On the Road Again

We're back on the road again. The exchange was far from the best, but we did manage to see what we wanted to in the area.

Up early (for us anyway), packed the car, and off and away, feeling pleased to be on the move. We were heading to Orange for the Roman ruins there, but seeing what we could on the way. The roads of Haute Provence and Vaucluse were lovely, lots of beautiful tree-lined stretches, and great views.

First stop was Roussillon, recommended by one of Lew and Jean's friends. What a good recommendation! Roussillon must be one of the most photogenic places we've been ever, with countless amazing sights. It's a little red village, sitting on a mountain of ochre of every shade from purple to white, but mostly reds and yellows. Really very sweet and well worth going out of your way for. It was also the first place we have come across Americans this year - many cyclists particularly.

Just outside the village are the old ochre mines...

After Roussillon we headed for the village perche of Gordes. Rather than red, Gordes is built on white sandstone, countless pieces of white rock as far as you can see. The entry to the town is through kilometres of tall drystone walls, then the town itself is more of the same. Just outside are some odd stone bories, beehive-shaped buildings built completely of stone. We snuck through tiny lanes to get to a village of these, but baulked at the prices and headed further on.

We knew the Abbaye de Senanque was close, but it is famous for its lavender which was out of season, so we weren't trying too hard to see it. However the route out of Gordes happened to pass directly past the Abbaye, and we really enjoyed looking down at it, and then a visit to it.

We found our way to our hotel in Orange quite early, so walked into the city for an orientation. It's a bit of a tired town. A lot of down-and-outers, a lot of very tired buildings. Perhaps it is running out of steam having been here as a Roman town since some 2000 years ago. It has two of the best preserved Roman monuments in Europe, which we'll report on later.

Encore Provence

A very enjoyable day today.  A latish start and a lovely long Skype with Bella and Nic in Melbourne.

We headed our little car northwards to Sisteron, about 30 minutes away from our home-exchange. It includes a 13th century citadel sitting astride a spiny ridge behind the medieval town. After a rather delicious Vietnamese meal for lunch (wonderful to have Asian food again) we enjoyed spending a few hours clambering around the fort/citadel/multiple passages and taking in the amazing views. 

We have taken to having a short sit-down meal for lunch over the last few days and just making up a salad here for dinner at night. It is a bit tricky sharing the kitchen but we must admit that Edith is trying hard to make us welcome. She produced a large bottle of local olive oil and package of superb local chocolates for us today (as presents for us to take back to Ceret) and a family BBQ is planned for tomorrow night. It isn't turning out too bad sharing the house. We combined our salads and pizzas to have a family meal again tonight.

Observations:

1. We often get a few strange looks at our footwear when we are climbing up stairs/ramps to random churches, citadels or similar monuments around about. Yesterday, an old French guy pointed out John's jandals to one of his mates. John quickly replied "C'est normale pour Néo-Zélandais" and received hearty chuckles in return.

2. When you greet other adults you plant one kiss on each cheek, but only kiss one cheek for small children.

3. Either there are fewer dogs in Provence than down Ceret way or they are much better controlled judging by the fewer reminders left sitting on the footpaths. However there are more cats.

4. We still can't get our heads around closure times at 12pm - 2pm, especially when it is tourist information offices.

5. Don't ever ask for a 'grande biere' unless you are certain of its size as you may end up paying about E12 for 1 litre handle.

6. You have to get used to driving on narrow badly sealed roads pretty quickly, and be able to pull your sides in and hold your breath when large oncoming vehicles approach, or just your typical French driver who is way over the centreline, but will ease back at the very last second.

7. French glace (ice-cream) is delicious.

8. Rural villas, complete with cyprus trees, swimming pools, large fields and gated entrances are to die for.

Today we wanted to re-visit Moustiers-Ste-Marie. We stayed there for a night after our trip through the Verdon Gorge four years ago. It is only about an hour's drive from here, so on the way we called in at Riez, a seriously old (as in Roman) town. We wandered around, discovering a Roman colonnade, really old residential streets, hotels hundreds of years old and a number of the communal washing basins that are typical in towns around here. The entire place just oozes heritage, as well as many wobbly faced buildings.

Onwards to Moustiers and a great view of it as we approached. It's a little hillside village, with a walk up to a lovely church in a nook higher up. It looked just like we remembered it. 

