Monday April 30th - Internet at home

AWESOME. We have internet at home. Not sure what I did differently this morning, but the phone is receiving email and more, and I can hook up the laptops to the internet through it. I’m not sure how fast it is (cell reception isn’t perfect here) but it looks to be fast enough to work with. What a relief!

More of the same today – me working on Talleys and Karen painting. It’s a shame that I have so much work on at the moment. Meanwhile Karen undercoated two pairs of shutters and painted the skirting. We are making progress, slowly.

160 cheeses in the deli counter

Off to do a supermarket shop because it is a holiday tomorrow, as it is also on May 8^th, 17^th and 28^th! We are pretty much surviving on salad stuff to put in our baguettes, plus food we can easily heat up in the microwave. Last week we bought a pottle of petit salé with lentils. Didn’t realise that it included pork belly, but it was actually very tasty. It will be a real bonus when our kitchen arrives and we will be able to make real meals. We love the breads and are trying out the different types on offer at the different bakers. I counted over 160 cheeses in the cheese counter at the Auchan store in Perpignan, and that doesn’t include the cheeses on the other shelves. The French take food VERY seriously.

It is 7pm already and now time to put up our feet. We tend to get to this time of the night, have a quiet glass of wine for half an hour while we watch the equivalent of Minties Moments on TV and then think about what to do for dinner. There is very little for us on TV. Ordinary programmes we know are subtitled, e.g. the Simpsons but it’s not really worth watching anything other than football. There are a number of Euro Cup football games on and we usually manage to watch the first half but fall asleep before the second half starts at around 10pm. However we do have Morse and other films on a drive which plugs direct into the TV and we can watch those. We’re trying to eke them out over our 5 months though.

We managed to Skype with Alastair last night while we were in the café. It was great to catch up with him – it seems he’s pretty keen on trying to secure another round of internships at various design companies around the world during 2012/13 while he has the opportunity. A number of companies have approached him – it must be great to be sought-after. 

Sunday April 29th - Hermitage Sant Ferreol

Up to a lovely day. Sunny and warm, in the high teens. We packed ourselves a picnic lunch, picked up a couple of skinny baguettes and headed out of town on foot to the west to climb up to Hermitage Sant Ferreol. This is a little monastery founded in the 13^th century. The track leaves from the Pont du Diable, which when it was built in the 1300s was the longest single span stone bridge in at least Europe. The track took us up roads moderately high above the valley floor, then swung round to deliver us to the monastery about lunchtime. A lovely view from there. We are still surprised at how big Céret is. The centre is very dense and old, a little like us perhaps, but there is quite a spread outside the core, again a bit like us. We expect that is why there is a good range of services available. The valley floor and the plains around here are a network of smaller villages, mostly quite a bit smaller than ours.

The Hermitage itself was lovely but not amazing, but the site is superb and it made for a very relaxing and pleasant walk. A few families and couples at the top, and a group of 4-wheelers at one point. Lunch was delicious, then a pleasant walk back down through bush tracks to Céret. There is a scattering of nice houses throughout the hills – some old mas or farm houses, and some newer.

Spring flowers in the cherry orchards

I got down to some serious work for the afternoon, unfortunately taking me right into the evening, when an upload session proved that more was needed, and apart from dinner, I worked through to 11:30pm. Not a great way to end the weekend. However one major advance – I tried to re-enable my new SIM card that I’d been anxiously waiting to be “provisioned” and it worked this time! Wow, another working phone. Mucked around for a fair while trying to make it work on the internet without success, so I thought I’d leave it to morning to sort.

Saturday 28th - Looking at scooters

Market day today but unfortunately we had to skip it. Yesterday our now fully functioning letterbox revealed a brochure from Castorama, which included a sale of beds. We need one for when visitors start arriving in May. We are currently making do with the mattress from the sofa bed (bought from IKEA) on top of the blow-up mattress. Castorama had one bed for sale at 60% off, which unsurprisingly appealed hugely to us. Yet another trip into Perpignan! Off on our usual 8.15am bus. Arrived at the central station and had to find our way to the connecting bus stop. 

You know you're in France with breakfast menus like these

Wandered in what we thought was the right direction and ended up in a gorgeous part of the old city. It really is very attractive. River through it, parks, old castles etc. and lots and lots of cafes. Managed to see a rally of old cars while we killed time before our bus. Finally arrived at Castorama at 10.30am.

Rally-car rally

First things first, we asked about the 60% off bed only to find they don’t have one to show us – they are all at their depot. How are you supposed to buy a bed that you can’t even jump on it to test it out? Even the shop staff hadn’t seen it. Commenced to jump on all the other beds for sale and hummed and ha'ed a lot. One of the shop assistants finally found out that the one at 60% off is a medium bed, rather than the firm we are after and more suited to occasional guests. That made the decision for us. We definitely want a firm bed. All the others on sale are still too highly priced for us, e.g. over NZ$1000. We really don’t want to be paying anything like that as we want to keep our investment here reasonably low. So, after buying a TV wall bracket we rapidly exited Castorama and began walking in the direction of cycle and scooter shops that we had previously found on the internet. 

Rather a long circuitous walk but found the Peugeot scooter shop. Very nearly walked (rode) away with a scooter. Came across a very good second-hand one and hummed and ha'ed again. We are getting a little weary of making decisions all the time- is this an age thing? Anyway, soon realised that we don’t have any insurance to cover us if we rode off into the sunset, nor do we have any garaging in Céret sorted. Decided we would wait until we can get these two things organised, hopefully on next week. We know that the scooter is just what we are looking for, and is a good price being second-hand. We hope to go back and bargain over helmets. He has already thrown in a double helmet box for the back of the bike.

Next stop was the cycle shop just down the road. We have discovered that there really aren’t that many mountain bikes for sale. Biking here is pretty much around-town stuff or road cycling. This was a huge cycle shop but there wasn’t much to choose from(in our price range. Decided that the best option is either the bike we have already cased at Decathlon (around the corner) or one in the Industrial Zone just out of Céret. Onwards to Decathlon and had another look at the bike there. Matt black and purple – not really my colours, plus it is heavier than we thought. My preference now is for the local bike at the same price and perhaps we can bargain him down a little.

