Le view:
Firstly may I just say this isn't my place I'm housesitting for someone but that someone is Zoe who I mentioned in my earlier blogs as being my guardian angel in France so if you do the maths on this then; yep I'm finally in FRANCE!!! I MADE IT I'M HERE!!!! Let's not get too excited just yet though, I can't get too comfy right now as I have to take the car back to the UK tomorrow and then get an overnight coach back to paris and THEN I've moved properly.
The past week has gone by in a blur of parents visitng (we spent the most amazing day playing tourist in London and there were lots of laughs and tears, happy ones obviously: how it should be) farewell dinners and drinks and me just wishing I could go and get on with it and then the bombshell. My plans changed early in the week with regards to moving help, my ex was supposed to be helping me move and he decided 3 days before my moving day he was no longer willing to do this...great start, just the stress I didn't need as everything was booked in his name and so I had to in hs words "deal with it". But a woman is like a teabag, never knows how strong she is til you drop her in hot water and I have to say I have the most amazing friends and family who pulled together to ensure that everything went smoothly and the result was Thursday night at 10pm my brother arrived at Victoria station to accompany me on my move. I was perfectly happy to go it alone but in the event it made it more fun having company and it helped massively when I was about ready to fall asleep. Rather than a task force it became a road trip!!!
We had a lovely last night in London at my Dior clad fairy godmothers house (Maggie) who laid on a pasta supper for us and we sat talking into the small hours, I have barely slept all week and knew this night wasnt going to be any different. Needless to say when I left England Friday morning I was exhausted and ready to go just to chill/dry out!
I'd say the move went relatively smoothly! When the alarm went off at 5am I wasn't feeling elated so much as oh god I'm so tired I could die but off we trundled from Pimlico to city airport clutching our coffee to collect the car! Now Europcar have been great Right up until they told me the deposit for the car was actually going to be £250.00 not the £50.00 they quoted me (that's a BIG difference)then I discovered the £40 payment for driving abroad didn't give me anything useful (like headlight stickers or a gb plate) merely a piece of paper to say I had their permission to have the car in that country, then we couldn't find the car as it had been parked in the wrong place, then because it was parked in the wrong place the car park tried to charge us £40 to leave. It was now 08:30am and I was unamused. Especially when I pressed the help button at the barrier and I could practically see the bodyless voice who answered shrug when I told her the problem.
Anyway we got out for free eventually, I programmed the sat Nav and off we went back to the wharf to collect my stuff. Except we bypassed the wharf. Now I think sat Navs are useful but I also think they are the devil. Especially as I tend to use mine like it's the actual windscreen. Not helped by the fact I haven't driven for a year so; mirror, signal, manoeuvre, sat Nav says what??? Bugger.
Now I have driven central London before and I know it well enough on foot (& by bus) to know that I was being taken away from the wharf but still you have to trust these things! As we started heading towards 'old street' It was a case of "Toto I don't think we're in Tower Hamlets anymore". Finally I recognised the damn thing was trying to take me into central London! I have no idea where it thinks central London is me and my bro were speculating about this. If we'd kept going at what point would the sat Nav have gone 'tah dah you're in central London you can stop now!!!'
Anyway finally got back to the wharf, had a moment where we both looked at all my stuff and then looked at the car and wondered if we'd need a miracle. But despite the pouring rain we had it all in within 10 minutes and were good to go!
Pretty uneventful journey to Dover and despite having not driven in years I didn't mind the rain, the sat Nav behaved and bro played DJ with my dodgy cd collection. Checking in went without a hitch, we got there an hour early so we got to board the earlier ferry (bonus) we also got to smuggle all our illegal goods on board...I'm lying but we could have done! They didn't even look at our passports, cars weren't subject to checks, nothing! Shame the ferry ordeal wasnt so smooth for everyone. Like the man in the car next to us. I'll never know what went wrong but he first came to our attention because we could here "6 HOURS 6 BLOODY HOURS!!!!" being bellowed from the car next to us. Then he just stopped the car dead (it was at an angle and everything!)then he got out and proceeded to have a total fist waving foot stamping fit Rumpelstiltskin style tantrum at his family in the middle of the lane by the check in point. It wasn't funny for his family but it gave all the cars around him something to talk to each other about (which we certainly did, we were playing guess what's gone wrong from window to window) and sadly the video footage my bro tried to get sneakily didn't come out, there was steering wheel pounding and all sorts this man was not a happy bunny I haven't seen anything like it since a toddler was told 'no' to a packet of sweets in a. Supermarket. Would love to have known what sparked such fury but all I'll ever know is whatever it was, it was '6 BLOODY HOURS' as that's all he kept screaming! We saw him later on board eating opposite his wife in total silence. His face not quite so beetroot anymore :)
A bientôt England!! (for a couple of days anyway...)
Ferry journey was fairly uneventful I am not a big fan of them i booked it though because it was the cheapest option and I was staggering round like a drunk (just cannot find my sea legs on big boats) but it was over pretty quickly and we soon climbed back into the car, readied the sat Nav and prepared to change it over to French maps, except there was no French map. I didn't have too much time to panic as they were starting to herd us off so I switched brain into 'right hand side' of the road driving and pulled out into what was far worse rain than we had left in England. Wrong side of the road, zero visibility...it's okay bro should have found the French maps by now right bro?!
Errrm no.... There's no French maps on here. Definitely not.
It was meant to have, we had borrowed it off a friend because it had and now in France we found it didn't! So plan B: had printed off maps from google as back up thankfully and in the end merely settled for following signs to Paris, then following signs to Disneyland and then I'd worry about finding Esbly from there!
