The house, the car, the school and some more on boats

THE HOUSE

Well whilst the last post mentioned a "holiday" we really only had about two or three days before our relocation agent started dragging us around Antibes and Juan Les Pins looking at apartments for lease ("a louer" en Francais). I think we looked at about half a dozen or so in the first two days of looking and thought that we had settled on a reasonably newish two bedroom apartment not far from Antibes city centre. But the following weekend we went to visit one of Cathy's work colleagues who lives right in the heart of the old town....

His apartment is what living in the south of France should feel like and the one that we had chosen at the time could have been anywhere really - if we closed the blinds, shut our eyes, spun around and clicked our heels three times we could well have found ourselves in Bondi or anywhere for that matter! So we set our relocation agent a new brief and started the whole thing over.

We looked at one apartment on the top floor of a building right behind the old rampart with the most spectacular view of Port Vauban. Unfortunately it was just too small with a single, internal bedroom of about 2m x 2m! We would have been able to fit our bed in the bedroom...just! And if we still had Cat we wouldn't have had much room left to swing her about too much. So despite the views, logic set in and we kept looking...

We have finally signed a lease on a fabulous 1920's art-deco / bourgeois place with two large bedrooms, a living room and even a separate dining room! We don't even have one of those in our house in Newtown - yet! It has all the mod-cons like a kitchen, a bathroom and a separate dunny. All going according to plan we will move in to it on 13 October. Presently all our worldly possessions, other than those that we left in the attic in Laura Street, are on a container ship somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea but they are due in to Marseilles on about 30 September. Allowing a week or so for customs clearance we should be right to move in after we come back from Ireland - we are off there for a bit of a holiday and to see the other side of the family for a few days. More on that trip in the next post.

THE CAR

Quite possibly our most amusing adventure to date has been purchasing a car. We spent one Saturday afternoon looking around some of the car yards in Antibes and a place called Le Cannet, which is just above Cannes. We were really only tire-kicking that weekend. The real business came the following weekend when we set out on the Saturday morning with every intention of actually buying a vehicle that day. We headed back to Le Cannet where we had seen what we thought was a great deal. But like all "great deals" there's always a catch - this one was that the vehicle only had two seats! As with our selection of the apartment, we considered the comfort of our guests / visitors and decided that this probably wasn't their best option, so we kept looking.

We had a short break for lunch in Cannes. Whilst there Cathy managed to find some of the lesser known shops - Louis Vuitton, Bvulgari, etc. Unfortunately we weren't able to get a photo showing all of the labels in one shot. We had a sandwich and a salad sitting on the grass near the beach so needless to say we didn't actually go shopping in any of the boutiques!

We didn't really find anything in Cannes so we headed back to the car yards in Antibes. Anyhow, to make a long story short, we ended up in Nice to look a what we thought was a really good deal on a Peugeot 206 - again there was a catch though; this one was that it had been repaired after a major accident - it had probably been a write off and sat in some wrecking yard for a couple of years and hence the low km's. But in the process we stumbled across a 307 that we liked. The only problem, and this is the amusing part, none of the sales people at the Nice yard spoke a word of English. Cathy's French skills were slowly coming back from the recesses of her mind but were barely enough to order a sandwich let alone buy a car and I had been at French school for only four days.

Cathy haggled, in French! We somehow walked away owning a car - well we assumed that the 250 Euros that we gave to the nice French man at the car yard was a deposit on a car! They called the morning we were supposed to pick-up the car and told us that it wouldn't be ready until later in the week as they had to replace the airconditioning compressor - this too was relayed to us in French - but I guess we are in France... So we caught the train to Nice the following Saturday and picked up our new Peugeot 307 - so it would seem that the 250 Euros was in fact a deposit afterall.

Now naturally the first thing you do with a new car is take it for a test run. We went to Italy!

We just popped up to San Remo to go to the markets. Cathy's sister Laura was in town for a few days and came with us so we even have photos with both Cathy and I in the same shot to prove it this time. San Remo is another quaint little Mediterranean town, well it's quaint once you get through the traffic chaos and the swarms of motor scooters!

