Counting down the days until departure;

Our family in France in 2007

An overview for this blog:

This site is about my family's preparation, planning, and the trip itself to France for six months. This is to be our third trip to France, we previously visited in July of 2007, then again in July of 2008. There are so many items for a trip of this length, the main item is the schooling for our daughter. We have chosen a French school near the town of Eymet, in the Dordogne.
We have narrowed our initial itinerary down to departing LAX on Dec. 15th 2009. from Los Angeles we will fly to Paris for a few days, then fly down to Nice to spend the holidays with out good friends Andrew and Arlette. After two weeks we will most likely take a train to the village of Eymet, in the dordogne area of Aquitaine.
Our daughter Caleigh will attend one of the two french schools in the area. My wife, my daughter, and I took french lessons for a year prior to leaving for France, My Wife Cindy kept up with her lessons, me not so much. I kept telling myself that I would study as the departure date got closer. I will double my efforts upon arrival.
This blog will get into the initial motivations for the trip, the various stages of planning, getting the house rented with a family which would also take care of our four pets, finances and budgetary concerns, etc.

This is my first blog, but stick around the trip should be educational for all who follow.

Pack all your troubles in a big trash bag.

After a couple days at the farm, we realized that the grocery store variety cleaning solvents weren’t making a dent in the accumulated film of disgust. We drove to a couple different shops and got bolder and bolder with cleaning solutions, unfortunately they weren’t the solution. The French have an odd assortment of DIY hardware stores, they start at the really cheap quality type small hardware stores, and work their way up the ladder to Brico-marche, and end up in trade specific stores that are really expensive. We found a good compromise and I chose some type of acid that could be diluted down from mild to varying strengths. We also bought a couple rakes that were really cheaply made, but we needed something to get the cat urine infused leaves out of the front yard. We were getting depressed and also slightly hallucinogenic due to the stench, after breathing this infusion in for the third day, Cindy was the first to fall. It started with her throat being irritated and worked its way into her sinus, what with the existing blend of the jet lag and hanging on effects of the canned airline air already stored in her system, she was a candidate for a mutated flu. So she slowed down, and went to bed earlier and woke up later, but she still worked at her nonstop pace. I meanwhile started using the acid in a couple different dilutions, and really the only formula that worked was with the acid uncut. So I decided to attack the worst offender, the first floor bathroom; who am I kidding, the only bathroom in the house. Well I poured a quarter cup of the bubbly on the floor and using rubber gloves spread it over a 2 foot square area of the floor with a floor brush. The result was instantaneous, the acid ate into the grout lines with bubbling, foaming efficiency, then using a water soaked rag, I went over the foaming results and swiped up the grime. The underside of the rag was loaded up with forty years of filth, looking down at the floor was rewarding. It resembled one of those T.V. commercials, with the scrubbing bubbles and the spotless streak in the wake of the cartoon scrubbers. For the rest of the day I was on acid watch, I finished the rest of the bathroom, and did a test sample in the kitchen, same results. We were making a dent in the first floor, and then I got hit with the modified plague, so we went for a drive to blow out the stench from our systems. We went to a store that sold appliances and furniture and browsed around. We did need a refrigerator for our temporary kitchen setup, so we milled around the fridge isle, then made our way to the mattress area. I didn’t mention that our furniture collection consisted of a bed, mattress, bedside table, and an armoire. It’s my belief that this bed was the final resting place of the sellers mother, may she rest in peace,… elsewhere. So there was the need to get our own mattress, even though Cindy had brought a new set of bed linen, mattress pad, and duvet. We even placed one of the existing linen table clothes under the mattress pad; still we need to feel unaccompanied while we sleep. We got a dormitory sized refrigerator and stuffed it into the rear of the little Renault. We finished milling about the store and drove home. I placed the fridge in the decidedly cleaner kitchen and Cindy and I continued bagging debris and shuttling it out to the barn. Our collection of trash was getting sizeable, but we wouldn’t be scheduling a container until our return. There were still a couple days of hauling bags-o-crap from the house, but the flu set in and we quit early that evening. I would wake up 40 hours later and venture from the bed, weak but glad the worst had passed. My main memory of this plague was the constant waking throughout the night and fighting for a comfortable position while trying to sleep. My body has never ached to the degree it did those 40 hours of hell, I would get up every 10 minutes and stand up gingerly stretching to alleviate cramping. I guess if you want to make lemonade from lemons, the good thing was I was so stuffed up; that the ringing odor of stench was barely perceivable due to my sinus’s being stuffed. We were now over the halfway point of our trip, but more than halfway completed with the house cleaning.

