April, 2015

Wine us up and watch us go!

Last month, we left off just as we had crossed on the ferry from Italy to the French island of Corsica where we then spent the next week driving around visiting this and that. On our second night, I feigned my inability to find a hotel and told Janice we would have to spend the night in a cave. 

The fact that it had a shower and kitchenette built into the rocks and was equipped with high speed internet (hey, my girl does have her standards) was a plus, but for us the room was a chart buster on the coolness scale. There is a well-known hotel in our home town called the Madonna Inn which has ‘cave’ rooms built from large boulders, but this was the real deal cut into the rock face of a cliff.

Corsica has a rugged coastline, similar to the world famed Coast Highway in California. Along the way we pushed through the mountain goat blockade above, stopped in Calvi (birthplace of Christopher Columbus) as well as visiting the Scanola Nature Preserve, coming in at #129 on our World Heritage Sites visited.

The Scanola Nature Preserve

Finally, after completing the 600 mile circumference of the island in a week, we saw the yearly olive harvest. These nets are spread out under the trees, the limbs are shaken and the olives fall in the nets to be taken away.

The olive harvest

Next stop was the ferry back to Nice, France or 'on the continent' as the locals refer to it, and drive up to our next home exchange in St.Tropez on the Mediterranean.

Our home away from home in St. Tropez ( The arrow, silly, not the yacht in the middle!)

We spent a week in the area which by now, we have come to know fairly well. We have been coming to this area to snoop around for the past several years, looking at real estate with the plans to eventually move to the area. (Our 4 months a year in Europe, not permanently.) After several days, we were joined by island friends Ian and Lyne who wanted to see what all the fuss was about. 

They stayed at our place in Brittany last year, returned home to Canada and quickly bought a house - sight unseen- online, in Provence. This was their second time returning to their new home, and we joined them on their way back for a 'look see' ourselves. Cute beyond words, it is a Hansel & Gretel setting that fits them to a "T". They plan to return twice a year for a month or so at a time. Our road trip over, we made our way home after having covered 7,000 Km (4,500 miles)

Ian and Lyne's home in Provence

Pee Wee's big adventure. The 2015 five week European road trip comes to a close.

Speaking of big adventures...

Knowing that our kids always have our very best interests at heart and are always looking out for us, we try to follow their advice and recommendations for our well being as often as we can. Several weeks ago, when daughter Cassie heard that we were looking at real estate in the South of France on the Med again, she strongly recommended that we buy a REALLY NICE house... "for your children's inheritance", she said.

So, we did.

View from both terraces and the garden room. Click on any picture to enlarge.

When we bought our current home 12 years ago, we wanted a place to hang our hats, a home base of sorts, to launch from and explore Europe during the months we would be here. It has done that in spades. It allowed us to travel hither and yon and get a better idea of the areas that pleased us. At some point though, we asked ourselves if we had had enough of the whole Europe thing and our answer was "not at all!!" We then decided that we would make a serious investment in a 'real house' in the South of France.

We started casually looking in the area with the thought that 'perhaps some day...' Then, three years ago we got serious, but outside of Paris, this is the most expensive real estate in the country. Anything we wanted was completely out of our grasp. Year by year, real estate agents assured us that with our budget, what we wanted simply did not exist. But, we kept looking anyway.

OK, so it is not our furniture but you get the idea.

This year was the charm. We found a 5 bedroom, 2400 SF (210 M2) villa, ["Villa Sur Mer"] (Villa on the sea) that is all but what the French call "Pieds dans l'eau" (your feet are in the water), 40 feet (15M) from the Med, in the heart of the French Riviera with two beaches in front of the villa and a view of the snow on the French Alps. Our property goes to the road, the width of which is the only thing separating us from the water. 

 Our place is marked by the arrow. The beach above is one of 96 within 50 km (30 miles) of us. In the picture  below, the view is from the opposite side of the beach .

For the geographically challenged, you can see ST. Tropez on the south coast of France on the map above. We can drive to Italy In 90 minutes, having stopped by Cannes and Monaco along the way. Restaurants (including one on the Michelin guide), shops and the like are less than a minute walk away. Whew, we are still pinching ourselves!

One of the two beaches below us

It's in a community called Les Issambres, in the bay of St. Tropez, between Cannes (film festival) and St Tropez. Many will question the wisdom of such a large place for two people, but the reality is that we have a lot of friends and a growing family. The other reality is that as long as our health holds, knowing that we are gone 8 months of the year, the vacation rental market here is staggering (especially in the summer months when we are at the island). We believe that it will become a significant source of additional income.

The third reality is that .... drum roll please...... half of it is a fixer upper (As if we would ever get anything else).  Yea, yea, I know. But this could be our swan song of construction projects. We are so bloody particular that we have never seen a place that we would get that would be OK with us, as is. At least we are willing to do the work to get what we want without whining. 

One of 5 bedrooms. (2 finished)

The villa has two main levels, each with its own terrace and the sea view you saw in the top picture. There is also an additional bedroom that opens to a garden terrace. The main level of the house has two bedrooms, a kitchen, 1 1/2 baths, a dining and living room with fireplace and is in great shape. 

The lower level, has three bedrooms, its own kitchen, 2 bathrooms, an open plan living and dining area and it's own private entrance if needed. An interior door between the two allows it to be one large single residence or two independent of each other.

All together, both kitchens, dining rooms, living rooms and 2 of the bedrooms in the villa have ocean views. This where it gets ugly, in that the lower level is little more than a concrete shell. Honey Bee and Honey Do will have to roll up their sleeves and get busy. You, being sensible, would pass on it. Me, I'm thinking that there has to be a Jet Ski dealership around here, somewhere!

Villa Sur Mer

To make a long story shorter, we can turn the villa into two rentals while we are gone. After the usual arm twisting and saber rattling, our offer was accepted and we are now beginning the long slog to bring it all to fruition. Should everything go as planned, it will be a long slog as we do not intend to tackle this beast until our return next February and we have projects at the Island and in California to finish first. 

After we signed the documents with the real estate agent, Janice turned to me and said "Happy anniversary. Now what are you  getting me?"

Wanna buy a house? Ours in Brittany is for sale.

#31

The Riddle

OK, what do you get when you put a guy with big plans but with little time for a haircut, together with a woman who is VERY ambitious and plays 'Grand Theft Auto' with his hormones?

I told you she was VERY ambitious!

The woman can drag the moon out of orbit and I still see her the same way I look at cake. So, after 31 years this month, I wonder. Am I a keeper, or will she will toss me back into the sea?

Somehow, someone got a video of my first date with Janice. After 31 years, nothing has changed..