The next bus back to Céret was not for another hour so we ended up back at Auchan and checked again for our muesli. Yes! Back on the shelves so we stocked up in bulk, along with a few other groceries. Bought an ice-cream for lunch (at 4pm) as we had only had one small pastry at a little deli while waiting for the bike shop to reopen at 2pm. Many shops here close from 12 until 2pm (even the food outlets). Onto our wonderful €1 bus and back to Céret bang on the dot of 5pm. Now chilling out with our cask of red wine, crackers and gooey blue cheese J. Tomorrow HAS to be a day off.

Friday 27th

An “at home” day today. J worked all day on Talleys stuff and I worked all day scraping and sanding the second set of window shutters in the living room – a gruesome job but it has to be done. We had visits from a builder and electrician to check out the work for quoting. The highlight of the day was a visit to the local bar to check emails/send J’s work off and have a café/pastis. Knackered at the end of the day but good progress.

Thursday 26th - More purchases

Up early, then a phone call from work – they come in at rather unsavoury times – either 7:30am or 10pm (NZ 5:30pm or 8am). We arrived in Perpignan a little late, then took our No.9 bus and hopped off close to Castorama to sort the shower. The second-choice one we’d flagged didn’t look so good in the flesh as in the memory, so decided on a third choice. Again, it has walls and a high floor so it will be much easier for us to fit. So that was sorted easily, delivery after 5 May when they are back in stock.

We also found some excellent anthracite-coloured tiles for the bathroom floor which we will pick up when we hire a van for IKEA, probably in a week’s time. I’m so looking forward to having a sofa to sit on, and a desk to work on. Not that a bike box doesn’t make a satisfactory desk, but it is rather low, and it would be nice to get my bike out at some point! We didn’t want to risk adding the tiles to our delivery order and having them discovering they perhaps should be charging us more for delivering the kitchen. We just can’t believe that our kitchen complete with oven, cooktop, range-hood, fridge-freezer, sink & mixer will only cost around NZ$1600, delivered upstairs to our living room.

Did a bit more thinking on curtains, locks, storage and more, then off via Fly (like Freedom Furniture) to Leroy Merlin to check out a little basin for our bedroom. Found the one we had seen in a brochure, but didn’t like it much so chose another and bought it.

We are getting a little sick of making decisions. There are always things to be weighed up one against another, invariably in different stores and with different prices and implications. Not having a vehicle is an issue as we have to think about delivery all the time, and you can’t simply drive from one store to another then back again as you might in Nelson. We’d hoped it would be a lot of fun choosing all the furniture and fittings, but it is only partly the case, tempered mainly by time and transport issues.

A good find on our way back was that some of the Céret buses have a stop at the commercial centre, which means we can get there or back in a single €1 ride without going all the way to the Gare and getting a local bus back to the shops. It also means we can pick up Karen’s bike from Decathlon as it can be carried on the Céret bus.

So it has been a good day. We’ve sorted the shower, the bedroom basin, bathroom tiles, made and received some phone calls on the mobile, bought some duvet covers, found the direct bus stop, and sorted some work.

Wednesday 25th

Up early so I could ring up Castorama and change the shower before it was packed up for us. No mean feat over the phone dealing with complex issues like changing and reasons and delivery but it got done OK, though we need to go back to Perpignan to sign for the change. Again, the staff have been exceedingly helpful, both with the original purchase and the changeover.

We wonder whether how much resentment there is among the locals about the numbers of foreigners living here. Of the people ordering major purchases in Castorama, I’d think getting on for half would be English. And in the cafes in the mornings and early evenings, again half would be foreigners. Maybe the times don’t suit the French so much then? I suspect we’d be resentful if Nelson got flooded by thousands of foreigners, inflating prices and speaking English badly or not at all.

Our parquet floor after cleaning and waxing

There’s a major funeral happening down below us, with many hundreds of mourners and a very young widow or daughter. The church must have been full, and the poor widow has had to endure every one of them filing our past her and offering condolences. 

Another thing off the list (almost). Went in to see Samir today (he’d had 2 days off to cope with his headache after the successful rugby of the weekend) and he has been able to get the missing SIM card redelivered to us. Should arrive Tuesday, after which we hopefully will have working internet – 3GB for just €20 per month. That will be a great relief and make life an awful lot easier.

Tuesday 24th - Purchases in Perpignan

Two steps forward, one step back. We did our first bus trip into Perpignan today to buy our kitchen and shower. Took the €1 bus to the Gare SNCF, then worked out a city bus to Porte d’Espagne where all the major stores live, including our major supplier Castorama. We got off near Auchan, hoping it wasn’t too far from Castorama (we don’t really know where things are yet, and not having the internet handy to look them up is still a bind), but the bus driver looked shocked, and our GPS said 3.7km. Darn!

A quick trip round Leroy Merlin to do shower comparisons, then a little shopping at Auchan (our non-sugared muesli is out of stock today), a bite to eat and up the road to Decathlon to look at a bike for Karen. The bike is fine, but we are apparently not allowed to take a bike on city buses, and there are none in boxes (a bike in a box would have fitted into the baggage compartment of the bus just fine). So we will have to buy it and take it away the day we hire the van for IKEA.

We could see where we were, and Castorama was thankfully only a short walk up the road. It isn’t designed for pedestrians around the commercial area. You either have transport or you struggle along half-formed paths (not footpaths, but paths in the wilderness).

Into Castorama and we checked the kitchen we had thought we’d buy, then found a discounted expo-model shower that looked just perfect, with a decent size enclosure and a side place to stand to drain. Our shower has to be on a platform for the plumbing, so a side platform seemed a good idea. Arranged delivery (€90 - ouch), then ordered the kitchen and somehow didn’t get charged any more for delivery (should have been €120 more). Bonus! Looked around at paint and all manner of other bits and bobs until we were exhausted, then back to the bus at Auchan. There are other bus routes closer, but the No. 9 from Auchan delivers us direct to the Gare where our €1 bus leaves from.