Self-defense, your Honor.

Or traveling tips for the visually impaired, or “My doesn’t your hair look shiny”.
Ah; France, the getaway for young lovers in the spring, well we’re not young and it’s not spring. But you can look your best and that’s a start, or is it? To look your best; start with a shower and then wash and condition your hair, eh…viola! Ze man around town is ready to go around ze town ,nes pah? Just put on the muffler (scarf) and take the ladies hand and away you go.
“My your hair looks shiny,” she says adoringly.
“Why thank you it’s the conditioner” I am replying.
“What conditioner is that ?, we don’t have any.” she queries.
“ Why the conditioner next to the shampoo, in the shower room. (which also shares space with the toilet and sink.)
“You are meaning the body wash and moisturizer?, mon cheri”
At this point I look off to where a camera should have been filming this deadpan expression, or the famous look after the roadrunner has yet again outsmarted the coyote and before gravity has taken its effect and I plummet 200 feet down towards the craggy cliff bottom.
Pause for effect………………..
“Why would someone ( I did not include the “in their right fucking mind”) leave moisturizer on the shower shelf, in the shower room?”
“You thought it was conditioner?
“Lets see, blind as a blind bat with out my conditioner/moisturizer label reading glasses on, shampoo and conditioner look the same as body wash and moisturizing lotion, and thirdly shampoo and conditioner usually reside next to each other in the shower shelf in a shower”. I’m feeling like Clinton not knowing the definition for “ is or was“, but for shower and lotion shelf.
Join us next week intrepid listeners, when the question is,
“Is it my imagination or does that toothpaste taste funny?”

A week away.....so not ready!

