Scouting week 2 continued

Welcome to post number 13 of our Baby Boomers Move To France blog.
In the last post, I mentioned that we stopped at Monbazillac chateau and winery. It is an impressive place. I also gave a description of our drive to Auch. In this post I will share our thoughts on Auch and also talk about our visit in Perigueux.

Monbazillac chateau is on a hill overlooking the Dordogne River valley.

Auch

We arrived at Auch on Thursday afternoon and were pretty tired. We were happy to stop into a very small grocery store and pick up some cheese, salami and a baguette for our evening meal. We had wine from our stop at Monbazillac so we were all set.

Friday morning was a little cool. We found a boulangerie about a block from the VRBO and had a coffee and a pastry. We decided to walk along the river and I wanted to find the Monumental Stairs. We found it and debated whether we really wanted to climb them. We decided that we would go up as far as the statue of D’Artagnan. Remember he is the famous Musketeer hero who was born near Auch.

The monumental stairs is something like 280 steps to the top. You can just make out the statue of d’artagnan at the first landing.

Once you get to the statue you have a pretty good view of the Gers River. We were feeling good so finished the climb to the cathedral.

D’Artangnan, EB at the next landing, and looking back down at the stairs.

We found our way around the outside of the cathedral and visited the Tourist Center. We picked up a good map of the town and we were told that we could go inside the cathedral. We went inside and saw some very impressive stained-glass windows.

Stained glass windows in the cathedral in Auch, This is in the Gers (pronounced like Jess) department. This area is sometimes referred to as Gascony.

Our first impression of Auch was not good, but after spending some time there, it grows on you. It is a big city and maybe a little gritty in comparison to Bergerac and Sarlat. In this city, you are either walking uphill or downhill. The only flat spot is along the river. We had a great meal in a traditional Gascon restaurant that we walked up a hill to get to. After all, we are in Gascony. Food was Excellent!! With a capital E. Good wine too. We have grown fond of the red wine from the Appellation Pecharmant. This is near Bergerac and available throughout southwest France. It is a nice full bodied red wine. By the way, Gascony is a historical and cultural region in southwestern France that encompasses the current Depatments of Landes, Gers, and Hautes-Pyrenees.

After lunch we drove south out of Auch roughly 30 minutes to a very tiny village to visit a friend that Greg introduced us to, Kim who had been visiting friends in Florida. She invited us to visit her when we get to France. Kim lives in a beautiful house on a hill up a one lane road in this tiny French village. She has a fabulous view of the surrounding countryside and in the distance, you can see the Pyrenees mountains. She has put a lot of work into her home and has 2 very comfortable cottages on the property as well as her beautifully decorated 4-bedroom home. She invited us to stay over, but we have a ton to do. However, we will definitely take her up on her offer the next time we are in the area. There are so many cool little towns and villages to see. Kim suggested that we visit a town a little north of Auch as she is sure that there are houses there that fit our needs and price range. We had a great time at Kim’s, but I wanted to be back in Auch before dark. Driving on those narrow roads is not something that I’m used to. We got back to Auch and stopped at a little market for a baguette, cheese and cold cuts for our dinner. We were going to be busy on the following day, Saturday. We had two goals for the day, visit the museum, “Musee des Ameriques” and then drive out to the city that Kim had suggested.

On Saturday we woke up to another beautiful day, did our French language lessons, took our showers and headed for the boulangerie for our coffee grand and pastry. I am so spoiled right now. Next, a 10 minute walk to the museum, Musee des Ameriques. Wow, what a great place. Even the entry courtyard is cool. We spent roughly two hours at the museum and no way could we take it all in before we had to leave for our next stop. That is one museum that I would really like to visit again.

We walked to get the Fiat 500, I complained about the car’s lack of power, but it sure is easy to park. Not the best handling car either, but it is great on the narrow city streets. By the way, France must be the king of roundabouts. I’m getting used to them as they make a lot of sense here.

Condom

Okay (d’accord) so let me tell you about our next city. The city name is Condom-en-Armagnac, affectionately known as Condom. It is the sub prefecture of the Gers department. I know, the name is a little different, maybe funny, but it isn’t pronounced like we Americans pronounce it. By the way the French word for what we call a condom is “preservatives”. Are you laughing your butt off? The town is actually a really nice town that is staying on our list as a possible hometown. I checked the name out on Wikipedia and pronunciation is like coco, but with “d”, so it is Codo. We drove back to our VRBO and tucked in for the night. We have a long drive to Perigueux in the morning.

Perigueux

I’m happy to say that we woke up Sunday to another beautiful sunny day. The turn by turn GPS is working great today. I’m glad because the route to Périgueux took us on some more narrow country roads. The scenery was gorgeous though. There are farms or vineyards and little villages all along the way. There are huge fields of rapeseed, with the bright yellow flowers. These fields are set off by the adjacent green fields. What a striking contrast. According to Wikipedia the crop is the third largest source of vegetable oil and second largest source of protein meal in the world. I believe that the oil from the seed is often referred to as canola oil. They didn’t like the negative connotation of the word rape.

