Five weeks out

Bonjour tout le monde, comment allez-vous? (Hello everyone, how are you?)

As I mentioned in last week’s post, Elizabeth and I are about 5 weeks out from our scouting trip to the Dordogne department in France. It is time to lock in our activities and confirm our VRBO homes for our stays. Elizabeth usually does the fine tuning on this and has had good luck with Viator for lining up the tours. In Amboise she set up a fantastic hot air balloon ride that took us over chateaus and followed the Loire River for about an hour. We actually landed in a vineyard. What an awesome treat. FYI, our pilot was Kevin, the company was Balloon Revolution-EvenementCiel. The crew did a superb job. Before I get too deep into the discussion of the activities plan, here is a quick update on Rosie and Artemis.

Rosie Update

Elizabeth and our chihuahua Rosie at one of our many local Venice brew pubs.

Rosie was scheduled for dental work this past week. Chihuahuas are known for having dental issues. I took her to the vet for the pre-procedure blood test and to discuss timing for the required chip implant. (You may recall that she has to have an ISO compliant chip implanted before we can take her to France to stay.) The vet always takes a blood sample prior to the actual dental work.

Bad news: her blood test indicated that she has elevated liver enzymes. The dental hygienist told me that the high end of the normal range is around 100. Rosie’s levels were just over 400. She will be on medication for two months. Hopefully this will bring her level down within normal range. If not, then there is whole new list of treatments to plan around. While she has lost a little weight, she seems fine. As onery and feisty as ever.

Speaking of feisty, Rosie has a tough time flying. On our trip to California last year, we decided to take Rosie along. In anticipation of the flights, we asked the vet to prescribe something for her anxiety. The vet did and we tried it. Rosie was a wreck.

Elizabeth had purchased this cool backpack carrier, and Rosie did well in it as long as we were walking around. She rode in the backpack without an issue and the backpack fit under the seat in front of us on the airplane. We had two legs for the trip. First from Sarasota to St. Louis, Missouri. Rosie whined the whole time on this flight. We had a brief layover in St. Louis, so we had a little lunch and gave Rosie another dose. We purchased some beef jerky for us to snack on during the flight.

The next leg of the trip was from St. Louis to Long Beach, Ca. We boarded our flight and tried to calm Rosie down. We were told that Rosie had to stay under the seat in front of us. She continued to whine. We hadn’t even got off the ground yet. One flight attendant warned us that if Rosie wouldn’t calm down, we would have to get off of the plane. We would be stuck in St. Louis. By now Elizabeth was a wreck too. We explained that we had just given Rosie a pill and thought that she would calm down in a few minutes. They let us stay on the plane. She didn’t calm down until we picked her up. This was totally against the rules but the flight crew kind of ignored us until it was time to prepare for landing. We were lucky in that there were two young kids in the seats behind us that were a bit rambunctious, so Rosie wasn’t the center of attention.

In preparation for landing in Long Beach, we had to put Rosie in her carrier under the seat. She didn’t like this one bit. We had this brilliant idea, let’s give her some of the beef jerky to keep her occupied. It worked!

Don and Cindy picked us up at the Long Beach airport in Don’s new Subaru SUV. Elizabeth held Rosie in her lap for the ride to Cindy and Don’s place. This worked out great until all of the beef jerky in Rosie’s system came up. Fortunately, Don’s new car didn’t catch the beef jerky. Unfortunately, Elizabeth’s lap caught it. Then Rosie was all good for the rest of the visit. We stayed with Cindy and Don and had a great time until Elizabeth tested positive for Covid.

We cancelled the return flights, rented a car and drove home. It was not all Rosie’s fault though. Elizabeth got Covid, then I caught it. Driving was the best option all the way around. To be honest the drive was very nice. We saw some beautiful scenery on the way to Florida from California. We decided to take the northern route because of reports of flooding along the southern route. This was a good decision as the good old US of A is beautiful. Especially along this route.

Looking back on that trip, we laugh. However, we now have to figure out what we will do on the long flights to France. We definitely don’t want to have Rosie fly over in the cargo area. More on this to come.

Artemis

Good looking boy

Nothing new with Artemis. He still doesn’t get along with Rosie. He’s a cat. What can I say? He is super laid back. Rosie is bit hard to get along with. We had a couple interested in Artemis this past week. That fell through. He will also need an updated chip if he goes with us to France. He might have to fly in the cargo bay. I’m not really happy about that. But I guess lots of animals have done it without much issue. We will see how this plays out.

House Update

We had a good meeting with Colleen, our real estate agent, this morning. Things are progressing on this front. Colleen is planning on listing the house by March 26. Maybe sooner if her photographer can fit us in sooner. We are making good progress on purging and organizing. Yes, I’m taking a little credit, but Elizabeth is the driving force.

