Our First Month
Well it’s the end of our first month, and we have enjoyed
ourselves so much we feel as though we have been here much longer
Things we've achieved
………
- Moved into our house
- Bought some furniture – waiting on more to be delivered, but that’s another story
- We have English TV – is this a good thing or no ?
- We have French internet and TV – no thanks to Orange ( France Telecom) who have yet to show – Graham is so clever
- We have both lost weight
- I am driving on my own – yeh !!!
Things we've experienced ………
Fete Musicale on Friday 21st June. Local musical
performers , from choirs to jazz and rock groups perform in their local
villages in churches, restaurants and bars, streets and town squares all over
France, for free, on this night. Everyone comes into town after dinner and
walks from one venue to another listening to the music. In our town, Port Ste
Foy, 6 pairs of white swans sat in the river beside one of the squares where a
group of English rock and roll enthusiasts were playing outside a bar. Even the
wildlife enjoys music.
 |
| music lovers on the Dordogne River |
A brocante market ( second hand and , maybe, vintage goods)
in our street on Sunday morning. This carried on most of the day with a steady
stream of visitors. And yes I did buy a small something, but Graham couldn't
resist buying a selection of Armagnacs from the stand of a local producer. We
were then off to a larger brocante market at Bergerac. There is always one
somewhere nearby and is a great way to spend Sundays.Below are a few of the items that we have purchased so far:
 |
| Graham's Armagnac's |
An art exhibition along the quayside beside the river near
our house. This was just for one day with work by local painters and
photographers. Great to see so many people taking an interest and such a lovely
setting, though would have been even better had the sun come out.
The French know how to do a
roundabout ………
Australians often seem to get flustered and confused with our roundabouts, but just take a look at a small selection of roundabouts (rond-points) from
our local area to show how imaginative the French can be with such an everyday
thing. Importantly any round about in France is always large enough to be effective, unlike Australia.
and some "street art" thanks to local council workers........ and no it is not Graham dressed up!.
French frustrations.........
While it is clear that we are both enjoying our adventures so far, there are always going to be issues that cause frustration and in France that can be very much an understatement.
After waiting for nearly a week for French Telecom (Orange) to come and install our internet connection and TV satellite box, we decided to do it ourselves so Graham, using the instructions in French, was able without too much problem to get the TV up and running. Now we have both UK and French free to air television and while it is not brilliant it beats watching a limited supply of English dvd's over and over again.
Customer service is also a bit of a novelty in France and while we have paid in full for much of our furniture, we still sometimes have to wait for up to 4 weeks for delivery and this does get you down a little sometimes. As a result we have had to rely on 2 cheap dining chairs to sit on, but at least we now have one sofa (three still to come). It even got to the stage where we ended up ordering off the IKEA website (all in french) from their store in Bordeaux. Still they take 4 weeks to deliver....probably coming from Sweden!
It is interesting also that French retailers can only have their sales twice a year and the timing is set by the government, not by the retailers themselves. This week is one those Soldes periods and it looks good when you see up to 60% off items in the store. Unfortunately the store often does not have any stock of those items on display and they just shrug their shoulders when you ask if they can get any for you. Some stores will have the sale on everything in the shop and others will only apply the sale to a small handful of specific items (usually the ones you would never want anyway). Even with these frustrations, we still find ourselves content and happy to be here.
Enough for now............but it goes without saying that it is not hard to write this blog while watching the first day of the Tour de France live and not at 2am in the morning. We are just trying to work out where and when we might be able to spend a day and go and see it on the streets.
à bientôt
No comments:
Post a Comment