Losing Sleep, But Super Excited
Welcome back to Baby Boomers Move to France. This is our 16th post about our experiences as we navigate our French moving adventure. Elizabeth and I are super excited about this great adventure and glad to have you along.
We have a lot going on this week. We are making tough decisions on stuff we are taking with us and those things we are deciding to leave here after all. Elizabeth has a doctor consult on her upcoming procedure and I’m struggling with some of the paperwork needed for the French bank account and finalizing the visa applications. With all that is going on and needs to be going on we are losing sleep, and the anxiety level is creeping up. We have been kind of preparing for this and knew this would be part of the whole adventure, but now we are living it. It’s nothing a little wine won’t help.
French Connections HCB has sent updates and answers to questions that pop up all the time. I must say they are being very responsive to my zillions of questions. Sometimes the answers are obvious, but I want to make sure that I understand what a certain statement on a form means. Even though the form is written in English.
Making progress this week
Wow! We actually made progress this week. I’m still struggling with the French bank account paperwork. I guess I’m making it more complicated than it has to be, It’s just me. I am making progress on the Long Stay visa paperwork though. I think I have everything ready. I got the health insurance figured out. It is less than $4000 for the year, but after 90 days we are eligible for the French system, and we should get a refund on unused months. I think the only thing left for the visa applications is our address.
We think we have a place settled. We are waiting for confirmation that we will have Wi-Fi at this cottage. If it doesn’t have Wi-Fi we will have to find a different place. Elizabeth wants to work part time for Tervis if that is approved by the CEO. It looks like she will be able to do it legally in France we have found out as long as Tervis does not do business in France, I would be paid into an American back account and I don’t recruit for the company in France. Of course, Tervis has to agree. Elizabeth is following up on that with her boss who will have to run it up to the top for approvals or if they even think it would be needed. Anyway, the Wi-Fi is critical if she is to work for Tervis, but we need it for our regular life too. Keep your fingers crossed.
Kailey at French Connections is doing the hard part of searching for a place for us. The place that we are hoping Kailey can work out for us is in a pretty little town just about 25 km (40 minutes by car) southwest of Bergerac. It is a commune called Duras located in the Lot-et-Garonne department. The Dropt river runs through the town. It is famous for the castle built in 1102, Chateau de Duras. It overlooks the Dropt river valley. There is probably a lot of history around the castle as I’m sure that over the course of the 12th century and into the 16th century the Chateau was added on to and fortified.
The area is also known for its high-quality robust red wine. I guess we will find out what they mean by “robust red wine”. Just checking on it, Google says, “Cotes de Duras is an appellation for the red, white, and rose wines produced there. Looks like lots of choices to me.
One way to get to Duras is by flying into Bordeaux then catching a train to Duras. The train ride takes about 3 hours. You can fly to Bordeaux from Paris and probably from most of the other airports in France like, Nice, Toulouse maybe even Barcelona in Spain and others in Europe. Unfortunately, there is no direct flight from the states.
We will take the 6 and a half hour drive from the CDG Paris airport. Since we will drive through Blois and Tours and Poitiers on the way to Duras, it might be a good idea to stop in one of those towns over night to break up the drive. I would like to check out Poitiers.
It is good to know that there is a train station in Duras. That is one of the things on our wish list for our towns.
In other news:
The tear drop camper sold. I didn’t get anywhere close to what I thought she would sell for, but it had to go. I’m a little sad because I didn’t get a really good feeling that the guy that bought it has much of a clue about camping or what a good deal he got.
The pistol including the safe, ammo, hearing protection and cleaning kit sold. I feel good about this sale. Colleen and her husband, Don came over and picked up the whole set up. They are super nice people, and I feel like they will take good care of the pistol.
Our very dear friend, Debbie bought the wine fridge and the front porch chairs, and we managed to fit all of it in the VW and delivered them on Saturday. Elizabeth said we looked like the Beverly Hill Billys. Debbie had a place for everything all set. Debbie also bought the “Murphy bed”. Her brother and his husband will bring over their trailer and deliver the bed to Debbie. The thing weighs a ton.
As soon as Don and Cindy are ready for the dining room table and drink mixer machine those will get shipped and our house will start looking like we are moving out. LOL The table and bench will look awesome in their mountain house.
Artimis chip is compliant with the French requirements and USDA requirements. The vet is ready for us so, when we get our actual flight schedule, we will get an appointment for Rosie and Artimis to get their travel checkup 10 days prior to our scheduled departure. For some reason the time slot must be 10 days before departure.