Climbed up to the church (in kiwi tramping boots i.e. jandals again) and back down in search of a beer at the same bar we had one in four years ago. Alas, the bar wasn't open. We were so looking forward to sitting in the same spot, overlooking the valley, beer or pastis in hand, soaking up the sun. Plan B = have a beer at a nearby cafe, but alas, it was just closing its doors, between 3pm and 5pm. We made do with Plan C = a beer and pastis at an eatery closer to the carpark but it wasn't the same! The temperature had reached 29 degrees as forecast so it was pretty hot to be wandering around for hours. A great village, very touristy but not too crowded at this time of the year.

We arrived home to have a quick dip in the pool though the sun had gone off its small terrace by 5pm. The water temperature is around 30 degrees and it was actually a bit too warm. When I jumped in Jean's pool at her place in Le Thoronet it was closer to 20 degrees, and it was actually much more refreshing once you had lost your goosepimples.

We are deep in lavender country here. This is a young field where the plants haven't yet joined up into rows...

Dinner was a very odd affair. Edith said we were having a BBQ when her son Yann arrived home from university for the weekend. By 9pm Yann, Eric (other son) and mother had started eating before we got to the table. We had put some sausages on the BBQ for us and shared some BBQed courgettes with them but we felt pretty strange sitting at the table with them all yakking away. We had bought fancy ice-cream which everyone shared for dinner. That experience pretty much was the last straw for us, dealing with a very peculiar home-exchange. We googled places to head to the next day and ended up booking a hotel in Orange for the next two nights.

Sojourn in Provence

Time has flown since our last post a week ago. With my now very advanced age it is difficult to remember what we have done each day. After coming down from the excitement of having the internet connected last Wednesday, we called on our friend Severine to see how she was. She is still lamenting the loss of Manu but seems to be moving on. We haven't quite managed to get her out of the house to shout her a coffee yet but hope to soon.

Friday saw us load far too much stuff into the back of our little car and point its wheels northwards towards Provence. Needless to say, if we'd been taken the scooter, we still would have had enough clothes with us just using it's small storage areas, but it would have been a little difficult to carry John's 22" computer screen. We were in fact very thankful we weren't taking the scooter because it was pretty windy on the roads north, and we ended up taking the 130km/hr toll roads for quite a way. We cut it pretty fine to make our 1pm appointment to meet up with Ian, Erin and their daughter Ursula outside the Pope's Palace at Avignon. Only a few minutes late and after a group hug we promptly found ourselves a lovely little eatery to while away two hours over a leisurely lunch. It was fantastic to hear all Ian and Erin's news, which included a debrief on their 12 day walk around the base of Mount Blanc. It sounded pretty arduous but a great accomplishment. 

Lunch with Ian, Erin and Ursula in Avignon. The petite, moyene and grande bieres we ordered were somewhat larger than anticipated,  i.e.. the grandes bieres were a full litre each!

Avignon

John and I then had a quick wander around and enjoy the sights of Avignon before jumping in the car again to  head southeast to Le Thoronet, to stay with our friends Lew and Jean, also from Nelson. They have been doing a house and garden sit since the new year, with less than one month to go. They are living on a wonderful property just outside the village, complete with gorgeous swimming pool, outdoor terraces and large grounds adjoining the river. While looking after the house and grounds they've still been able to take plenty of time off to tiki-tour around their part of France, western Italy and Corsica.

Lew and Jean were exceptionally generous with their time and spent the next three days taking us a variety of villages and towns in the area, on two lengthy walks into the hinterland, and out to a neighbour's party for an evening of pastis, petanque, evening meal and socialising. Plenty of time was also spent talking, wining and dining and we had a wonderful time (except for watching the debacle of the America's Cup racing on the laptop each evening). It got to the point where Lew was losing sleep over it so no pressure tonight Team NZ! It's your last chance!!

Hot chocolate and pain-au-raisin with Jean and Lew at Villecroze

Outdoor lunch at Jean and Lew's place

Playing petanque on Pascal's rather challenging gravel driveway. 

 

Superb tiles at a ceramic museum we visited at Salernes

More tiles

Soon after we left Jean and Lew's we came across a winery selling splendid Cotes de Provence wines for E1.99 out of the barrel or a just a little dearer for a bottle. We bought a dozen (bottles not barrels!).

