Settling in

We finally arrived in Pézenas, our home town for the winter. The first 2 nights we spent at a B&B where we received the warmest welcome from Robert & Isa, our hosts, who went out of their way more than once to help us. It was Sunday evening & we found that dining choices were pretty limited, a preview of things to come. We ate at a Breton restaurant in the cellar of a 14th century building. The salads were some of the best we've ever had, but the galettes (buckwheat crêpes) went mostly uneaten. Wine was inexpensive & good. Portions in France have changed radically over the last 20 years and, sadly, are imitating the American "more is better" style.

On Tuesday we got the key to our house & went to look at it before bringing our luggage, etc.  From the outside it is essentially a tower, 3 vertical floors, one room per floor. It was built around 1640 at the height of the Religious Wars when houses were built both for comfort & defendability. Like most houses in the area it has a beautiful wrought iron balcony.



 We came inside & found that the ground floor is decorated nicely with a large wood table & chairs, a small sofa & a corner kitchenette. There isn't quite enough room to cook gourmet food, & the stove/oven are not great. There is a washing machine (no dryer); we used it once but gave up using it because the spin cycle does not work & the clothing comes out clean but dripping wet. There is a laundromat within walking distance, but it is very expensive.

Up the first flight of winding stairs is the living room, shower room & WC. Again, it's tastefully furnished, but don't look too closely at the Ikea quality. On the top floor (again up a winding staircase) is a large, sunny bedroom overlooking the roofs of Pézenas.

There are, however, a few "interesting" features here. There is air in the pipes so every time the toilet flushes it sounds very much like the beginning of the Kirk Douglas movie, "The Vikings", when the ships come into the fjord & someone blows on a 10-foot horn trumpet to signal their arrival. It seriously can be heard blocks away.

The shower leaves something to be desired as it has a starburst shower head that only drips; the hand-held shower nozzle works, but feebly. The room that has the shower & sink is barely large enough for one person. Aaahhh.....We are growing fond of it.

Our television is interesting in that the Irish owner of the house bought Sky TV & we can have our choice of English-language news channels which all have the identical news feed, except for RTV, the Moscow-based English language Russian news station. The have a very different take on news events & we wish everyone could see this.

One thing that didn't make us happy when we first got here was the weather. It rained every day for the first 3 weeks. We were told it was not normal, but it was still depressing & made it difficult for us to walk around town or do anything. Luckily, things have gotten better, weather-wise.

We are only 2 short blocks from the small shops in town & the weekly Saturday market, which is famous in this area. There is a large (bigger than most Safeways) grocery on the edge of town, about a 7-10 minute walk, & there are some other groceries, etc. in that direction as well.

The food in a French grocery store is generally of a quality hugely better than what you'd find in US groceries, unless you tend to buy your food in gourmet shops. This is nice & it makes us happy. If we want pheasant or duck or lamb, or any other thing that's considered a delicacy in America, it's available at every-day prices.

One not-so-great thing we discovered is that Pézenas must be the dog poo capital of France, if not the western world. Those of us who remember New York City before the pooper scooper law will have a small understanding of what we mean. New Yorkers, however, always made sure their dogs pooped in the gutter; not here.  To be fair, in much of the town there aren't really sidewalks wider than a few inches so there aren't really curbs. The locals feel that leaving a gift of poop in front of your door is a nice gesture. We've learned to look down when we walk & wipe our shoes well when coming into the house. To be fair, most houses have shoe scrapers on the outside -- not ours. The Piscenois seem to really love dogs, because it looks like nearly everyone here has one.

Our laptop battery ran out of juice shortly after we arrived in Pézenas, & our small 220/110 converter blew, so we were without a computer. This was a disaster so we quickly bought a new laptop. The challenge is that the keyboard is different & the commands, etc. are all in French.

Also, our Rosetta Stone language software is loaded on our US laptop & the discs are in storage in the Bay Area, at least until our furniture & household goods arrive this spring. This means we have fallen behind in learning French, but it's amazing how many things we've managed to accomplish. We arranged for Internet & phone to be installed, we bought a new cell phone, we opened a bank account, got car insurance, mandatory rental insurance & are getting our health insurance. There are still many bureaucratic hoops to jump through, but we're taking them one at a time.

We discovered that public transportation in Pézenas is limited. There is no train station & there are only a few bus routes here. This was more important to us between the time we returned the rental car & when we picked up our car at Le Havre.....More about that in a future post. Meanwhile, here are a few photos of Pézenas that we took shortly before Christmas.