priced, so we can get a good start there and broaden our search easily.

We have decided that we will likely want a car, so I have started doing a little research on the market. We are anticipating a road trip to Aix les Bains, where Cindy will be competing in a Dragon boat regatta in, I think, August of 2026. Aix les Bains is the whole way across the country (west to east). So, we will want a better car than the little Fiat 500 that we rented for this scouting trip. The train is an option, but we are looking at 9 plus hours. Bergerac to Bordeaux to Paris to Lyon to another place, I forgot the name. Car for us is a better option for this trip.

Yard Work

The weather is really nice here in Venice, Florida so I don’t have a good excuse not take care of some yard work. Yard work is always on the to do list, but this week was a little extra. While we were away the lawn sprinkler system stopped working for some reason and the grass was turning yellow. In addition, one of our potted plants died. It gets water from the sprinkler system. You can’t sell a house with yellow grass and dead plants! I won’t bore you with the details, but here is what I did. I checked the control station and found that it had power. I tried the Test function, and the program seemed to be working. There was no water to the sprinklers though. I remembered that a few years ago I had talked to a sprinkler guy, and he showed me a small “screw” valve that sometimes gets clogged with dirt and stays open. This causes the sprinklers to spray water indefinitely. Well, I had a different problem. I had no water. I tried turning the controller off thinking maybe it needed a hard reset. No joy. Then I went ahead and decided to see if that obscure screw valve might help. I opened it up all the way. No joy. I found the ball valve and closed it then opened it. No joy, but there was a little moisture around the screw valve. I closed and opened the screw valve again. Still no joy. I messaged John to see if he had the phone number for the sprinkler maintenance company. John and Denise were still on their cruise. I went in the house for a glass of water. Elizabeth had gone out to get her haircut and when she returned, she came into the house and said, “The sprinklers are on”. WTF? I went ahead and left them on for 20 minutes. I believe that because I left the screw valve open, whatever dirt was in the system worked itself out and when I went out to turn off the screw valve the system shut down. Opened it and sprinklers sprayed just like they should. I wasn’t a 100% sure that it was fixed. It was late and I decided to check it later. Short story long, the system is working fine now.

On Monday I will get the truck serviced at 7:55am, get a haircut, go to Home Depot to get a replacement for the dead plant and all will be right with the world.
All done and we are ready for a Wednesday showing of the house.

Monday was busy as the truck service took longer than expected and as I was getting ready to leave the dealership, I got a call from the Hyundai people stating that our truck was in excellent condition and asking if I would consider selling it to them. Since this is a task on our long list of things to do to prepare for our move to France, I figured it couldn’t hurt to hear what they had to offer. There offer was more than I anticipated, but I didn’t say so. I said that I need to discuss it with Elizabeth. EB and I had a brief discussion and agreed that we could live with only one car for a while. I made an appointment to do the deal on Wednesday. The deal went smoothly and had cash in hand on Friday.

I sure miss the morning walk with Eizabeth to the boulangerie for coffee and a pastry. We are back to our busy life.

I played golf with the Thursday league this week after missing 4 weeks. The 4 weeks off is my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I really enjoy golf, but I sure didn’t live up to my expectations. I did wear my new Masters Tournament hat that Corey brought me, so I’m pretty sure my score would have been a lot worse without it. I can hardly wait to test the hat’s mojo again next week! At least the beer and comradery were great.

Rosie update

We picked Rosie and Artimis up from Ace pet resort on Friday the morning after we returned from France. They were happy to see us. Rosie was a little bonkers as usual. They are settling in to being home now.

I took Rosie to the vet for the follow up bloodwork on Tuesday. Hopefully her liver enzymes are back to normal, and we can proceed with her dental work. I will let you know how it goes.

Rosie’s blood test results are back. Her enzymes are still a little high, but she can have her dental work done next week. That’s a relief.

Artimis is doing fine. This was the first time for him staying in a kennel for 2 weeks. The staff at Ace said that it took him a little while to warm up to them. He finally did. He is such a cool cat. I don’t care what Rosie says.

Visa, address and French bank account

I contacted French Connections HCB to let them know that we had returned from our scouting trip and had decided that Bergerac will be a good town for our temporary headquarters as we search for a permanent place to live. With that information and details about our anticipated house sale they will locate a rental for us around Bergerac and thus we will have an address. An address is a must for our long stay visa application.

For stays in France up to 90 days your American passport is all you need. We have heard of people that go for 90 days then move to England, Spain or Italy for 90 days then return to France for another 90 days and so on. You are limited to 90 day stretches and180 days total within a year. That approach seems to work well for them, but it doesn’t interest us. The long stay visa is our choice for now.

The French Connections team told me that it is possible to get a French bank account remotely, so I have asked them to proceed. BNP Paribas bank was recommended. This bank is a worldwide bank and has very good ratings.

French language lessons

I have decided to take a French language class (French for Travelers). This coupled with the Duo Lingo app should be a good combo. Elizabeth won’t be able to attend the class as she is still working full time (50-60 hours/week). I feel bad about that, but I really need better language skills, and I will be able to share what I learn with Elizabeth. The class is offered by ACE (Adult Continuing Education) up in Sarasota. I have signed up and class starts next Thursday.

House sale update

Colleen has been working hard and showing our house pretty regularly. There is a lot of competition in the neighborhood and some aggressively priced options. That said, there has been some interest in our place. We haven’t had an offer yet, but I’m very confident that Colleen will guide us through this project.

Coming up next week

We are glad to be home, and it is great to see all of our friends and neighbors and plan a Mexican Train night.

We are eager to get all of our ducks in row so we can make our next steps to move to France. We made some progress this week and will have a lot to talk about next week. Another Rosie update for sure, French class, phone updates, and hopefully some updates from French Connections.

Thanks again for keeping up with our blog. Please leave comments, questions, and suggestions below. It is great to hear from you via our blog.

Below picture is an example of narrow streets in Bergerac

Have a great week, stay safe and we will update you next week.