Crazy snails that climb up fences, stalks, grasses, anything they can to gain altitude.
They border both sides of the roads and it looks bizarre.

After a typically leisurely breakfast on Tuesday morning we hit the road again, this time off to Oraison only 1.5 hours away to the north. We are staying in a home here, in exchange for a woman and her teenage son who stayed at our place at Walters Bluff in January this year. We  arrived after 4pm after making two great stops on the way, one at Barjols (a town with 42 fountains) and another at the gorgeous village of St Julien, which is perched high up on a hill, with the lookout giving a complete 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside. It did in fact seem a little odd to us, that the orientation board showed 400 degrees - this is France however so no real surprise there.

One of the 42 fountains at Barjols.

Our home exchange is a little disappointing. We didn't realise (or weren't told by Edith) that we would be sharing the house with her, an older son, and her aged slightly senile mother. We have our own en-suite room but it feels awkward using the dining room and kitchen. To be fair, she made us a meal last night, which we shared at the table, and Edith and her mother are leaving at the weekend, but we would much prefer to have the place to ourselves. We've just found out another son is coming here for the weekend. Also, they are smokers, and the place smells of smoke which we find pretty detestable. We didn't know Edith smoked because she certainly didn't inside our place in Nelson.

John and I think we will just do about four day-trips from here and then head back towards Avignon. Today we visited Forcalquier, 20 minutes west of Oraison. As with most places we have visited, it has an immensely impressive historic centre and some lovely little squares and nooks. Each place we visit has its own peculiarities, either in size, scale, ambiance, location or surrounding terrain and land-use. We are very much enjoying comparing the differences, and also seeing the country change as we go through it. Around Le Thoronet it is pretty densely forested but driving west towards Barjols it opens up into more rolling country. We have passed paddocks full of sunflowers, unfortunately now past their flowering time, and lavender (also been cropped). We would love to come back when they are in full bloom, and in fact we might skip some of the sights going back home so we see them on our next trip. Having driven from Ceret to Le Thoronet easily in a day, including a four hour stopover in Avignon, we figure we could quite readily drive to the Nice and the Italian border in one day if we set our minds on a tiki-tour in northern Italy at some stage. We would both love to return to Italy sometime.

Walk up to the citadel at Forcalquier

Lovely courtyard

Internet, Finally!

YYYYYYuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuusssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss! We have the Internet! All takers for Skyping welcomed with both arms open.

After waiting for our electrician to turn up yesterday afternoon to check the electrics for the new cooktop (and no, he didn't turn up), we were slightly dubious that Technician No. 8 would turn up for our 8am internet appointment this morning. What doubting Thomases we are! He arrived promptly at 8.45am, and after a poking around at our phone connection in the apartment, plus checking connections downstairs, Voila, il marche (it's running)! So, please tell us why the first technician from the same company didn't come up with the same result 8 weeks ago, or the other four technicians in between. After 20 minutes he had the system running, no new wiring needed, no major head scratching needed.

We no longer care what the story was, but just danced a little jig when the guy left and immediately fluked a Skype with Alastair. He was rather surprised to see us come on-line, that was for sure.

End result - we are like two pigs in mud, or something like that anyway. Happily checking out news, Facebook, and lots of other stuff we haven't been able to do for months. We can now both readily work on-line, and the speed of the connection is brilliant - twice that at home in Nelson.

France, we love you again!

Internet, Maybe?

The Ronde Cérétane running event took place on Sunday. It being France here, the drinks table not only had water, but fresh grapes, sliced apple, and best of all, goat cheese rounds on bread!

Now Tuesday afternoon, and we have technicians 6 and 7 arriving at 8am tomorrow morning to install a completely new phone line into our apartment. On Monday we were heading out, and there was a man wandering aimlessly around Place de l’Eglise looking lost. Karen wondered if he might perchance be from Orange, France telecom’s lines company, and indeed the logo on his shirt was Orange. I asked him if he was looking for us, and he was. Weird – no appointment and no attempt to ring the bell.

To cut a long story shorter (12 weeks of story by now), he and his mate who turned up soon, came in, fished about for an hour, and finally decided they had no idea where or even whether the line from our apartment ended up down below where the Telecom line arrives. This of course means that there was no way they could connect the incoming line to the apartment. They were a little perplexed how the very first technician hadn’t also worked this out. It appears he simply gave up and found out our line number from down below, and never checked that it reappeared in our apartment. So it seems that his laziness has cost us 8 weeks of trouble. The upshot is that we have yet another set of techies arriving tomorrow to install a completely new line, and the current line will remain one of those mysteries. We are not counting our chickens yet – the floor here is littered in counted chickens, none of which have hatched. But it does appear hopeful!