Dropped by the job site, old job site I should say. Checked in with Alec, the Project Manager, work is proceeding with out me. Hopefully there will only be a couple months required for them to finish the interior. Seems as though it was only 3years ago when i broke ground on the project. Lets see 127 piles(3 foot diameter ,60 feet deep), 12 retaining walls, a footprint of 4000 square feet laced with grade beams, excavating a hillside and then re compacting it to 95% compaction,20 first floor walls, 2nd floor concrete deck, 20 second floor walls, concrete roof deck, concrete pool and spa, site features, driveway, house mechanicals, steel studs, drywall,etc. Sorry about that, it was slightly cathartic, just thinking what i might have left out.
Last Friday was my last day at work, today is Wednesday, I'm now doing my share of preparation for the trip. Cindy has organized the lioness's share ( yup, every time you watch "History Channel" the lion is lying around with a boo radley glazed over stare while momma is out bustin a cap in some wildebeest or Thompson's gazelle, dragging it back a quarter of a mile for shiftless ole dad to gnaw on till he passes out from the exhaustion of chewing gazelle butt) So i went out to Costco to hunt down some Cat and dog food for our pets while gone. There was a nice reversal there me hunting,,,,the lion and stuff...forget it.
Cindy labored on Extended visa's, rental places in the Dordogne,rented our house while we're gone..best thing ever, the financial burden that it lessens is incredible. Just packing for the trip is like solving a rubics cube blindfolded. At one point we were so proud of our selves, we'll take this many bags and ship the rest. Well we packed our luggage and boxed up things we would need. As the postmaster is weighing the two boxes of stuff, we're mentally adding the combined value of both boxes. Well when the amount it would cost is said, we're both retrieving the boxes saying we'll think about it. Plan B, buy another piece of luggage and pack that, not so good, we're going to land at Charles de Gaulle, Paris then tote around three and half bags each. The reality would have been my looking like a sherpa carrying 6 bags while Cindy and Caleigh struggle each with one. Don't get me wrong Cindy and Caleigh are both quite capable, me however not so much, if I see even one of them struggle with the bag for a second, i lose patience and want to do it myself. I just can't bear the thought of missing a shuttle because the girls didn't cross traffic because they wanted to wait for a walk sign. Yep I'm kinda a prick to travel with, it's my viking roots. "For cryin out loud guys can't you rape and pillage any faster we're gonna miss the tide and not get to loot Styrkssltownforyyd." Geesh.........So we're going to end up using one piece of large luggage for two days in paris, and two weeks in Provence, then use the other two large pieces for vacuum storaged warm clothing winter wear for the dordogne. Hope we can use a vacuum when we leave, or we're gonna look like the kids in "Christmas Story" when the mother layers on the clothing.
We had to totally organize the garage. I would have said re-organize, but that would loosely imply it once being organized, we even bought it un-organized, seriously. I think i took four pick-up loads to the dumpster, not a small pick-up either, that allowed us to look at a realistic view of the stuff not even visible at the start of the organizing. We took down alot of personal items a couple really valuable antiques and stored them, to make the house safe for some other family to live in.
Our Realtor did an incredible job finding a nice family to be in our place, even take care of our animals. The two dogs, when they were young, were abandoned, separately, such horrible people, i mean for leaving innocent pets alone somewhere. I can completely understand them leaving my wife's dog, I've even thought about it once,......once a day. Holly is a mix, half Pembroke Corgi, a quarter chihuahua and 1 eighth anteater, and the last eighth is missing. Skye is my daughters dog, i would say that i would miss him the most, but that would imply i would miss Holly. Skye is an Australian blue Shepard, beautiful dog, constantly alert but i don't think he knows why he's constantly alert. Then we have our two cats, Ziggy a calico tiger who thinks hes a dog. And Nipper an older grey tabby, I'm not saying he's old, but when he pees, dust comes out. (Sounds like an old Henny Youngman routine.)

Wow we're going to France in a week.

First two trips to france

France July 2007

We were invited to join my wife’s father and step mother for a week in the Dordogne in the summer of 2007. Since the flight time was to be essentially a day to get there and a day to get back, it seemed as though we should capitalize on the trip by sandwiching a week on either end of the Dordogne stay. It would rationalize the two days lost to travel and present an opportunity to see Paris, The Normandy beaches, and alone time. Plus we had the added bonus of our 10 year old daughter with us. Tres romantique-ooh la-la.
The itinerary we settled on was to arrive Chas. De Gaulle -Paris Stay a night at a hotel as our flight arrived at 10:30 pm then head down to the Dordogne stay a week then head south to Spain just across the border of France at Hondarribia, stay a couple days then head to Normandy for a couple days then to Paris for a few days.
Well the trip couldn’t have been more incredible, the food, the architecture, European charm and we really enjoyed the people. Paris ,the city of lights, we arrived at night, flew over the city and looked way down at the million diamonds lit from within. We were picked up by a Mercedes limo through a business connection of my wife’s. Once we were whisked away from the airport and heading into the city though, I was totally taken aback, it’s as though we were driving through a Long Beach industrial area and into Hoboken in New Jersey. When we did hit the real Paris. it was old world and in its best gown. The buildings had no apologies needed, they knew they were the headliners, sure the warm up band was gritty and techno but the symphony that is Paris was all it was booked to be and more.
We had a nightmare of a flight, a horror of an initiation at Heathrow, and being the last passengers not allowed on our flight while watching incensed, others a few feet away having access to the same flight. So we had to get a connecting flight to Paris. We arrived at the Hotel Champs du Mars, and from our room on the third floor we could see the top of the Eiffel tower. We slowly forgot about our passage to Paris and tried to get some sleep. Upon waking and showering off 24 hours of dreary travel odor we made our way to the subterranean continental breakfast cave. No French lessons, a couple months of French cd’s and we could try to order the basics. Reading French with a slight Maine accent might have been a test for a real Parisian, however I think the young ladies might have been from French Guiana. So we pointed to the menus and mouthed the words-Coffee-baguette-bure. I want to make it clear we are not the typical bad American tourists, we don’t presume that everyone in France should speak English, we’re not loud and bovine like milling about with cameras at the ready, we attempt to speak French when we are at markets and buying goat or gruyere cheeses. Since this trip we’ve had a year and a half of French tutored lessons. But initially I must say I was under armed in vocabulary.