Périgueux is a very pretty town. It is the capital of the Dordogne department and Perigord. It is a fairly large town and has the issues of a large town. That is, lots of traffic and it is difficult to find a parking space.

We left Auch for the drive to Perigueux early as we were concerned that because it was Sunday, we would not find a restaurant open if we arrived in town late. Even during the week if you aren’t seated at a restaurant by 1:30 you won’t get lunch. Lunch is served between noon and 2:00 period, hard stop, just not happening. The kitchen is closed. On Sunday even the brasserie might not be open. We were super lucky and got a seat at 1:30 at a tiny restaurant with outdoor seating. It was called La Taula (The Table). We checked out the menu and saw that the prices were not bad. Then realized it had a Michelin Star for several years running. It serves regional cuisine, so you know duck is on the menu in a number of variations. We have learned not to order the meal of the day because it is too much food, so we ordered a simple plate that included duck sandwiched between potato and man was it good. We sat outside in a plaza surrounded by medieval era buildings. In front of the church there was a large square where people were practicing figure skating on roller skates. After lunch, around 4:00 o’clock, we met the owners of the VRBO where we were staying, and we got the keys for the apartment and a remote control for the parking area. You got it, free parking at the VRBO and it had a (super small) elevator. We were living in tall cotton. While a bit dated, the apartment was nice and it had a washing machine, so we got our laundry done. The washing machines in France are little things. Your loads are small. It took us awhile to figure this one out. We for sure figured it out though.

We opened a bottle of wine and Elizabeth fired up her iPad and downloaded a movie and we settled in for the night.

House hunting

Monday morning was another very pretty day. We decided to walk around the town and visit a Leggett Immobilier (real estate agent). On the way we meet a lady on the street that started chatting with us. I guess we are obvious tourists. She told us that we were very lucky to visit on a day with such nice weather. We told her that we had already had 2 weeks of nice weather. She said that it was unusual. Maybe she was trying to scare us off. If so, it didn’t work. We found the Leggett office and went in and met Sophie. She spoke very little English, so we knew this discussion was going to be interesting. She understood that we want to move to France and buy a home. I think she said no problem and called a colleague to help with translations. We told him our story and that we couldn’t do anything until we sell our house in the states. We are just researching areas and costs for budget purposes, and we only had the following day for visits. He asked us if he could find something that fits our criteria would we like to visit a couple of houses the next day. We said sure. Sophie already had her computer buzzing as she started searching. In very short order she found 5 options. We nixed one immediately and prioritized the remainder 1 through 4. Sophie had her cell phone going as she was contacting agents to set up visits. In between calls she continued searching. We finally had to say we had enough choices. She laughed. She only managed to set up one visit in Montignac and we suggested that we would come back later after lunch (déjeuner) to check in with her about the other places. We lost something in the translation, when we went back, she was out. No problem because Christoff Gilles contacted us and had our number one house priority set up for a 10:00 visit the following morning, Wednesday, in Bergerac. Elizabeth didn’t really like the Montignac property, so we cancelled that one. Thus, our Wednesday morning was booked.

We jumped up early Wednesday morning and got the GPS going on the phone, had a coffee and pastry at a boulangerie and headed south for Bergerac. We arrived at the house a little early (as usual), so we drove around the area before we met Christoff. The property is a little north and east of downtown up a hill on a narrow tree lined road. The way that we came to the property we didn’t realize how close to town the place is. There is an electric gate that opens via a remote control onto a nice parking area. Probably large enough for 3 cars easily. Maybe 4 Fiat 500 cars. The house is small (just over 753 square feet) roughly half of our Venice villa. It sits on a fenced property of about 10,500 square feet roughly a 1/4 acre. In addition to the house there is another building currently used as a workshop with water and electricity that is roughly another 700 square feet. With a little work and imagination this could be made into a separate guest house. The main house is big enough for us and would be a great project for us to build out the additional area and it is all on one level. We really liked this little house. We are thinking, Bergerac will be a good place to set up our search headquarters in the future.

Cristoff had another house for us to visit just a little distance away that would be ready for our visit in less than 1 hour. This gave us a little time to check out how far the first house is from the town. It is not far, just down the road. We then met Cristoff at the second house. This one didn’t inspire us. We agreed to stay in contact and let him know if our circumstances changed. The drive back to Périgueux was a little easier as this was our second time.