Monday and Tuesday have meant a scooter trip into Perpignan to see if we can sell the scooter back to the dealer we bought it from. Monday’s trip was a bit abortive as the the scooter shop was closed on a Monday. Huh? We couldn’t believe our eyes when we rolled up to the gate to find it closed on Mondays. How or why can an ordinary shop not be open on a work day? Today’s trip wasn’t a lot more use, as they said they will only trade in on another vehicle. However it does seem we should get a reasonable price through LeBonCoin, the French version of classifieds. That will have to wait until after we get back from Provence.

We have to say that almost everyone we have dealt with on all matters, internet technicians included, have generally been very friendly and helpful. Even when they are unable to help us, they say sorry and often shrug their shoulders in frustration themselves. We really have been impressed with the friendliness and politeness of the French here, though it sounds that the Parisians are very different. When we have come to grief while trying to get things done, it's tended to be the underlying systems that are the problem, not the people themselves.

Work on the apartment below us has started, very noisily. It is being completely gutted, as against the way we tried to change as little as we could get away with. It will be interesting to see what they end up doing.

Birthday Girl

Our daughter Bella was very quick off the mark this morning. In fact, I hadn't woken until she rang! It was 7:30am however, a very acceptable time to be asleep, though Bella thought it was actually 11:30am. It was lovely to talk with her and she was in great spirits. Her firm has bounced back from the straits it was in pre-election in Australia, and she is looking forward to plenty of new challenges, and hopefully a pay-rise as well. John managed to get in a “Happy Birthday” before Alastair texted and rang me as well, so a great start to the day for sure.

Breakfast in bed then off to Bar Pablo for a coffee. Bumped into our friend Julie (English) who has just sold her apartment and is having to clear it. She had earmarked a set of very tall salt and pepper shakers to give us. We had admired them in the shops three years ago, but they were no longer available when we cam to buy them last year. Hence, we received the shakers for our combined birthdays. I doubt we will be able to get through the salt and pepper within them for at least three years.

Next stop, the Control Technique place. Yes, stamp onto the carte grise and big tick. Second stop was the mairie. Handed over a huge bundle of papers to get the new rego under way. Whoops, sorry, we don’t take cash. John had to go to the Post Office to get a postal note for the payment for the new rego. The new carte grise will now be posted to us, unknown how long it will take. Big tick anyway.

Third stop was our insurance company. With our rego process underway, we got an extension of our insurance cover pending arrival of the new carte grise.

Once the latter arrives we will be able to apply for new rego plates for the car and will be able to use our local dechetterie (refuse station). Wow, we won’t know ourselves.

All-in-all, absurd paperwork and going from place to place, but the outcome is that we can legally continue to use our car from next week. If we hadn't received the original carte grise by courier, our month for changing it would have expired next week and the car would have been ‘grounded’ until a new process was worked through. Thank goodness we avoided that.

We had planned to go to the beach after lunch but it clouded over so we ended up doing small jobs around the place instead. John mended the side mirror of our scooter with epoxy and I stuck tiles onto the wall above our new kitchen sink. Both turned out very well.

Next off to our combined birthday dinner at Fred’s. We opted for the degustation menu, which consisted of six courses of wonderful food, which we quietly worked our way through over three hours. It really was a treat for us. Another late night.

This morning, Saturday, we had to bound up to see the All Blacks versus South Africa match at Bar Pablo at 9am. Togged up in our appropriate kiwi gear, complete with All Blacks flag. Nobody else was inside the bar (everyone having coffee outside because it was market day), however our waiters got into the spirit of things, with one even wearing a silver fern shirt. It was a bit of a nail bitter at times but really great to see the entire match and see our boys win. Our Zimbabwean friend nipped in for 5 minutes before he had to rush off to catch his flight back to Perth. Of course he supports South Africa so we can see a fair bit of ribbing in the future. This is already a given with our Aussie friends when there is an All Blacks versus Aussie match. Anyway, great result, quick lunch then we packed our togs and towels and headed to the beach. 

