Well it's been a while I know but what a crazy five weeks we have had traveling. We were both looking forward to getting back to Kuwait and starting the settling-in process in our new home. I have to say it was worth the 17+ hours of flying just to see the look on Mother's face on her birthday when she walked in the room and saw us there. It was really great to see everyone and get an unexpected visit so soon back to the States. Of course it was nice to know we had a house to come back to in Kuwait and made it a lot easier to shop for household things that we could ship. Our shipment has arrived in Kuwait and hopefully it will be delivered to the house soon so we can see what actually made it through this time. Andrew said that three weeks was too long for him workwise but for this special occasion it was okay.
We had a great time in France on vacation. We started out in the Midi-Pyrenees region in the south central part of France. We flew from London straight into Toulose and rented a car. The first night we spent in a small city called Auch. It was the quarter finals of the rugby world cup so Andrew stayed up and went to a local pub to watch the French team play New Zealand. Luckily France won that night. He did manage to start up a conversation with a french couple that spoke good english. He told them that we were there looking for property and their response was "don't move here - we don't like outsiders"! Actually on further investigation it appears that this village has been split into two smaller areas because of the english moving in and not trying to speak the language or adopt any of the french ways. Which we totally understand their attitude - how frustrating to have lived a certain way for years and then have a bunch of people you have never seen just move into your neighborhood and not even try to get along. Luckily we are both trying to learn the language again and embrace the french way of life with both arms.
We moved on to Oloron-Saint-Michelle further south on the road to Spain. The more we progressed down the road the more we fell in love with the area. The terrain was amazing with all kinds of hills and vallies. I don't think we saw much land that was flat and the colours were absolutely beautiful lots of green but trees that were turning all sorts of brights oranges and gold with the fall weather moving in to the area. We only spent two days here but knew that it was an area that we would consider living in for retirement. The people were very welcoming and the area was full of places to explore.
After our short stay in the pyrenees we went east to the provence region of France. I had a contact in the states through our petanque association that owns a b&b propety in Saint-Remy-du-Provence. The area was virtually empty of tourist with the odd european family scattered about from time-to-time. We spent the next five days doing day trips and taking time to play petanque. There is a lot of roman history in this part of France and lots of things to ponder. We saw the aquaduct that the romans built to supply water to other regions and a collesuim and pantheon look-alike in the town of Nimes. Which by the way for all the Americans reading this, the wonderful fabric that you all love to wear on a daily basis "denim" is atually french for de Nimes - "from Nimes" is the translation. The fabric originated in this town where they used the water of the Nimes river to dye it. Not very American, eh?!
From Provence we took the high speed train out of Avignon up to Brugge, Belgium and spent the night. This was wonderful for me because my friends Cathy and Mario came to visit us for the afternoon as well as our friend Joeri. We didn't get too carried away as we all had work to do on Monday. Andrew and I went to Oostende the next morning to go through our storage and get things ready to ship to Kuwait. We had originally thought to ship the entire lot but decided it would be better to scale down and wait until we buy our property in France and just truck it down to put in our own house.
Now I am putting a link to our pictures we took in France but I thought I would give a little something to look at as you finish reading my blog first! :) I had never seen grape vines that turned red before but here they are and the trees full of orange berries were beautiful.
We had to fly to London and spend a couple of days before we travelled on to Kuwait. We have now been home for one week and are both completely exhausted. Literally we landed at 6:30 AM and started trying to supply the things we need to set-up house here. Everyday we have a to do list that we think looks reasonable and it all goes out the window when our sponsor company sends workmen out to do one thing or another at the house. Most homes have a staff so the owners don't have to worry about being present but as we are it for now we have no choice but to sit and wait and wait some more. Andrew will have to start working soon which should make it all the more interesting as well. For the most part our furniture is everything we had hoped it would be when we returned. The bedroom looks like something you would find in a castle. It was hand-made in Pakistan and has a lot of detailed carvings on it. They had originally put it in the sitting area and the sitting room furniture where we wanted the bed. We thought there is no way they will ever be able to move this bed but out came six men and they commenced to picking it up and moving around. Now the room looks even bigger - no help. We thought that the furniture we had picked out would be good for this villa but it doesn't begin to fill the space. We will have to spend some time at the markets over the next few months looking for more pieces to add to flesh out the rooms. Of course this sounds like great fun to me but Andrew hates shopping and even more hates haggling. I will let you know how we progress!
I am desparately trying to find a maid at this point. There is no way I can possibly keep this place up by myself.
1 comment:
sounds like you guys had a busy five weeks. glad you are home safe.
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