Planning for our scouting trip

Okay, back to the fun stuff. As I mentioned, Elizabeth arranged for some great tours for our last France visit. In addition to the hot air balloon, she also organized some super nice wine tours. These included very knowledgeable English-speaking guides and drivers that spoke good English. These tours originated in Amboise and Tours. Tours is bigger than Amboise and to me, is not as quant and charming as Amboise. Don had arranged for a taxi to take us from Amboise to Tours. This worked out well.

Elizabeth has already lined up the VRBOs. These will be 2- or 3-night stays in Sarlat la Caneda, Bergerac, Auch, and Périgueux. The main objective is to get a better feel for the cities and surrounding areas. You Tube videos only go so far. With a little luck the weather will be good, and we will get a chance to see the local farmers markets and other amenities in the towns. While these towns are not as well-known as Paris, Nice, Bordeaux and others, they are pretty important towns in our search area. Having the rental car will give us the flexibility to check out smaller towns too.

We need to understand some of the transportation limitations that we will encounter once we make the move. You might recall that we are thinking that it would be good to not own a car at first. That means we need to stay within walking distance of our village center where we want a boulangerie, pharmacy, restaurants, medical facilities, weekly farmers market, train station and so on available. Reality might be totally different from this vision. Even if we do end up with a car, things like parking and driving on very narrow streets and roads will challenge our adventurous spirit some.

Then of course, we need to be clear eyed about having things to do once we make the move. Some people have said that walking to the boulangerie for a coffee and croissant every morning will eventually get boring. I’m thinking that I could get used to it but, maybe they have a point. For sure I’ll need to confirm that there is a golf course close by. A French language class and history/culture classes will be on the agenda as well. The whole thing of integrating into society will keep us pretty busy. I have heard people say that the shear effort of speaking French to the neighbors and shop keepers is hard work until you get more fluent.

In the Dordogne there is canoeing and cruising along the river and something like 1500 chateaus to visit and 22 of the most beautiful villages in France. I want to visit every one of them. Maybe even live in one. The wineries in the region produce some of the best Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Bordeaux blends in the world. It will be fun to get to know these wineries. Definitely have to find a restaurant and bar where we become known on a first name basis.

I can hardly wait to share these experiences with our family and friends when they come to visit us in France. Anyway, checking all of this out makes up a big part of our list of things to do during our scouting trip.

The time of year that we are visiting might preclude some sightseeing activities like canoeing. The truth is some tours must be booked 2 to 3 months in advance, so we are a little late. Actually, with all that we have to do we won’t have much time for a lot of sightseeing anyway.

I went ahead and booked a tour of Rocamadour anyway. Rocamadour is a member of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France Association. (The most beautiful villages of France.) It is about an hour drive from Sarlat. Our tour guide will pick us up in Sarlat, so I won’t have to drive. I will get to really enjoy the views of the French countryside and take some pictures.

We will have more opportunities to check out wineries on the fly while we are in Bergerac. Also, while checking out the towns we will stop by the tourism offices and get some advice on local tours and maybe some insights of expat communities in the area.

I mentioned You Tube videos above

Previously I have shared the names of a couple of You Tube channels that we have found helpful, and I will list them in the resources page, but I wanted to mention a couple more here. This is not a paid ad for anybody. LOL. Just sharing where we have found information about moving abroad.

“Les Frenchies” is very good. This couple have lived in France for many years and have a unique blend of experiences to share. First the husband was born in France then spent many of his adult years in the USA. His wife is American and had to go through the learning curve that all expats go through when moving to France. Of course, she had help from her French speaking husband, but their advice is from the point of view of a French person returning to France after a long time away and a newbie coming to France to live for the first time. They live in Paris.

Another channel that is really good is Leggett. Leggett is a real estate agency that specializes in house sales throughout France. They are primarily in the Southwest of France, but they have agents all over France and share videos of towns, villages and homes throughout France. Joanna Leggett usually hosts the videos. We like her because she is so real and comfortable. They feature homes for all budgets. They have showcased homes from 33,000 euros to 200,000 euros to millions and everything in between. They treat them all with equal respect. As you know, Elizabeth and I aren’t ready to commit to a home purchase until after we have rented and scouted out potential areas. I’m pretty sure that we will check out the Leggett offerings when we do decide to settle down.

The last channel that I will share this week is “International Living”. This one gives their advice and opinions about great places to retire all over the world. Some places that might be on your radar or some that you haven’t thought of. You might be surprised at some of the top expat destinations.

Whether you are thinking about moving abroad or not, these videos are interesting and give you a chance to do a little armchair traveling too.

Thanks again for reading our blog. I hope that you enjoy it as much as we enjoy writing it. Don’t forget to subscribe too. Next week we will update you on the week’s activities.

Also, in the first post I mentioned that I would get into a little more detail about the Perigord. This is the ancient name of the area that we are considering making our home.

Until next week: A bientot. (See you soon)