It has been much colder this week but it was back to 28 degrees today and lovely and warm.  It took less than half an hour to drive to the coast north of Collioure. Unfortunately it was quite windy, which made it just a little chilly to sunbathe for long, and didn’t tempt us to swim, though John made sure he got his feet wet.

Now trying to catch up on emails and John on work. We must try to get an electrician in soon because we haven’t got our new cooktop connected yet. 

What a Difference a Day Makes

Wednesday was basically spent chasing our tails. Although we have a photocopy of our carte grise (rego papers) we can’t get a new carte grise for the car at the mairie (town council) without the original, nor can we get it without the CT (WoF/MoT). We tried every which way to advance things but no go.

Thursday was a different story all round and some big wins for us. Yeeeeeeessssssssssss!  We headed into Perpignan to leave our car at a garage there as pre-arranged on Monday. Arrived at 9am and caught the handy bus soon after into the centre of town. We had all day to kill but we managed to fill it very easily. There was a massive photographic exhibition on in a number of the historic buildings in the city centre. 1200 photos from around 50 international photographers had been selected for the exhibition and we spent an intrigued 3+ hours wandering around the various venues. The photos were stunning, mostly recording coverage of wars - Vietnam, Syria, Afghanistan, refugee camps, the tsunami in Japan, the annual gathering of millions of pilgrims at the Ganges River and so on. Incredible footage and certainly thought-provoking.  Not a lot of fun given the content, but well worth looking through.

We didn’t have much more time to fill in. Many of the shops were closed because it was a Catalan Festival Day.

Collected our car at 4pm and thrilled with its performance. Two new tyres, four new shock absorbers and all wheels balanced have made the ride hugely smoother and more comfortable. We are extremely pleased with it and don’t mind too much the extra money needed to get it to this level of safety and comfort. We are now ‘good-to-go’.

After having all this work done, we called into a Control Technique place on the way home, to get the sign-off for the equivalent of our WOF. However, he can’t sign it off because we don’t have the original of our carte grise. Grrrrr.

However......the best win of the day was waiting for us when we finally got back home. Despite our car sales woman assuring us she had posted the carte grise a few weeks ago, it had arrived by courier in the postbox today. Yippee. We can now progress a whole bunch of things.

By this stage it was 6pm and John was starting to feel ill. Yes, you guessed it, with so much going on we had omitted to make sure he had had his coffee for the day. A bad headache was threatening. Dashed to Bar Pablo for an emergency topup, followed up by a panadol and lie on the bed. He manfully managed to avoid throwing up this time and started to come right.

We had already organised to meet our new Aussie/Zimbabwean friends for dinner at Café de France at 7:30pm so I went to meet them and John stayed home. He felt well enough in time to join us for the full meal. Our new friends have been here only a week and were looking to buy a place. When we met them last Saturday we pointed them to an apartment we had looked through ourselves and they had actually signed up to buy it earlier today. They were keen to celebrate. They had three of their four children and their partners with them.  We had a pleasant meal together, our second, and John and I have now met all their children, most of whom are professionals in London or Milan. A great night, and a late one.

Merde! Bureaucracy Gone Mad

There are times when France is just superb, and there are times when you wonder why everybody has not just packed up and left. Today is the latter for us. It is small wonder that France has been overrun in the last few World Wars. The problem would have been that they were so busy filling in forms, waiting for other people to do something, and hanging around their homes waiting for deliveries of bullets and guns, that the Germans would have been in Paris before they had a chance to say “Non”.

We had actually moved ahead yesterday, as the bench installation helper turned up more or less on time, and by lunchtime our lovely new beech bench was screwed and glued in place. It looks superb, and it is so good having a really generous amount of bench space versus almost none. The new induction hob looks perfect too. We are most pleased.

Well today we’ve been screwed (but not glued). It promised well. The internet man was due to turn up between 9 and 11 for what we naively imagined would be the last time. At 10 he arrived, and fluffed about for most of an hour before declaring that the problem was within the building, and that wasn’t his responsibility, so he wasn’t going to do any more, and we’d have to get technician number 4 along to actually sort things out. How totally incompetent has this all been? Four technicians to fix what will no doubt be a simple connection problem with the wiring, and already 11 weeks to get it sorted. It isn’t necessarily because we went with a cheaper provider, as 2 of the 3 techies were with Orange, and the guy from Free was the most clued-up of the 3.