An exhausting day, but we are further ahead thankfully. Were desperate for food by the time we reached the Gare at 6.45pm so a quick shop in the supermarket there and we came up trumps with a box of 12 mini ice-blocks (we thought there were 4 in it but it turned out there were 4 flavours!)  and a 6 pack of beer. Consumed half the ice blocks while we waited for the bus. Yum. The rest stayed reasonably frozen till we got back home, where the quickly consumed, followed by a beer (our first since we have arrived in France). A few crackers completed ‘dinner’. Lying in bed that night we both decided that the shower will be just too large for our bathroom.

Monday 23rd - Scrubbing floors

Slept until after 8am again. We seem to be sleeping much later than we do in Nelson, perhaps because the room is dark with all the shutters closed. With no curtains at home we are used to waking up when it is light. Took our new phone card and phone number to the bank and immediately got it registered on our bankcard. Whoopee – can now use our bankcard to buy things online. Straight to the café to order our appliances from Auchan. Ordered a dishwasher, washing machine and clothes dryer (all at the cheapest prices available anywhere). Have yet to find out when they will be delivered – that will be a day for celebration. No more washing the clothes in the bath!!! Managed to fluke a Skype with Bella and Nic while we were online. Lovely to chat with them but unfortunately the connection gave up after about 10 minutes. They are so excited about buying an apartment and are already well into planning quite a make-over in the week before they move into it.

The electrician was supposed to arrive at 11am this morning to do a quote for the electrical work we need done. Alas, he didn’t appear. This is the first time we have been let down by a tradesman so I don’t think we can complain. J spent the day working on Talleys stuff again and I had a wondrous afternoon spent on my knees. First I scrubbed half the living room floor. The colour of the water that I dumped into the bath was unbelievable. At least 100 years’ worth of dirt from in between the floorboards I reckon. Next, it was a round of grinding with wire wool and turps to get off old splatters of paint etc. By the time I had finished I finished at 5pm I had unknowingly worn grazes into my knees (through my trousers) and the fingers of my gloves had completely disintegrated from the turps. Absolutely knackered but the floor looks so much better. Now all it needs is a coat of polish and it will be grand. That leaves only half of the floor left to do another day. 

Back to the café to for J to post off more work and a well-deserved vin rouge. 7pm already and no energy for making a meal so wandered along to a local kebab/panini type place and bought a kebab and chips. It hit the spot J. 

Sunday 22nd - Samir's rugby match

Up early today to go to the vide grenier (second hand market). It was to be held at the bullfighting arena and, judging by the one we went to in Laroque des Alberes a few years ago, are pretty big affairs. We were hoping to pick up some bits and pieces for the house, e.g. tools, mugs, maybe a bike for me.

It was freezing, 10 degrees when we set off at 8.30am. Only a few blocks to walk and threatening to rain. There were certainly heaps of stalls but mainly second-hand clothes, very tired crockery, ancient electrical appliances and little of interest. Picked up one small pair of earrings for me and that was it. Back home for a hot chocolate by 9.30am. It is only 16 degrees inside but feels so much warmer even with the heaters not yet on.

Work for J and French study for me until about 2:30pm when we headed to the café so J could upload some work. Ended up working online until 4pm. Managed a quick Skype with Alastair in Munich. His mate Julian from Wellington Massey Uni days was staying. Alastair is still keen on spending a second year of internships before heading back to Sweden to finish his Masters. He’s currently eyeing up opportunities in the USA, China and India. He’s keen to get as much experience as he can before looking for a permanent job after he graduates.

We finally headed off to the local football stadium in time to catch the second half of the game. Our friend from the bank was unfortunately not playing but it was an important regional final. We’ve probably already harped on saying how cold it has been here but for the match we wore just about all the clothes we brought with us, plus I had on two pairs of socks. Samir’s team won after a very closely contested game. Back home to a cup of hot soup and an omelette for dinner. A big bowl of strawberries for dessert – they were being sold off cheaply at the local superette.

Our mate Samir at his after-match!

Saturday 21st

A day off today so down to the market (100m away) at the respectable hour of 10am. Bought our supplies of fruit and veges, accompanied by a large packet of steel wool for doing the floor and fireplace. Managed to quickly secure an outdoor table at the café (highly sought after) and listened to the jazz. A quick check of email and great news from Bella and Nic that they have just bought an apartment. They put in a bid at an auction, it was passed in to them, and they negotiated with the vendor. Extremely exciting for them, and it’s two bedroom (room for us when we visit?).

Sausages & spuds, French-style

A bit of a lazy afternoon – J reading and me working on my French. Stretched our legs with a bit of a walk around town. The real estate agent that we bought from was still working (6pm on Sat night) and we dropped in to say bonjour. We found out that the apartment below us is up for sale at the same price that we paid. It doesn’t have nearly as good a view as us and is probable well due for a makeover. It has been rented by the same women for the past 11 years, and her rental contract still has up to 3 years to run (so not as saleable in some respects). 

Friday 20th

Great progress today. Our new phone number arrived in an email from the firm we have bought it from and we dashed off to our friend at the bank to have the security code validated (so we can use it). Unfortunately we still have to wait to get the physical card – maybe tomorrow (except it is Sat and the bank won’t be open!).

Spent the whole day painting and managed the second coat on the ceiling and second coat on the walls. We are not sure if the wall colour is warm enough. We wanted an off-white but it may be too white still. We will paint the doors/door trim white and see how it all looks. The room is certainly heaps brighter and a great improvement on the yellowy ceiling and orange walls. It will pretty easy to put another coat on the walls.

Off to a well-earned demi-pichet du vin rouge at the café and a catch-up on emails. Didn’t realise we were so far behind with the blog (sorry folks) so dealt with that. 

