It is so lovely being back here. It's hard to pin down the reasons why. We certainly feel at home here, and seem to know as many people as we do in all of Nelson. I guess it is that the town is very small, and you keep seeing the same faces constantly. Staying last winter was certainly a very good move, as it has no doubt distinguished us from the summer-only crowd. We feel very relaxed - somehow the cares of the world don't seem to affect us as much here. Maybe it is that we are still viewing it through rose-tinted glasses, but long may it last.
On our third morning we were enjoying quietly lying in bed, listening to the birds outside and contemplating our plans for the day. Gradually we noticed the smell of fresh bread; the baker opposite must have opened his oven. It's a pleasure we will miss in Place des Neuf Jets, though there will be compensations.
It's hard not to appreciate the excellent food and drink. We filled up our larder and fridge at the Saturday market with all manner of goodies - it's such nice fresh food, and at prices that make it easy to eat well.
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| Some shopping from the Saturday morning market. |
Of course some things are not as good. It's near impossible to find any breakfast cereal that isn't heavily sugared and full of chocolate.
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| You can choose from dark, milk or a combo of three chocolates to complement your oats. |
Jetlag hasn't been too bad, and after four days our sleeps have got in tune with the local hours. Karen hasn't been feeling great, but we wonder if she has picked up a bug of some sort, or maybe it is indeed jetlag. Time will tell.
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| The old guys have been out in force playing boules. |
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| We had a meal out with our Aussie friends before they left for a week in Spain. This is the entrée at one of our local restaurants (Fred's). |
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| The view from our new apartment in Place des Neuf Jets. |
Much of our time so far has been spent at the new apartment, running through ideas, chalking the outline of rooms on the floor and generally mulling things over.
When we bought it in winter there were no leaves on the trees. It's even better now with the restaurant tables coming outside for the summer. A suggestion from our builder yesterday about extending our mezzanine above our bedroom for more storage made us rethink things a bit and we have now changed where the staircase goes up, and made some other tweaks.
A new friend Hortense has quickly acted on our stated wish to improve our French and within 12 hours had found someone who was happy to meet with us regularly to chat in French. When we met up with our 'teacher' on Saturday afternoon (at Bar Pablo of course) it was an English woman we had already met through mutual friends. She has been coming to Céret regularly for the past 27 years, is thoroughly fluent in French and was a history teacher in a past life. She's very keen to tell us all about the history of France and Céret in particular so that will be an added bonus, and something we have always been keen to know. We plan to meet up once or twice a week until she returns to England in late May, coming back again in August. Ross and Liz, our Aussie friends, will be joining us for the May get-togethers.
Regarding our French, we have been getting on very well. We've had decent conversations with all manner of people. Karen has been chipping in lots and has clearly made strides with her speaking and understanding. We popped into the notaire's office to thank one of their staff for doing the apartment purchase, and it was a gesture that clearly went down extremely well.
We checked out Place de la Liberté on the 25th to see if there was any ANZAC commemoration, having remembered something at this time a previous year, but New Zealand's ANZAC Day doesn't feature here. However French Liberation Day on the 27th saw a small service at the war memorial in the square. Our friend Ross had planted a small Aussie flag in front of the memorial and it waved bravely below the large French flags being held by old members of the French military.
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| Our mayor at the Place de la Liberté ceremony (the Aussie flag is at the base of the statue). |
Straight after the memorial service finished at midday a parade of dozens of horses of all shapes and sizes filed through the church square below us for the "Blessing of the Horses". It was a rather bizarre but fun sight. There's never a dull moment in a French town. One funny thing was that there were a pair of town workers fastidiously cleaning up droppings, yet the perennial dog problem gets nothing like that attention. Personally, I prefer the horse version immensely - they are easier to see and avoid.
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| Blessing of the chevaux in our church square. |
This week we have an agent coming to value our apartment here in Place de l'Eglise. He is the one who sold us our new apartment and he's very nice. Our tentative buyer from January has given the idea away but we are not too worried. Another agent who we touched base with in Perpignan in January brought a couple for a viewing on Saturday, though we don't think it was what they are after. We plan to put our own advertising board on our balcony and try and sell the place privately to avoid the agents fees. Here's hoping...