So we will be another who-knows-how-many weeks without internet… again.

Next we went off to the mairie to do the car registration. We carried a fair selection of the necessary bits of paperwork - ID, proof of residence, two forms saying the previous owner has sold it, new form for immatriculation, CT (MoT/WoF), a copy of the carte grise (rego papers), change of underwear and a clean hanky each. However we didn’t have the original carte grise. This appeared to be a showstopper. We have been told by our car saleswoman that it’s been posted (we have rung three times), but it hasn’t arrived. We suspect it has never been sent. Apparently, without the original carte grise we can’t get new rego papers issued, despite the fact we have a photocopy of it, and the whole point of the exercise is to create a new carte grise and make the old one redundant. To compound things, the dealer is away, and the car yard has shut down totally until Monday. On Monday 23rd, we have to stop using the car altogether on the old registration. Aaaaarrrrrgggggghhhh! We have a fortnight’s trip north to Provence planned from around 18th Sept so things are looking pretty dicey.

So now we will likely have no internet, and no car. And French beer is awful.

Right now we feel like tossing the whole France thing in, except that would no doubt be very complicated, require 34 duplicate forms, and probably be even worse than staying on and getting over these hassles. Why does it have to be like this? We certainly will not be attempting to move on with the roof terrace as we are not prepared to fight the mindless bureaucracy.

I needed all that off my chest.

On the brighter side, we had a lovely dinner out last night in Laroque with our French friends and a French Cérétane couple they had invited. We talked away madly over a delicious meal until nearly midnight, about 50/50 in French and English. Speaking French with French people is really the best way to improve. Pascale had organised a special birthday cake for us - how nice was that?

We can’t believe the change in the weather. It is bitter today. Grey sky, and only 20°, which when you have come off weeks of 30° feels bleak indeed. We’ve put longs on and a second layer on top. It’s been a very sudden change which has taken us a bit by surprise. Hopefully that isn’t the end of the hot days, but it is looking that way.

Changes in Céret

It’s been amazing to see the change that has taken place this week in Céret. The rentrée was on Tuesday – the day the schools start their year, and most of the workers head back to work. It has brought a big change in who we see here. Last week it was families, this week it is couples and non-French families, but far fewer. The market last weekend was quieter than normal, and more so this morning. The Tuesday night markets have finished now. Even our nightly concerts or bands have suddenly stopped too. There was a band somewhere last night, but it is the first for the week. At least the jazz on Saturdays is still playing at Pablo or Neuf Jets.

We’ve been having a superb spell of weather – it’s been in the mid-20s since mid-August, and nice and dry too. Virtually not a cloud to be seen. Not the best time to be sitting in front of a computer screen, but lovely when we are doing other things. This afternoon it has broken with a delicious heavy thunderstorm. The streets below have been awash under water, and all the drainpipes have been disgorging the autumn leaves which are starting to fall. Halfway through one of the heaviest downpours a little swallow flew in and parked up on our sofa, totally drenched and barely able to fly. It’s sitting in the balcony now, slowly drying off.

We are looking forward to being here in winter. It is a cosy little place (both our apartment and Céret in general), and will suit winter well. There won’t be the same urge to go outside, and when we do I expect our coffees will be indoors at Bar Pablo or elsewhere. It is going to be interesting to see how much of the town shuts up shop for winter.

The internet connection saga continues. Despite the man from FREE saying that France Telecom would be here in 24-48 hours (80 hours ago already), we’ve not heard peep from anyone. A surprise? Hardly. The good thing is that when (and hopefully not if) the next man turns up, he won’t be leaving until we have everything actually up and running, as the line is the last piece of the puzzle. I’m not sure what we will do when it finally works – maybe do some Skyping, as the odd phone call to children never seems like enough. Perhaps some catching up with the news, no doubt some work.

Speaking of the children, Alastair is now settled in Umea doing the last 9 months of his Masters. Bella will be frantically working from tomorrow morning (yes Sunday) now that Rudd has been removed in Australia, and the proposed rule change that shut down her company’s business will no longer take place. Her company has to get going again, but with half the staff having been made redundant. It will be a busy time for a while.