Thursday 19th - Painting started

A big day again today. First stop the bar for a café, but only so J can log in and get some work sorted. He put in a big effort yesterday but various connections to client sites and programs were not working properly – extremely frustrating for him. Mostly fixed and up and running this morning so that’s really good and a weight off his mind. Another plus – Auchan replied to our email saying they still have the washing machine we want in stock. Can’t buy it online till tomorrow though when our SIM card will hopefully arrive, as we need the phone number both for the delivery, and to receive the text giving us the security code for the bank card transaction. We will get the washing machine, dryer and dishwasher all from Auchan at online prices and a good lump sum deal for delivery.

Off to the little magazine shop where we bought our (expired) phone card yesterday. He was happy to give a refund on hearing that it was now out of date. Next a whole load of groceries from Carrefour and carted them home in a little granny-style trundler we have bought - as all the French do here (but we wouldn’t be seen dead doing at home). Our usual baguette for lunch, which we are thoroughly enjoying, and then we decided to start some painting.

First paint going on

Major progress with one coat of white on the living room ceiling and one coat of off-white on the walls. We have just finished (at 7:30pm) and time for dinner. There has been very little for us to watch on TV. It’s all in French! We can get subtitles in French though so we watch the news and try to get a vague feel for what is going on in the world. Apart from that we have been watching some of the football matches, e.g. a cliffhanger last night between Barcelona and Chelsea. Hope our football mad son-in-law is proud of us J. 

We are sitting on our bed in our room (our only furniture) with the windows wide open to disperse the remnants of paint smells, outside a cheery 12°, inside a toasty 16°. We’re partly wrapped up in the duvet.

We plan to do the final coats on the ceiling and walls tomorrow and then take the weekend off.  

Wednesday 18th - Phone saga continues, Observations

The phone saga continues. Went to see Samir this morning to get him to do the registering for us. We presumed this would be relatively easy. First hurdle is that to have a phone card of this type you must give them a fixed line number for them to enter into their system. Why? That’s daft. Samir was happy to provide his own phone number. Also the particular card we had bought is out of date apparently, and it should have been yellow and black, not white. So the end result is that we still don’t have a phone, as a new card is being sent out. Incroyable (incredible). In three days’ time we should finally have a phone we can use, and can then ring and sort the internet.

It was much colder today – 10 degrees and raining but it has now cleared to be a lovely sunny afternoon. J put in a major push with his work today while I togged and masked up and spent many cheerful (?) hours sanding the first of three sets of shutters (which have lead-based paint on them). They come up pretty well and we are looking forward to putting fresh paint on them.

J has just gone down to the local Netto is search of some glue. The power input slot to my laptop has pushed in so the laptop can’t recharge. It’s funny how little things like this are proving to cause us a bit of grief. In contrast, we have been really impressed with all the tradesmen we have had dealings with so far – invariably really cheerful, helpful and prompt. Once we have a phone working we will be able to seek more quotes. The one that came back yesterday from a plumber gave us a bit of a fright but we can probably knock some things off the bill.

We had a chat with one of the real estate agents we made contact with last year and asked him about the merits of turning the apartment from a studio into a one-bedroom apartment and also whether we should keep the bath (for potential English buyers) or opt for a shower. He was really helpful and pleasant. In fact, everyone has been very pleasant and friendly. All the shop assistants, boulangers, barmen, people you pass in the street are really nice. We really love this. I can hear J outside in the lobby chatting away to someone – his French is brilliant. He is easily understanding just about everything face-to-face, but talking into a phone with rapid French emanating from the other end is still a bit too difficult to handle. J has just come in to say he was chatting with the father of the owner of the attic apartment above us. He had a tour through the apartment – huge and being done up to a very high standard.

Some observations :

• It is easy to see the difference between the French and NZers in terms of their attitude to alcohol. We are astonished to regularly see men order just a 150ml of beer and sit out on the café or bar terrace and keep the same drink for an hour. It is very common to see people drinking a glass of wine or beer at any time of the day from late morning onwards but the glasses are very small and are not renewed. People just seem to sit, read a paper, watch the world go by or converse with others for hours and not actually drink. This is so different from NZ where, if you go out for a drink at 5pm or something, people will get through at least a few handles of beer or glasses of wine and typically a lot more. The cultures are worlds apart in this respect and it is quite sobering (no pun intended). Mind you there are a few drunks, though they tend to be fairly old and gently and permanently drunk rather than roaring drunk. The vendor of our apartment is one of them, though we are on friendly terms with him.
• Wine (red, rose and white) is served very cold here, presumably at cellar temperature, which at the moment is pretty darn cold.
• There is a whole heap more smoking – across the ages and sexes – and inside smoking while banned by the EU still happens to some extent.
• By and large the population is a lot trimmer and more healthy looking than NZers. We’ve seen very few obviously overweight people and the vast majority look slim.
• The men working on laying paving and new roading around the main streets seem to be incredibly efficient and work hard. Things seem to happen really fast. We’ve been very impressed with the workmanship on various projects around the centre of town. There is plenty of upgrade work going on.

Tuesday 17th - Problems with sorting a phone

The big mission today was to sort a phone out in some way. We started with a visit to the electrician to pay him, but they don’t accept cards, only cheques which we don’t have, so we need cash instead. Next to the post office to see if they maybe had kept the letter containing our SIM card (which must have been delivered before we arrived) but no luck. We got told off for having our name on a cardboard box above the real boxes instead of having our name on a real letterbox, which is a legal requirement! Next to Samir at the bank to see if he could ring FreeMobile for us, but his work phone was blocked for such numbers.

So yet another reason to try to get a phone SIM card. Off to InterMarche (30 minutes walk to the Zone Artisanale) to see if they had them, and found one place which did, but they were all on monthly plans, which are no use to us. Did manage to get a new lock for our letter box though. Back to Carrefour to see what they had – and struck a very helpful man at the wee shop there who finally found the right sort of card – one that doesn’t have a monthly plan but is a simple pay-as-you-go. Yippee! We have a phone card.

Back home to find that you have to call up to register it to get it started. What a daft system. The whole point of a card is so you can call, and if you can already call you perhaps don’t need a card. Maddening. So I went off to a phone box to call. I’ve been coping really well with French conversations, but to having to follow the “If you want xxxx, press y” conversation is rather more tricky on a phone. I worked out the right number on the 3^rd try, but on getting the operator got totally lost and had to give up. Back to Samir so he could give them our details, but though he works until 5:30, the bank shuts its doors at 5pm. Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrgghhhh!

