France: We got the keys!

What’s the best way to start a post-retirement holiday? Is it:

• finding out your cycle carriers were bought for your last car, so don’t fit your current car, and so you can’t take bikes with you?
• getting a 40cm crack in your car windscreen days before you leave to drive to France?
• having to make TWO round trips of 120 miles to get said windscreen crack repaired due to staff sickness?
• driving 183 miles to Folkestone in the heaviest rain imaginable to get Le Shuttle?

So it felt like maybe this was a blursed holiday. That is, until we were in France.

The first test of this was of our badge télépéage from Ulys to deal with the pesky toll road payments which are all designed for a left-hand drive car. Now we just get a satisfying bleep and the payments get taken care of remotely. Would highly recommend. So far, so good…

However, the sheer distance involved in driving to where we’re planning to live is making us rethink (again) the Cat Convoy. More on that in a later post.

Épernay

We’d booked two nights here in the Champagne region to have a break from driving but also to go on a Champagne house tour.

When we saw our hotel we had immediate doubts. Then we checked into our room and these were confirmed; this wasn’t anywhere we’d want to stay for a single night. A scramble on Booking.com found us a (much) pricier but nicer hotel in Reims (which I still have trouble pronouncing as it sounds too much like ‘Rhams’). But as soon as we saw the room, and had established ourselves in the restaurant with a bottle of wine, order was restored.

While in Épernay we also indulged in a tour of the Mercier Champagne house, which turned out to be enormous fun riding in the 18km of underground tunnels on a small ‘train’, then getting to taste 23-year old vintage champagne. Ol’ Mercier himself turns out to have been quite the communications and marketing genius.

Bless our complete naivety in thinking that the boutique shop was offering 2 boxed bottles of champagne for €25. No, that cost was just for the box. We declined.

Colmar

It was so great to be back in Colmar. Rachel took joy in showing me around her old haunts from when she was property hunting in May. It felt quite different from our last time there together where the pressure was on to search out potential places to live.

Having said that, we couldn’t help but swing by the Le Sud and Maraîchers areas on our walks to confirm that these were places we could happily purchase a house/apartment when the time comes.

After a particularly amazing evening at L’Un des Sens wine bar we walked back through the Parc du Champ-de-Mars to see the place swinging with dozens of people dancing to samba music in the open air. Hard not to break your face with smiling here.

Eguisheim

Finally, the day arrived for us going through the formal walkthrough of our property with the landlords, and to get our keys. As ever, we had Natalie from Ibanista on a WhatsApp call to help translate and give her thoughts, but we soon found that German seemed to be the easiest way to communicate (not for me, obviously).

Every small concern we’d had about the property as a place to live quickly evaporated as it turned out to be even better when seen in person. The kitchen was much wider than we’d imagined, which gives us scope to add in additional units.

The nicest surprise was realising how much light came into the property. And that we had a fantastic view of the Vosges mountains from our kitchen and our bedroom.

We learned as we went round that the landlord had built the whole house with his father, and that his mother had continued to live in what is now our apartment after he died, with the top floor converted to a gîte that she managed. He also mentioned it has taken him 2 years to get our apartment into a state where he was happy to rent it out, and that we are the first tenants.

By the time we had finished the tour, chatting about cats etc over an hour had passed and we’d had to lose Natalie to another call. So we did the paperwork side of the handover with them in the gîte.

Niggles and surprises

Of course, it would be naive to expect everything to be perfect, and a few things cropped up on the tour:

• Light fittings - we’ll need to supply our own, but there are temporary ones in until we do. A quirk of European renting from all accounts. Ikea has the answer, of course!
• Water boiler(s) - as the house overall is two apartments, there is a separate water heater for each. For some reason the pressure regulators tend to leak, so a bucket is under both of them to catch this excess water. As they are down in the basement it’s no big deal, but we have been asked to empty these buckets every 2-3 days. However, we’ve inserted a clause into the handover document (with photos) to review this arrangement after a few weeks of living there to determine if a proper fix is needed.
• House alarm - as there is a shared entrance hall with the gîte, it adds complications with setting/turning off the alarm. The entrance hall sensor would set off the alarm unless turned off, but then we’d need to know about the movements of the gîte occupants. Solution; move the entrance hall sensor to the basement level.
• Garage door - on our video tour we’d asked if the garage door was electric or manual, and the landlord told us it an electric one was being installed “in June”. When we saw it hadn’t been changed yet we were told this was happening the next day!

As we were completely exhausted after being in Eguisheim in 28 degree temperatures and then having the long handover, we’re heading back to the apartment again today to do proper measuring up for room planning.

The pint of milk test

Before our tour we spent a couple of hours in Eguisheim village centre, walking around to soak up the sights and check out things like the local shops. Olivier, a local fromageur, tempted us in with samples and lovely conversation. It seems clear I will forever be his bitch if he continues to feed my cheese addiction.

We also dropped in at the supermarkets just outside Colmar, which would be our nearest significant shops. Just amazing!

First up was Grand Frais, which is a chain we’d not heard of. This had a fabulous range of high quality fresh food, so is likely to be our ‘go to’ store.

Right next door is a large E.leclerc Drive which is just a delivery outlet for their online service. It’s a pretty soulless box with no entrance.

Just a small distance further is a HyperU (that’s a SuperU on steroids) which has pretty much everything.

Measuring up

We returned on Wednesday to admire the new garage door, but more importantly to measure the whole place so we can see what furniture will fit where. I’m planning to use Floorplanner.com to knock up some 3D prototypes.

That is if I can interpret this when we’re back home in the UK!

I managed to set the alarm incorrectly so it went off when the landlords went back in to complete the garage door installation. A bit of miscommunication there that Rachel nipped out to resolve in person. I hate alarm systems.

Badenweiller

One of the advantages to being in Alsace is proximity to Germany (and Switzerland). On our last trip we’d met with our friend Alison at her apartment in Freiburg, and popped into the spa there too.

While it was amazing to be just an hour from a proper spa, it wasn’t the best, so it was great when Rachel found there was a closer one at Badenweiller, just 40 minutes from Colmar. That takes us up to 25 on our spa count!

Not only was the spa brilliant, but the town itself is a really beautiful place, with a wonderful park and a great Festspielhaus, where we took in a quick free Sunday afternoon performance.

I think this is going to be a regular destination for us.