A number of our friends have arrived back in town (they stay away for the most busy months and rent their places out), so we have been meeting them for meals or coffee. We have just received a repeat invitation for Tuesday to our French friends in Laroque, so that will be nice. Monday we go into Perpignan to get 2 new tyres for the car, and possibly get the brakes tweaked for the warrant of fitness (the Controle Technique). The kitchen bench man comes on Tuesday morning to cut the holes in the new top for the sink and cooktop. Hopefully somewhere during the week Monsieur France Telecom will schedule an appointment.

We had an interesting and most enjoyable day for my birthday. After our market we went for a coffee at Bar Pablo, as normal. Bruno, the head waiter asked if we knew our son was inside. We thought not, considering he’d flown to Sweden a few days ago. Next Anthony asked if we knew the All Blacks were on TV playing Argentina. No we didn’t, so we upped stakes and went inside. There indeed was a young New Zealander, tall, gingery beard so Bruno’s comment made more sense. We got talking to him, and discovered his girlfriend’s father was around, and was looking to buy a holiday house in France or Italy, and he particularly liked Céret. Things moved on, the parents arrived, and we spent an hour discussing options, locations and rules. To cut to the chase, their original plans to buy an expensive villa with a pool changed to a village house without one (and maybe one for sale by people we know), possibly more suitable to lock up and leave. They hadn’t realised a village house was just as easily rented. The upshot was that we were invited to dinner at Can Jordi with the entire extended family – parents, three of four children and their spouses or boyfriends, a noisy and cheerful party of 10 including us. A really good evening in interesting company.

Today Sunday we got up moderately early with the intention of jumping in the car for a walk along the coast, probably at Collioure. Down to the car, key on, sad little whirring noise. The battery had given up the ghost. I wasn’t surprised, it had never had much kick to the starter. Fortunately some friends were in the car park a few cars away, so we asked them if they had a charger. No, but in the end Edward and I hopped in his car and drove to LeClerc in Le Boulou for jumper leads, but miraculously I was able to buy a suitable new battery (the current one was the original – now 8 years old). Back we went, and after the Heath Robinsonish use of a shelf bracket and a bolt from some bike pedals, I was able to install it all connected properly. The car now starts better than it ever did, so a good result in the end, and nice to know we won’t have battery problems for years. However the walk was off.

Progress on Internet

This week has been work, work, work. John's work has ballooned so much in recent months that decisions have to be made of ‘where to from here’. The only trouble is that we can’t make changes while we are here in France and can only tackle it when back in NZ.

In the meantime, we've been counting the hours until the anticipated rendezvous with our FREE technician. He actually arrived 15 minutes early at 11am today (Wednesday)! He was very pleasant and quickly deduced that the problem is with our telephone line – it is not fully connected somewhere in this building. Exactly what John had deduced, but it needed somebody official to make the call. He now arranges to have to get the Telecom man back. We had said man here 6 weeks ago to check the line, but obviously he screwed up by not checking the line was actually functioning properly. If he had done a proper test, we would have had internet six weeks ago, and John wouldn't have pulled so much of his hair out. The FREE guy was very cheerful and assured us the Telecom man would be here within 24-48 hours, i.e. We will have internet by the weekend. This is actually better news than we had anticipated. We fully expected to be put back into the system and have to wait another 5 weeks for Telecom to turn up again. So, fingers and toes crossed that we will be having a celebratory drink by Friday night.

Other than that, life has been quite quiet. We helped English friends lug an old clothes-washer down from their apartment (3^rd floor) and then went out for dinner with them last night. We went to a little restaurant, Imprevu, in Rue San Ferreol that we hadn't tried before, and it was lovely. Really good simple French food, well-cooked and well-presented. We will be back.

We have made plans to visit friends in Provence and use a week’s home-exchange owing to us there. We were planning to leave next week but realised that Céret has a big festival weekend on 15^th/16^th Sept. It is based on the annual Ronde Ceretane, which is a run of either 6km or 20km around Céret, or an organised walk of 9km. We are booking for the ‘grand repas avec menu terroir’ which is an outdoor lunch starting at 1.30pm in one of the large local squares.

At least one other couple is booking with us. I was tossing up about entering the 6km run or not. The entry form states that you have to have a medical certificate to enter. Our friend Sam went to a local doctor yesterday for this reason. After a 5 minute check-up he came away with a 23€ bill. With that and the cost of entry, it seems a very expensive 6km run. Given that John and I run over exactly the same route as the race 3 times a week I've decided to pass on it, but go to the repas.