So we now have a SIM card, but we can’t use it, and we still haven’t ordered our whiteware (the cheapest deals are available online only), and we have a particular slim washer we are desperate to get that we know is in runout and difficult to obtain. Perhaps tomorrow? Anyway, the postbox lock is now fitted, so there’s a small win to make up for the frustrations.

Monday 16th - Ready for painting, phone troubles again

A serious work day today. We spent the whole day sanding, getting the main room into a fearful mess. We’d shifted everything out into the kitchen so we had free reign. By 5pm we’d completely finished all the surfaces, ceiling, walls and doors, and had to set to cleaning the dust up, a mammoth task. Not really a fun day at all, but a day good to have behind us. We’re all ready for painting.

After dinner off to Café de France to order our washing machine, dishwasher and dryer online  – the latter is vital here as you are not allowed visible washing. All went well until the payment part, when our French bank card system sends a text to our phone, which as yet we still don’t have. There’s no way round it. Much swearing and cursing. Then tried to contact FreeMobile to see what the hell is going on with the SIM card we should already have, but the number to ring doesn’t seem to work from the public telephone. More cursing. Nor is there any way to contact them online. Unbelievable! This phone thing is turning into a nightmare. Without a phone you can’t get deliveries sorted, nor arrange for quotes and so on. Seriously maddening.

One minor win – I managed to drill out a lock on one of the postboxes below so I could empty it and claim it as ours. So we now have a opened, labelled post box to keep the facteur happy.

Sunday 15th - Concert in the church

Today was planned to be our first big walk, but my back was very uncomfortable so we just headed out to see how far we got. We went up the back of Céret, up to Le Balcon de Céret, a viewpoint looking back over the town, having first picked up a baguette to make a picnic lunch. You can buy bread from the multiple boulangers pretty much any time any day, except of course at lunchtime which is sacrosanct here. My back was sort of OK, but not great, but we managed to find our way up to an orientation table well above town.

The centre of our village, with St Pierre

It gave us a good idea of where Céret is positioned in the area, with Canigou to the south all covered in cloud today, and looking like it was snowing.

It has been unseasonably cold, with temperatures in the mid-single figures overnight, though further north in France it has got to zero. Virtually every night the weather shows here (probably Perpignan) the warmest place in France, often with Cannes/Nice the same or one degree cooler. Up on the hill it was pretty bleak with a good southerly coming from the snows of the Pyrenees. Céret is tucked into the valley of the Tech River, with hills to the east and west, mountains to the south, and the plains of Roussillon and Perpignan to the north. From the lookout we can easily see the Mediterranean and the taller buildings of Perpignan.

We were back by mid-afternoon, and read until our concert in the church below at 5:30pm. Entry was a miracle of disorganisation with far too few ushers getting things sorted, so the concert took a while to get underway. I have never heard an orchestra take so long tuning up. They were at it for 20 minutes before it all started, then walked the 50m to the stage where they tuned up all over again. The orchestra was from Barcelona, the choir from up the Tet Valley and the soloists from Barcelona too. The concert was good, but not quite as good as we had hoped. Perhaps the orchestra was a little small for the church, but it didn’t seem to fill it with sound. A big break halfway through, another serious tuning session, and then the second half. At the end a huge ovation from the audience, and a repeat of the Magnificat to another ovation. We don’t know whether the audience was local, or perhaps from Perpignan too, but it was mostly French. “Titanic” was on TV after, and we enjoyed watching it, again with subtitles on which made good sense of the dubbed dialogue.

Saturday 14th

Another market day, and even more busy. We wonder how full it must get in holiday season – you may not be able to move. We bought olives from the same vendor, various veges, and this time found a couple of vendors of English-language paperbacks, so trebled our meagre library. Red Cross had a clothes stall so Karen managed to find some €1 trousers, shirts and shoes for painting. Once again the jazz band was in residence outside Bar Pablo, where we spent a pleasant ¾ hour with a coffee and apple tarts, listening to the jazz. We had the laptop and Alastair happened to be online so we messaged him on Skype, the square being too noisy for voice, though he could see and hear the jazz in the background. He didn’t look very cheery; Munich has been a bit gloomy by the sound of it. Our weather too has been continuing cold, but mostly sunny, with fresh snow on Canigó (the mountain previously known as Canigou but the council has a campaign to have it known by its Catalan name).

All vehicles will be blown up except for deliveries???

Our plan today was to go up the road to Le Boulou by the €1 bus to see what was there and in particular to check out the big E. LeClerc store, where we hoped to buy some monster salt and pepper mills that we had not been prepared to carry around for the rest of the trip in 2009. I had tweaked my back this morning bending down to pick up the camera, so it wasn’t a totally comfortable journey, but we did manage to get a few more things we hadn’t found elsewhere., though not the S&P mills.

We are still pinching ourselves over our choice of town and our apartment location. We don’t feel it could have been any better. The location on the square gives us a nice open sunny outlook rather than across an alley onto another building, and there’s always something going on. The town too seems to be lovely and busy, and the market is excellent. We’re surprised about the number of English people here (though maybe a lot come in from other places for market day), but the flavour of the town is clearly still very French, which is what we were after. We are finding the lack of our own transport a bit of a bind though, and will see about getting a scooter and/or a bike for Karen, and some scooter storage, asap.

Friday 13th

Away at around 9am to find a local builder, one that had been recommended by the plumber. He had obviously moved because we ended up walking the entire 30 minutes back to the Industrial Zone that we were at on Tuesday. First stop was at Mr Bricolage for yet more building supplies, then to see the builder who wasn’t at his yard, then bought a pair of working shoes for J and then all the way back into town arriving home at 1.30pm. A much needed rest with feet up for an hour then back into scrubbing etc. I have now started work on sanding the main windows. It will be a big job but they should look pretty good when all finished.