Périgueux Gallo-Roman ruins and the Temple of the Goddess Vesunna

We got back to Périgueux with enough time left to go to lunch and a bottle of wine. Then we walked over to the Temple of Vesunna, Wow. A short walk further we came on a wonderful museum of an archeological site right in Périgueux. These are ruins from the first century. It is an incredible site. We spent a couple of hours going through the display, it is so amazing. The very modern building was built right over the ruins to protect them. You walk on elevated walkways that allow you to look over and into the ruins of an ancient Roman house. Along the walkways are display cabinets of various artifacts. Two hours doesn’t really do it justice though. This little old man was worn out with all of the walking. We walked back to the apartment had some cheese and sausage and a baguette and packed and prepared for the drive to Paris.

I have heard of Gallo wine and the Roman empire and even Gallo Roman, but what the heck does it mean? I googled it and here is a brief summary of what I found. Before the Romans came along, much of France was inhabited by Gauls, a Celtic people. With Roman rule, over time the Gauls adapted to the Roman language and customs. All of this resulted in the combination of Gallo-Roman culture. Of course, there is a ton more to learn about the Gallo-Roman history.

Back to Paris and our flight home

Thursday morning, we hit the boulangerie and then packed up the car for our drive to Paris. The drive is about 6 hours including a stop for gas. My credit card didn’t work at the gas pump, so I had to go into the store to pay cash. Geez, I need to learn French. With a little help I finally got it done and filled the car up with gas (essence). Cost: 50 Euros, 55 USD. A lot of the drive was on modern highways and toll roads. I must say the drive was pretty nice until we got to the outskirts of Paris. The traffic was as bad as I have ever seen in Los Angeles. Early on, we had decided to spend the night at the Holiday Inn at the airport and catch a morning flight home the following day. I was a little stressed by the drive and was so glad that Elizabeth had scheduled the extra day. We didn’t plan to go to downtown Paris as we had been there before. Our plan was to grab a glass of wine and a pizza at the hotel bar. It was a good plan!

We did get the glass of wine, but pizza was not available this time. There was another couple from the states having a glass of wine and we got to talking. We met Peter and Caroline. Two really nice people traveling from Melbourne, Florida. They were in town to visit a friend who is living in Fontainebleau, a town on the edge of Paris. I mentioned that there is a lady with a You Tube channel in Fontainebleau. Caroline asked if her name is Janice as her friend is a friend of Janice. EB and I said, yes and the conversation took off from there. We enjoyed another couple of glasses of wine and suddenly it was 7:00pm and the restaurant was finally open for dinner. The four of us had a nice dinner and continued talking. They are a very interesting couple, and we were so glad that we met. They were scheduled to leave in the morning too, so it was time to call it a night.

Thursday morning, we packed up the car, managed to get out of the parking garage on the second attempt and headed for the airport. Charles De Gaull is a huge airport. It is a good thing that we started early. It took us talking 2 or 3 different airport employees to realize that we needed to take a tram to the other side of the airport for our flight. No problem. We made it in plenty of time and settled in for a short wait. The flight to Boston was good and our connection to Sarasota was a piece of cake. Elizabeth had made all of the plans including UBER, Jet Blue, the car rental and the VRBOs. It was a truly great trip thanks to her hard work. We had a few hiccups with GPS and telephone reception, but of course, that is no body’s fault. Next time we will probably get SIM cards for our phones that are compatible with the French system.

What did we learn?

As you know, the trip was a scouting trip to help us find a place that we would use as a base camp for the house search once we are set up in France. We had done a lot of research and were pretty sure that the Dordogne department was the starting point. We did add in Auch which is in the Gers department for a little change of pace.

We learned that driving in France is not tough once you get used the zillion round abouts. The road signage is pretty good and all in all, the drivers are pretty courteous. Gasoline is expensive as indicated by the fact that they sell it by the liter (roughly about a quart) instead of by the gallon like we buy it in the states. The liter cost about as much as our gallon. We would want a car with automatic transmission if possible. Although manual transmission is the norm in France, and we did okay with the manual transmission on this trip.

We learned that we need to improve our French language skills despite the fact that so many French people speak pretty good English. Most instructions are in French and of course legal paperwork is in French. Well, I guess we already knew that but being there again really drove it home.

We learned that we definitely do not want to live in an apartment. We thought we might be able to handle it. NO.

We learned that we do not want to live in the middle of a big city. Again, we thought maybe we could deal with it for a short time. NO.

We learned that we do want to live near a good size town. Train station, medical services are important. Restaurants/bars, veterinarian, boulangerie, grocery store, etc. in walking distance are must haves.

We learned that we are certain that we want to live in the southwest of France. This is where the weather is nice most of the year and there is affordable housing.

We learned that we still like France! We saw some beautiful sights and got a feel for the Dordogne department and potential places to live.

While we were in France, Colleen was super busy working on our behalf to sell our Venice home. No serious offers yet, but it is just a matter of time. Luckily there is no rush.

Next week will be busy and our blog will be full of our activities. Come back for an update. Thanks for visiting our blog and have a great week. Take care of yourself.

Merci