France July 2008

So we arrived at LAX 3 hours early, and we wait 2 hours in line due to some whistledick declaring he had a bomb. After 6 lines, 2 pit stops and a security check we arrive at gate 120C flight 451 on the first leg of the LAX to Frankfurt. (The fact that we were on flight Fahrenheit 451 never did sit well with me until we landed) We had 10 relaxing frightful minutes to board. My wife and daughter managed 6-7 hours of crappy sleep, while I managed 10 hours and 40 minutes of non-crappy sleep, awake the whole time and able to enjoy The other Boleyn girl, not the girl herself but the movie. Arrival Frankfurt.
We fast marched the 1.5 kilometers to the transfer gate and then wait 2 hours. The flight to Nice was nice and short , we caught the local bus to Antibes for the sum of 1 Euro each. Priceless, well 1 Euro each, but you know what I mean. From the e Bus station we hiked to the Apartment that we were loaned.
Flight 13 hours, bus trip 35 minutes, sleep priceless.
Our French teacher had made the ever so polite gesture of offering us the use of her apartment in the Medieval part of Old Antibes. We jumped , tripping over each other exclaiming “ We wouldn’t even think of … ah…maybe just a week!” So our plan was to use Antibes as our base of operations for three weeks. This place was incredible, perched on the ramparts of old Antibes, around the corner from the ancient archway that leads to the old town center. A small garden facing the Mediterranean ocean that was 50 meters away. The beach was a frightfully long 60 meters away, quell dommage! The daily market was 1 minute away by foot, well feet literally, don’t imagine me hopping on one foot. Morning in Antibes, I wake and put the water in the coffee pot then coffee in the
Basket above the water with the tube which percolates the water into the coffee basket and voila Café, kinda earthy in a gritty way, but a hot cuppa of Joe none the less. While this was heating I would walk down the street and buy 2 different kinds of baguettes, half of one I would eat on the way back to the apartment.

The Marche Provencal is the local produce / farmers market in Antibes. The market is one street north of the Mediterranean beach. There is a side street on the southern side of the market and the formal entrance is on the east side. You can enter anywhere into the market as the sides are all open, the north side has a sidewalk with shops and restaurants facing the market. As you approach the market from the medieval archway into Antibes, there is a statue, a bust actually of a man an admiral I believe. The market structure is a monitor style built of steel and glass with metal roofing, kind of like a horse stall structure but more deco in feel. There are three rows of tables, the outer row on each side
serves as a counter with the artisan behind waiting on the shoppers, the center isle being overflow of goods. The produce is what is in season and fresh, really fresh. There are cheeses galore every size, shape, and texture.
From Antibes it’s a short train ride to one of the most beautiful beach towns on the planet. Villefrance-sur-mer is on a crescent beach 10 minutes northeast of Nice. After departing the train you can see the beach from the platform, the walk to the beach is a small hike but once there the environment harkens back to what it must have been like in the 40’s and 50’s .

Gotta get outta dodge;