The room already feels bigger and brighter

 

The outer shutters really need a good sanding down and painting but we are not quite sure how to tackle this because it is part of the outside façade and therefore all work on it must comply with the rules of the body corporate (and may be paid by them). Have yet to work out how to address this, but no rush. We come across the owner of the building often enough, he is usually at or around Bar Pablo. However he is usually about 80% sloshed (as he was when he sold us the apartment in the notaire’s office last year) and have chatted with him a few times but he is pretty hard to get much sense out of.

We are surprised at the price of some things here. Some tools are amazingly cheap while other bits and bobs are really dear, e.g.  €43 for the replacement circuit breaker for the hot water.

Thursday 12th

Back to work today. It feels like the first day we have settled in Céret. I’ve been working at my bike-box desk, Karen is back on the windows. The weather is a little cool – we had expected it to be warmer. It’s been around 10 in the morning, rising to 18 by evening.

We spent most of today working on the place. I was scrubbing the windows, shutters and balcony rails and John was skim-coating and sanding the walls – in other words we are ‘living the dream’. Up to our armpits in accumulated grime and plaster dust respectively, and we feel absurdly content. 

Wednesday 11th - Starting the renos!

Still no SIM card, therefore no internet. I can’t wait to get it all sorted as it is a pain trying to work in two places – home for the preparation, then in a café to upload or edit on the live systems.

Today was our first brush with real French artisans as we have two booked in for the afternoon. In the morning we started by visiting the mairie to see what permits we needed – the answer was a nice simple NONE. They only want permits if you work on the outside or windows. Back for lunch after a visit to our friendly neighbourhood artist Denis Ribas. As we part-expected, he didn’t remember us all that well to start with (us meeting a caricature French artist is a memorable occasion, him meeting some more travellers is pretty ordinary). He had rushed back from Shanghai to look after a sick dog, but there was no hope for it and he was very upset. However he insisted on giving us a second copy of his book for our apartment. Our one and only coffee-table book!

Something special this afternoon – we started work on the apartment. I began by skim-coating the first of the walls with plaster , while Karen scrubbed down one of the windows. There really isn’t all that much to do. Having only 50m² means quite a small area of wall, particularly as every wall has windows, doors, cupboards, a kitchen or something reducing the area needing to be done.  The plumbing man turned up on time to quote on what we intend doing, and was all very agreeable. However to get the waste water out from the kitchen means he has to remove the bath, which in turn means we have to at least make a start on the bathroom if we want to be able to wash ourselves. That was going to be next year’s plan.

Later on the electrician came round to look at the impossibly noisy circuit-breaker for the hot water. Again very pleasant and he left having sorted the issue (we can now leave the hot water on overnight without being kept awake), and also another couple of minor issues. One was putting a plate over an electrical outlet, which potentially could have been very nasty as it had exposed 220V wires. Overall we are pretty pleased with the apartment as regards services and state of repair. There have been no unpleasant surprises thankfully, and a few pleasant ones like the impossibly-stained toilet coming up like new with acid.

Tuesday 10th - Checking stores and tradesmen

Time to make some headway on getting our renovation started. We managed to get some names of plumbers and electricians from the mairie and got a visit arranged for tomorrow from a plumber and an electrician. We haven’t sorted our mailbox yet – we need to get a lock changed – but with a little luck the postie can open the box so we can remove the old lock and replace it. No sign yet of my SIM card which we need for internet, and hopefully it hadn’t already arrived and been tossed out. If it hasn’t arrived by Thursday, I may have to reorder. It is frustrating always having to go to a café for connection, there’s only so many coffees, wines and pastis you can have. Well to be honest, there really isn’t a limit!

I’ve been doing a bit of work in cafes, but it is really a lot easier if I can do it back here, even if my desk and chair is actually a bike box propped on two cartons with a pillow on the floor in front.

Looking back past the 13thC Pont du Diable to Ceret

We had a good look around town to find what stores are available. There is a locksmith, several small hardware stores, a big decorating shop, far too many boulangers and patisseries, and a huge surplus of hairdressers for some reason. In the late afternoon we headed out to the zone industrielle to look at a bike shop (pushbikes and motor-scooters) but they only have a limited range, and all new. We had hoped there might be some 2^nd hand ones to check out. Coming back was a bit of a laugh. There have been a few showers during the day, though the weather is nice and warm (20), but as we headed back on the half hour walk the big black clouds began a good thunderstorm, followed by 1cm wet hailstones, then torrential rain. We got rather damp very quickly but thankfully found a shelter to hide under until it passed over.

Monday 9th - Town walk

Easter Monday today, a holiday in France. This morning we did the historical walk around Céret, most enjoyable and interesting. This town is seriously old. The church has 1750 carved onto the side of it, but that is the very newest bit – the belltower is 11^th century, i.e. 1000 years old! We have been a little relieved to note that it doesn’t chime before 8am or after 10pm, though as with other French churches we have met, it makes up for it by chiming at 3 minutes past as well as on the hour. We have found the sounds here very enjoyable. There a nice chatter below us in the church square as people pass through and there’s a lot of birdsong in the mornings. We hear a range of bells, though we don’t yet know where the others come from as we know only of our own church.

Céret has been an artists’ town since 1919, with Picasso, Braques, Soutine, and others. It must have a dozen galleries, many with working artists. There are plenty of explanatory plaques about, and many of the street names commemorate artists, and of course there is the famous Museum of Modern Art.

As we had our lunch in our apartment we were entertained by live jazz from Place de Neuf Jets just round the corner. We are really feeling that we have fallen on our feet here. It is beyond what we thought possible. 

Sunday 8th - Easter Sunday

It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon after the excitement and bustle of the Easter celebrations here. The procession started at 6am, somewhere out of town we presume as we didn’t wake until 7am. Again a sunny day, though temperatures have not got above about 18 or 19 so far, with a low so far of 10 overnight. We have put the mattress from our sofabed (we have the mattress and the cover, but not the body of the sofabed) on top of a double-height blow-up mattress, and it feels like a real bed and is very comfortable.