EB had her pre op consultation and is all set for her procedure.
What is the plan
You are probably wondering what our plan is for the next couple of months. Weeellll, we are working on that. You know EB, she needs a plan. I’m glad for that because this move is actually pretty stressful. A plan reduces the anxiety level.
It is a little complicated as we don’t want to spend a lot of money on a rental here in Venice, but we had to bite the bullet. EB found a rental place in Northport for 2 months starting about May 29th so we can have all of our stuff out and the house cleaned up for the new owners by the 30th. We need the rental since the timing for the visas and the house closing are the pacing items.
Kailey at French Connections is working on our short-term place in France. We hope to have our place in France set up for our planned arrival as of 1st of August and we will stay there for at least 90 days. This 90-day period is required for the visa application.
I’m hoping to have the car arrangements done soon. The plan would be to have the car waiting for us at the Charles De Gaull airport when we arrive. We will drive to Duras with Rosie and Artimis. I’m thinking that we will have packed light so there should not be too much drama. Speaking of packing…
Packing
Elizabeth has been taking pictures off of the walls and packing them in bubble wrap and plastic bins. We are going to have to buy some more bins. LOL We will be heading to Home Depot this weekend.
We are thinking that we might have to rent a small storage unit here until we can ship stuff to a new address in France. We can’t take too much as we won’t have much storage space in a little France rental cottage.
So, what to pack for the first week in France. We will have to start a list for this as we need to plan for Rosie and Artimis too. EB and I can get by with a backpack for us but will have to check a bag with Rosie’s bed and blankets and other important goodies. Rosie and Artimis will be considered our carry ons. Anything that we think that we will need immediately when we get to France will have to be checked baggage. Additional essentials will have to be shipped via “My baggage” to arrive at our new address about a week after we arrive. Then the pictures and my toolbox and the like will probably go by boat. Still a lot of details to figure out.
We will get a little practice packing when we move into our 2-month rental in Northport.
Looking at other areas
We are still exploring options in France. We should probably stop watching You Tube videos.
The Dordogne department still has our heart, but as we think about the idea of a home purchase there are a lot of towns where there are really nice houses at affordable prices. What is affordable? We want to find a place under 150000 euros. That will mean some compromise on location but not a lot of compromise. I mean it is forcing us to look around and there are really some great options. We don’t need a lot for just the two of us. Hopefully we can find a comfortable house that will have enough room for the occasional visitors too. We are looking forward to having visitors.
I mentioned You Tube, we came across a pretty good You Tube channel, called “The Euro Pats”. This couple started out looking in Italy but found the visa requirements were a bit arduous. They said that they would need an income of 30000 Euros each. That is about double of the French requirement and out of their range (ours too for that matter). That opened their eyes, so they started looking at other European countries and ultimately settled on France. They are from Texas and now seriously considering the Normandy area of France. It is beautiful there, but the weather is a little iffy for me.
To be clear, the visa doesn’t cost 30000 euros. Italy just requires a minimum annual income of 30000 euros per person for expats. France requires about 15000 euros per year per person. Speaking of euros, the recent political stuff going on has caused the US dollar to fall as compared to the euro. So now 30000 euros cost about 34000 USD. Last December 30000 euros cost about 32400 USD. Thus, we lost about $1600 in buying power since December. I had the opportunity to buy euros in December but didn’t expect the dollar to drop like that. I’m hoping that the dollar will gain a little, but I’m going to need to buy euros soon.
Despite that very bad news about the dollar vs the euro, we are still going on this adventure.
Stay tuned for next week
I’m pretty happy with our progress this week. I think it is time for one of favorite drinks. The ever-refreshing Aperol Fizz. You will remember that it is a concoction my sister, Cindy showed us. We love it.
Next week, I will follow up on the “Traveling Mailbox”, “My Baggage”, whatever shipping company I select for the big stuff and preparing the kitchen table for Don and Cindy. It sounds like the shipping company will charge less if the legs are removed from the table. Of course that makes sense. Luckily the legs can be removed. Just requires an Allen wrench. So that is the preparation required, minor detail. We figured out how to pack the cocktail mixing machine, so life is good.
I’m confident that we will finalize our French address next week. There is all that packing to do. Also, I should be able to finalize all of the necessary documentation for the visas. Once the documents are in place we are looking at about 8 weeks until our visas are in our hands.
Thanks again for reading our blog. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to list them in the comment section below.
See you soon (A bientot)
Mark and Elizabeth