We went to what I understand to be one of the biggest weekend markets in the Provence region - miles and miles of food and clothes and other wares. Then we sat down in one of the old back streets and had lunch at a little cafe. Needless to say our newly found French skills were utterly useless as, being in Italy, everyone now spoke Italian so the lunch order was a bit of a lucky dip!

These shots were taken of the car when it was in Italy.

Quote of the day goes to Cathy, whereupon our first crossing of the French-Italian border we came upon a toll pay station and she started freaking out because "we had no Italian money"! She had obviously forgotten about how the Euro is supposed to work.

The car went fine until we were coming back through Nice and the airconditioning decided to start pumping out hot air regardless of what temperature the dial was set at. It was a balmy summer trip home regardless of the outdoor conditions! Between Cathy's work colleagues calling the car yard and my visit to the Antibes Peugeot dealer I think we have the car booked in this Friday for repairs, or maybe a re-spray, who knows really...

THE SCHOOL

I have started an eight week long, full-time intensive course to learn French. We are led to believe that it is one of the foremost French schools in the region. It is set in an old chateau not far from where we are currently staying; about a 15 minute walk. The gardens and outdoor seating areas have great distant views over Antibes and toward the Mediterranean Sea.

The first Monday of the course we had no lessons. It was to be an orientation day and included a tour of Antibes; most of the students are here on holiday from other European Countries and aren't "locals" like myself! Now being a complete beginner to the French language I assumed that the orientation would have been in English because we were there to LEARN French. But no, the entire experience bar maybe a dozen sentences was in French from start to finish. I still don't know where the headmaster's office is so I am behaving myself!! I left the town tour after about half an hour as we were only going places that Cathy and I had already explored.

So after the first day I was a little dismayed about all the French they were speaking but approached the following day with my usual optimistic outlook; surely they would speak some English to us for the first couple of lessons? So first up in the morning, in walks the teacher babbling away at a million miles an hour in French! Now I'm thinking that maybe I am in the wrong class but the faces on the other students said it all - nobody knew what the hell was going on! The teacher broke into English briefly to explain that she doesn't teach in English and doesn't translate and that we probably won't understand a thing for a few days but to trust her!

Now I can see the logic but it did take a few days for the fog to clear. There are Germans, Swiss, Russians, Italians and me, the token Aussie, in the class. Some of them don't speak English and even those that do only have limited English; so logic says that French has to be the middle ground seeing as that's what we are all there to learn.

Basically the school works on the immersion principle - sink or swim. It seems to work. After only four days my knowledge of the language had improved ten-fold. After two weeks I could read and almost completely understand the kiddies French phrase book (with pictures) that Dave Loncasty gave us before we left Oz. Now after three weeks, I can go to the real estate agents' office and pick up the keys for our new apartment so I can check the mail (that's another storey) and book in our car for a/c repairs, all in French...I think!

Due to my "Intensif 2" course, my schedule includes morning classes, with about 10 students, from 9:00 till about 12:20 (with a 20 minute break in the middle). Then a lunch break until 2:00 - we are in the French Rivera afterall! Afternoon classes, with only three students, run from 2:00 to 4:00 without a break and then I go into a one-on-one class until 5:00. Phew! It doesn't leave much time for anything else, but with my woman (that's what a wife is called over here: "ma femme") working full time now I guess it makes sense for me to keep myself entertained somehow during the day or I would be up to no good.

THE BOATS!!

There's a fella goes by the name of Paul Allen who co-founded a little company called Microsoft. Now the company must be doing OK because he's managed to buy himself a nice little boat called Octopus. It was here last week and the sun rose just a little later in Antibes for a little while. Now when I saw this thing I could hardly contain myself (just ask Cathy one day!)- I had seen and heard storeys about it over the last few years but had always assumed there was some element of "internet myth" surrounding the storeys, but no it would seem to be all real!

Then last weekend we looked out over the port on Sunday afternoon and there were three new and very strange looking masts in the frey. So I just had to go and investigate, This little boat has three masts with 5 sails on each mast, all controlled completely by computer. It is the most amazing thing I've seen on the water to date.

If you want to know more about this boat, check out http://www.symaltesefalcon.com/index2.asp

That's all for now. Keep an eye out for the nest installment which will include our recent trip to a couple of the local villas, moving day and a visit from the in-laws...