At 10am we went down into town for a morning espresso, this time meeting M. Café de France’s wife with whom we had a really good chat. She was most interested that we bought here when we had all Europe to choose from. I guess it was a bit random, but we feel it is a perfect spot for us. She says many of the foreigners in Céret are very much part of the community, unlike some other places where they keep to themselves. That suits us fine.

The Easter procession duly arrived – three frames being carried with various statues or emblems – followed by a small service in the main square, then a quick trip to the cathedral below us for the main service. Crowds of locals out to watch, mostly very well dressed, unlike us.  We do need to buy a change of clothes or two. What we did buy was some bread and a couple of little fruit tarts for lunch, then back upstairs for some tidying.

As I write this at 4:30pm, we are very well established with everything pretty much in place. It now feels like a home, and looks so much nicer than when it was grubby and unloved. It’s been scrubbed from one end to the other, a shower curtain installed, the black-stained toilet miraculously cleaned with a bit of hydrochloric acid (standard procedure round here judging from the bottle), and the bed repositioned so we look out the windows across the square to the trees swaying above the roofs opposite. We are delighted with how quickly we have settled in, and can now function more or less normally, though a fridge and cooktop would be nice.

Saturday 7th - First morning and the market

Wow! We have arrived and it’s awesome. This morning is what living here is all about. Another clear morning, with sun shining on the buildings opposite us in the church square. A leisurely breakfast, with our first cup of tea, courtesy of our new jug. It’s lovely hearing the people, locals and tourists, wandering about below us – we are amazed at how many visitors there are despite it being way before the tourist season. Lying in bed working out the new kitchen we had a revelation that we could reuse an existing cupboard as a pantry, thereby reducing both the work and expense of doing a new pantry. We can also use the 2.5m kitchen with an extra bench instead of the 3m version. So the new kitchen would cost just €999 including fridge-freezer, cooktop, rangehood, oven, sink and mixer tap. Absurd really.

Our first stop was the church (1750). Inside was full of people doing the Easter decorations and changes. They are assembling frames of some sort for the procession tomorrow. We noticed there is a performance in the church next week – Bach’s Magnificat, Vivaldi’s Gloria and Handel’s Messiah, so we’ll book that today.

Next was the market. We were stunned. It was busier than last year, and larger too, spilling out along another street. An unbelievable array of produce and goods, people, sights and smells. There’s many saucisson sellers, cheese vendors (some you can smell from many stalls away), butchers, even a dedicated horse butcher, olives, paella, soaps and herbs and spices, all operating from stalls or fold-open trucks. We feel like we’ve fallen on our feet – it is even better than we remembered, and those were great memories to start with. We sat down at Bar Pablo with a coffee (yes, €1.40 is now the going rate) two meters from a 4-piece jazz band, and spent an hour just soaking up the atmosphere. The trials of the last 4 days have drifted away and been replaced with a feeling that we are going to enjoy this place immensely. C’est si bon!

As I write this in Cafe de France (Pablo Picasso's cafe when he lived here), the patrons are singing French songs. So cool! The bar owner and his wife are good mates of Dan Carter (she was one of his French teachers here).

Anthony at Bar le Pablo

Friday 6th - First night in our apartment

We’ve spent our first night in our apartment! Not a great thrill unfortunately, we still haven’t got our heads round it all. Up and away early to Perpignan for another round of urgent purchases. We toured round half a dozen shops making snap decisions on, amongst other things, giant pots of paint, 25kg of plaster,  a TV, monitor, small appliances, microwave (they are all combo grillers and microwaves here), and much much more. We’d hoped it would be quite fun going shopping with compulsory spending, but the reality is that there’s so much to do in so little time. By 4:30pm we had visited half a dozen major stores, filling the car up, and were back to Céret to unload, turn round and drop it back to Perpignan. The only major purchase we haven’t sorted is the kitchen (we think we know what we want - an all-inclusive one complete with appliances) but there are better ones around, but which take much more effort to sort, and more money. Unfortunately the one we tagged last year is no longer available.

The shambles in our apartment

Got an unpleasant surprise when the man at Europcar tried to charge us 1 full day’s hire for the 3.5 hours from 3pm to 6:30pm, and for the tank of diesel we had prepaid for in Paris. Hopefully sorted without extra cost though. Coming back was our first chance to use the €1 buses that the regional council provides for the entire area from Perpignan to the Spanish border. All very easy to use – 45 minutes to Céret and home to another bread, cheese and pepper meal. We’ve been having muesli, fruit and milk twice a day, as we have no means to cook, nor a fridge, and are not up to going out for a dinner. 

A nice surprise was connecting up the TV to the aerial outlet and finding an onscreen planner like SKY or Freeview with 20 channels in HD, though of course in French. However some can be given French subtitles which will help us. Tomorrow’s going to be a good day with no time pressures. Unbelievably, we have taken four days to have our first wine, a glass of local red with our dinner.

Thursday 5th - Water & power

We had heaps of sleep to catch up on but were both awake for a while at 4am, but managed to sleep again until 7:40am - time to leap out of bed and head straight to our apartment, where the power and water servicemen were due to arrive between 8am and 10am to connect us up.

We've arrived

Wow, awesome service. The waterman arrived at 9am and the powerman at 10am, the only problem being that the water didn’t then flow, and the powerman thought that the real estate guy had organised the wrong apartment to be connected up. The trouble is the number of the apartment. The legal docs say we are Lot 7 or Apartment 2B but the bell outside the door says Apartment 4. There’s no number on our door. The outcome was that we had to retrace our steps to the real estate office and unload our concerns to the receptionist there. The woman duly rang the electricity department in Perpignan and got seriously annoyed at them. We were a little perturbed but she was very pleasant and chatty to us. After much waiting, during which the manager of the real estate office chatted away with us, the electricity department finally sorted it all out and agreed to send someone else out today.  Yippee.

The receptionist was then going to tackle the water dept. We had to hotfoot it back to the apartment because they could turn up anytime between now and 5pm, but we did have time to grab a quick coffee from Bar Pablo. We were most distressed to find the price of an espresso had gone up from €0.90 to €1.40 but hope the owner charged us tourist prices.

