What an awesome weekend. On Saturday we managed a quick whip around the morning market and set off for a shopping expedition to Perpignan at 10am. The plan was to be back home by early afternoon so we could do an hour's work on the stone wall in our new apartment (extending and tidying it up), leaving the remainder of the day to tackle a backlog of work on the computers. Yeah right. It didn't quite work out that way...
First stop was Villeneuve-de-la-Raho, a little place beside a lake just on the outskirts of Perpignan. The oven we had ordered on-line had to be collected from the depot at the supermarket there. After a bit of a struggle we managed to fit the oven in its bulky wrapping into the back of the car. We dropped in on a little café beside the lake for a much needed coffee, and to see if we could catch up with a French friend of ours who we got to know well at our local bank. He has a part-time job at a café there but now works in different branch of the bank so we haven't yet caught up with him since we returned to Céret. Alas, he wasn't there so it was off to the huge 'Mitre 10' type stores in Perpignan. We stopped off at a few lighting shops along the way but, because it was after 12pm, they were all closed until 2pm. It still amazes us how these massive shops can close their doors in the middle of the day so all the staff can enjoy a two hour lunch break.
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| Villeneuve-de-la-Raho |
We repeated Thursday's run-around between the stores, comparing prices of different things - floor tiles, kitchen units, fridges, dishwashers and the like. 5:30pm saw us finally hitting the road home. We managed to squeeze a bathroom vanity top into the back of the car alongside the oven. The vanity unit itself is on order. The major purchase of the day was a beautiful big fridge. Conforama had already reduced the 700€ price by 250€ down to 450€ and had a special deal on for the day which gave you a 100€ voucher if you spent 400€. We jumped at it. The end result was that we effectively bought the fridge for 350€, and spent the 100€ on a rug (100€ reduced to 70€) and some light fittings. We came away feeling very pleased with ourselves. Many more stores later we had decided on the wood flooring for our mezzanine, the kitchen units and had decided on the style for the floor tiles, if not the exact type.
We struggled back and forth carrying our purchases up the stairs to our current apartment and flopped on the sofa at 6;30pm. We were still buzzing from the success of our expedition so instead of relaxing a little, we made a scratch meal and spent a few hours pushing little squares of paper around on a piece of grid-paper to design the layout of our kitchen. We don't have a lot of room to play with and it was a bit of a juggle but we think we have got it sorted.
Today, Sunday, we were woken at 7am by the glorious aroma of freshly baked bread coming in our window. What a way to start the day!! The baker across the way had just opened his oven and the breeze brought the delicious smell directly to our noses. We bravely fought off the impulse to jump out of bed in search of croissants and made do with muesli in bed while we read for half an hour. What a treat. I was determined to do a short weights session (having done extremely little since we arrived back) so managed half an hour of huffing and puffing while John worked.
Our scheduled Skype with Bella and Nic was very welcome and we caught up on all their news. It was great, and took a while. This was the start of what proved to be a wonderfully social day. Our French friends in Laroque-des-Albères had invited us to a seafood lunch at their house and we rolled up at midday. After a perfect meal, good conversation and a very relaxing time, we rolled back into the car at 5:30pm. What a lovely couple.
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| Our French friends Pascale and Miquèl |
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| Stunning seafood platter, it comes over ice in a polystyrene platter |
Since we were in Laroque we called in to see our Irish friends Valerie and Lorcan with whom we did our home exchange in 2009. They were very surprised to see us and gave us another warm welcome. We caught up on all their news. They are off back to Dublin during the week but we plan to catch up again in July. It was to Valerie and Lorcan that we looked for an opinion on whether we should buy our initial apartment here in Place de l'Eglise and we valued their advice. They took a sneak look at our new apartment last week (unfortunately we were away for the day in Perpignan) and they've since given us the thumbs up on that one too so we are very pleased to hear that.
And so, after a most enjoyable day of friendship, we arrived home at 7:30pm. John has got straight into work but we've had a great day out. It's not over yet. Our son Alastair is in the last few days of writing his thesis and we are on standby for him to do a 'dummy-run' presentation to us (40 minutes duration) at 9pm tonight.