After and hour and a half I was truly flagging, after a week of next to no sleep and having been on the road/moving stuff/ferry for almost 12 hours and with 2 hours to go my ass was well and truly kicked, so we stopped for wake up juice: coffee. 2 actually. This is when I discovered café au lait parfumé or cappuccino parfumé avec noisette (with hazelnut basically) I'm in love.
First time setting foot on French soil:
With coffee in system we finished up the journey which was actually easier without using a sat Nav because you are forced to look at those other markers that are in place to help you...signs. When my sat Nav failed halfway through the Nevada desert it was no problem we spent 3 days using maps to guide us round Nevada and arizona and that went without a hitch so wasn't stressed about this. We marvelled at French driving, laughed at French signs, talked about how dull the scenery was (honestly motorway scenery in France is so flat and dull!)then we were approaching Charles de Gaulle (I always get excited about the fact the runway goes over the motorway so seeing planes driving over you is always novel!) then there were signs to Marne la Vallée, then Disney, then we got to Disney and.... No signs for Esbly anywhere!! Desperately pouring over the maps to find villages in the direction of we blindly followed those til the first sign appeared and then I was in the village, pulling up outside the house and were greeted by Zoe and Thierry with champagne and a lovely meal! This was followed by me doing my best to concentrate on all instructions given for the weekend (as they were going away so I am looking after their house!) and then dragging myself up the stairs to bed. Much needed sleep!
I woke up early the next morning waved them off and then just sat out on the balcony with my coffee wondering how i got here! 24 hours ago I was still a PT in London and now 1 day later I'm here in the french countryside looking after dogs and collecting fresh eggs from the chickens.
The house!
Dobby and opium my charges for the weekend (bless they aren't the brightest, honestly opium is slightly brain damaged and I was too stumped to laugh at some of the things he did out on walks, such as walking head first into a fence without even seeing it...)
Yep this one will do for breakfast....Bro checking the Chickens!!!
When we'd finished chilling and felt more human we decided to pop out and find a supermarket and stock up on supplies for the weekend. So it was a trip to the local carrefour where I discovered
1. I'm going to get FAT...
2. I'm going to become an alcoholic (wine @ 13% is under €2!!!)
3. If my brother wants this he can cook it himself:
We must have been in there for over an hour! Shopping has become fun again, trying to analyse recognise and translate everything. Things are always more exciting in another language. Pouring over every type of cheese on the shelves... I give it a month.
With various goodies which said we were tourists more than our dialect, we, well I, decided as we were over that way I wouldn't mind having a nosey at the village I was moving to. So armed with only our inner GPS and my very loose knowledge of the area we set out and eventually came across the sign!!
With a rough image in my brain of where the road was I drove on and stumbled across it almost immediately so started looking at house numbers, mine is number 5 so when I started driving up the street and saw no. 1 awesome, no. 3 BONUS mine is the next house!!! No. 23... WHAT??? 25, 27..... why me.
So we parked up which gave me a chance to notice that the street looked like something out of a wildwest town almost, no 2 houses were the same and all we could do was stand there and say "oh it's so, so....errrrrm.....so.....FRENCH!"
On the street where I live...
I wombled down making a mental note of my local boulangerie (award winning apparently), passed about 4 people all of whom smiled at me and said "bonjour" (for a minute I thought I'd landed in disney's beauty and the beast and so wasn't sure if I needed to launch into a verse of "there goes the baker with his tray like always....") as I approached an alleyway I saw a White house I recognised from the pics that Zoe had sent me from the house viewing.
There was a lady in the driveway trimming the vines and for a split second we looked at each other, the thought went through my head as I noticed the houses front door was open was 'wouldn't it be odd if that was Anne the landlady (neither us has a clue what the other person looks like) when there was a flash of recognition went across her face as if this strange vine trimming woman just shared the same thought as me.
Turns out that's exactly who it was!
Within minutes I was pulling my car into the drive and unloading into my amazing room whilst she ran to the shop so she could lay on a welcome lunch for us of all things typically french which was lovely!! Now this house is amazing but what makes it more amamzing?? Is Sasha, her dog who I'm officially in love with. Apparently the guy on the top floor takes her for walks everyday...we shall soon see about that haha. I have already said if she can't find her to check my room, anyone who knows me will know I love animals (quite often more than people) and the year I spent in London with no animals whatsoever (although some may beg to differ) I at times really struggled without them.
Me and Sasha outside
Room with a view
The garden:
The beautiful Sasha:
Bro and sash with impromptu welcome spread!
Good to meet you! My new best friend.
When in France
Before we knew it a good couple of hours had passed and we wanted to head back and take out the dogs in our care for a walk so we bid our goodbyes to Anne, ken till whenever and me til Tuesday and headed back to Esbly to walk the dogs! What started out as a quiet walk turned into an expedition as we explored the canals and paths and surrounding countryside, we re-visited this again Sunday as turns out walking to Condé from Esbly is quick and scenic, so getting to and from the station is easy. It's nice to have a few more bearings in the area!
The canals are beautiful as are the surrounding woodlands which are littered with cute little properties no 2 the same, plus lots and lots of animals and the wildlife is amazing even saw a terrapin basking at the side of the canal, it's so peaceful and quiet. This suits me and anyone who knows me well will know this is what I like. The locals are so friendly and I'm all good to go if this is how life keeps on I'll be a happy bunny here. Fingers crossed the job is all sound as times here will be tough but this place is so beautiful!!!
Right I better go, got to put petrol in the car ready for heading back to the UK tomorrow so more than likely next time I write on here I'll have been to Angleterre and back again one last time (got a lot of mileage to do next 24 hours) and then I'll be back living in France permanently!!
Stay happy xxx
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