Back to our place and a bit of unpacking, tidying and wonderfully soon a second electricity serviceman arrived and very quickly connected us up. Yes, we have light. Now to start vacuuming the floors, especially all the large quantity of bird poo and feathers from around the outer shutters. The place looks so much nicer already.

It’s now 2pm and John has gone off to the bank to sort our bank card. Hopefully the waterman will arrive soon and then we will be fully up and running. It was quite funny when we gave our sob story to the receptionist at the real estate agent. I think I was looking extremely weary and when she got on the phone to the Perpignan office told them in no uncertain terms that we had come all the way from NZ, had slept in the car overnight, and needed our power on NOW.  We are going to give her a little NZ gift when we can confirm back to her when everything is connected.

A wee surprise at 3pm when the water heater started up with a horrendous permanent buzzing from the switchboard. We will have to put up with it from 3-5pm each day until we get a sparky in to get prices – he can replace or fiddle with the breaker that’s making a racket.

Everyone told us when we left NZ that we had to take it easy and chill out for a while before tackling anything. Unfortunately, as we knew we would, we have had to run on pure adrenalin for the past three days but hopefully will be able to settle down soon. We have the hire car until tomorrow, and hope to make 1 or 2 trips back to Perpignan to collect more stuff. We thought we only had the car for two days and a bit but we found out it costs the same for three days so we have kept hold of it. We need tools and a ladder first off, but are also looking at maybe collecting a clothes dryer and other stuff while we have the car. A washing machine may have to wait until we have sorted the kitchen, as we may put in under the kitchen bench instead of in the bathroom. We will have to hire a BIG van sometime to trip up to IKEA Montpellier to buy the sofabed (they won’t deliver it), and will collect other bigger stuff then, e.g. dining table, shelves etc. I think we will happily put this off for a week or so though.

The town is definitely gearing up for the Easter festivities. Heaps of street cleaning going on, part of the main street is being blocked off from 6am to noon on Easter Sunday for processions. The main street is in the process of a major make-over – it’s ripped up for drainage and is being laid in new paving and new footpaths. Everyone we have met so far has been really nice, including the servicemen.

Impressions? The town is everything we remembered. It is utterly French, and the people are without exception very friendly - always a bonjour as you pass. The apartment is as expected, not large but plenty large enough. It’s going to be great here. We can’t wait to lie down and have our first night here, water connected with a little luck.

The real estate people didn’t believe us that we had turned on all the required stopcocks, so sent a man out to check and satisfy himself there was really a problem. By 5pm he’d been and gone promising to sort things out. With plenty of evening left and our car hire running out, we headed back into Perpignan for Leroy Merlin (another Mitre10) and Auchan again. The loot was a bunch of tools, a ladder, drill and more, then a major supermarket shop until the doors closed at 10pm. Back home for a bread and cheese dinner at 11pm.

At this stage we haven’t arrived mentally. We are running on exhaustion and willpower, and have no feel for what is happening. A bit sad really, and not a lot of fun. However we are coping well enough, making dozens of decisions without getting hassled with each other, and are getting through the absurdly long list of “things to do when setting up home”. There’s an amazing amount of stuff to do, and all in a foreign language in an area we don’t know well.

Wednesday 4th - Arrival in Céret

We slept well until 3am, then found were both pretty much wide awake – mid-afternoon NZ time. We decided to get underway again straight away to make use of the deserted roads. The driving went well, though we found even the major roads not nearly as well lit as in NZ, e.g. very few roadside reflective markers, no centreline cats-eyes and, with the car lights having to be dipped most of the time, the vision ahead was pretty dubious at times. Once the sky lightened it was much better. Not a lot of traffic, but plenty of large long-haul trucks. Heaps of these were also pulled off on the side of the road for their drivers to sleep. We pulled over once at a service station area to get a hot chocolate, and again at about 9am into a little village to sit and have a coffee and pastry. We had planned to settle back with our pillows at some stage to get another few hours’ sleep but we both felt more like keeping going.

Millau Viaduct

The highlight of the trip through to Perpignan was seeing (and driving over) the Millau viaduct. This is the world’s highest viaduct, and cost €400 million. The weather was cloudy and stormy-looking, which gave a very special look to this incredibly impressive structure. We clambered up to the viewpoint, and took some pretty neat photos. The nearby information centre was quite interesting but J and I were blown away by how crudely the track to the lookout was formed. After spending mega millions on the viaduct, and beautifully restored farm buildings for the info centre, the track was terrible, the concrete lookout structure askew, parts of the track didn’t line up with others….. obviously we are spoiled in NZ, where we have no doubt there would have been an impressive noticeboard, a fully formed track, and generous landscape planting. Just a different attitude we suppose. Anyway, we were very pleased we chose this route and were really stunned by how awesome the viaduct looked.

We finally arrived in Perpignan at 1pm and went straight to Castorama (a French Mitre10). A number of hours there buying a range of stuff, then off to Auchan (Farmers with a supermarket) for yet more stuff, especially some basic cleaning materials and some food. Off to Céret at 6.45pm feeling VERY knackered by this stage.

We had organised the real estate agent to leave the key at the hotel we were to stay at that night, but decided to call in on the off chance the agency was still open at 7.15pm. Hey presto, they were – and our keys were there rather than at the hotel! Picked them up and walked the few hundred metres to check in to our hotel. Then back to the car, managed to drive it into the church square and we were home!

 

It was quite rather odd turning the corner into the church square for the first time, to see our apartment building and very unexpectedly, its façade was sheathed in scaffolding and netting. We are not sure why – the face is stone so doesn’t need painting so perhaps it is for the roofing or guttering? I guess we will find out soon enough. It slightly detracts from our view of the church square for the moment.

The apartment was precisely as we left it, no different to our memories of it. We were really too knackered to make any sense of anything, but had to spend a torrid 30 minutes emptying the car and carrying everything up the 2 levels. Finally back to the hotel at 8.30pm, out of our 3 day old clothes, into the shower and a much appreciated meal of muesli and milk. Lovely. I fell asleep at 9:30pm while J was Skyping with Alastair.