Spain at Last

Our fast get-away plan worked, almost. We tried to head out of Céret by 9am today, all set for a little time in Spain before Alastair flies out to Sweden on Sunday morning. 

Under way finally at 9.30am, up over the border into Spain, where our first stop was Figueres. Cunningly, and co-incidentally, we managed to secure a carpark right beside a neighbourhood park which contained a great collection of outdoor exercise machines.  Since Alastair is planning to do his thesis about setting up this type of facility, he (and Karen) spent a happy wee while playing on them and taking a number of photos. A pleasant wander around the outside of the famous Dali museum, a coffee and then back onto the road. Our aim was to get to the coast and then meander down it until we found somewhere nice to stay for the night, and perhaps have a swim on the way.

We soon realised that much of the Costa Brava is intensively developed as a seaside holiday playground for Barcelonans, however, many of the towns are still very attractive, with a nice feel to the place, plenty of grassy parks, and very accessible beaches. Not all are like that though. We stopped at Tossa De Mar for a short sit on the beach while we ate our bread rolls, and then a wander up and around the lovely fortification at one end of the bay.

By this time we were keen to find somewhere to lay our heads for the night and, on arriving in Arenyes, accepted a room in the first place we tried. Lugged all the gear up two stories and then headed out for a much needed beer. We were close to the beach and in the main street. Chose one of the many bars and settled in for a few beers, a very comfortable chat and fun watching all the people wandering around and socialising. By 8.30pm there were so many people out and about but no-one eating yet. Just loved seeing all the young kids kicking a ball or riding small bikes around in one of the squares, with all the grannies and other ages sitting around the outside chatting away. It is so ‘Spanish’. Funny that. I forgot to say that our 6 beers came to less than 10€ – certainly comfortably cheaper than France, and better beer, though that wouldn't be hard! The French beers tend to be very sweet, and not to our liking.

At 8.30pm we moved onto a small restaurant with a good reputation (according to TripAdvisor). A leisurely and very pleasant meal was had by all, even though Alastair ordered tuna steak and was presented with lobsters (prawn-sized) in garlic. It was the waitress’s fault not his, though he was practising his newly acquired Spanish language whenever he got the chance. He accepted the plateful of large prawns with good grace ‘on the house’ but struggled a little with de-heading, de-tailing and generally disembowelling the little beasts. Not sure how you are meant to get the meat from the claws. Very tasty but he ate half of my meal to satisfy his hunger sufficiently. Of course the little chocolate self-saucing puddings to follow also helped.

Off on the motorway and a pretty straight-forward hour’s trip to Barcelona Airport. A fully laden Alastair then headed into the terminal for his flight back to Sweden. 

His first lecture is 9am tomorrow morning. Rather sad to see him go as we have had a wonderful time with him, particularly with so much opportunity to just chat and chill out together. However, he is planning to come back for perhaps a week at Xmas-time. Somehow he managed to get his two 25kg bags (allowance is 20kgs) and his 10kg cabin bag on without any extra charge!

It was only 9km from the airport to Ikea so John and I headed there. We have a few things we are interested in looking at. Nothing special – just an extra shelf for the bookcase and a few odds and sods. No joy. It should have been open, but wasn't (no known reason - perhaps just Spanish time?), so we reset the GPS and set off home. Only two stops on the way. One to a supermarket to stock up on a bit of cheap pastis and beer. The second for a coffee at what turned out to be a gorgeous little town (Sant Joan de les Abadesses), not long before we crossed back over the Pyrenees into France. We ended up coming back down our very own Tech Valley into Céret, i.e. the tradesman’s entrance from Spain into France and one which had us driving through new country and very much enjoying the alpine flavour of it all.

Home by 2pm and crashed for Nana and Poppa naps, and now struggling to refocus back on work and the chores ahead for this week. Our builder is coming sometime this week to do our kitchen bench. We also have to set about selling the scooter, getting two new tyres and the wheels balanced on the car and a few other things, washing all the cushion and sofa coverings and more. Life has got too busy.

However, today was Father’s Day and it was a great day out. We even had Alastair with us for part of it and a phone call from Australia from Bella. All-in-all we both feel as though we have been away for 3-4 days instead of just 1½. We are surprised we feel so bushed though – maybe we are getting old !