…and finding joy everywhere
After viewing thousands of houses online, reaching out to dozens of realtors, and visiting 20 houses all over France, we signed a contract! It turns out that our “unicorn” has a name – La Maison de l’Amiral (The Admiral’s House). It’s better than anything we could have ever imagined. It sat vacant for 25 years […]
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I couldn’t sleep at all Wednesday night after seeing the house in Castillon-la-Bataille! I google mapped my way around the streets, taking stock of all the shops and restaurants. I learned about the town and got excited to see they’re involving the community to gather ideas for improvement (design thinking!). I found a swimming beach […]
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What a difference a day can make! Yesterday I was chatting with some girlfriends and the topic of toiletries arose. As in “lawd have mercy how did we end up with all these things?!” That must have stuck in my craw because I woke up at 0400 thinking about all our toiletries, bedding, and other […]
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You don’t have to “check the box.” If I’ve learned one thing during our time in Europe, it’s that you don’t have to hit all the tourist destinations to have a memorable time. In fact, Ralph and I have the best times when we just wing it! Take today, for example – our only “full” […]
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Ralph and I covered a lot of ground the last two days and we even found a contender! More to come on that (decisions, decisions) but here’s what we’ve been up to… Yesterday we left Pau and met up with two new friends, Mykle and Doug, to get a tour of Oloron-Sainte-Marie. They relocated to […]
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Is it lame that we’re in bed by 9 pm and I’m writing this update on our trip to Pau? Eh – I don’t care. We did and saw a ton today and I’m happy as a clam. 😉 Lemme tell you a little bit about Pau. It’s a city of around 77k people in […]
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Tomorrow, we’re off to explore southwest France! After our last househunting trip, I decided to switch things up and look at the region first instead of a house that caught my eye. So why not check out an area where just over an hour’s drive will take you to the mountains in one direction, or […]
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Some people leap into the unknown, while others take a methodical approach. I fall somewhere in between. When we first started considering the possibility of living in Europe permanently, my curiosity led to dozens of questions. They ranged from straightforward ones like “Which countries could I see myself living in?” to more complex considerations like […]
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Between the two of us, Ralph and I have owned a half-dozen homes. We’ve jumped through some crazy hoops in the past to get a mortgage (paperwork! deployment! marriage!), but we’ve always been successful. However, after lurking in a few “Expats in France” types of Facebook groups, we began to realize that mortgaging a home […]
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Delightfully Disoriented 