A very Happy Thanksgiving to our friends and family. This is our favorite holiday. It reminds us to reflect upon all the blessings we have in our lives. We have so much to be thankful for…especially each other and you!
Today, we are thankful to be in Angers, France. We will be celebrating this Thanksgiving with our new friends at the Bibliothèque Anglophone where we begin our volunteer duties next week! We met S, a retired international exchange student program coordinator from...Corvallis! Can you believe it? Another PNW connection!
We love the Brittany area and may eventually move there, but the people in Angers provide a connection that makes it feel like home. The size of the city still concerns me, but we have access to plenty of open, green space. Yesterday, we walked 8 miles on inter-connected parks to the ville of Bouchemaine and only saw a handful of people. Summer won’t be like that, but we are hopeful to be housesitting in England during the summer.
Our Airbnb hosts are adding another property to their collection this spring and it looks like that may be our new home! It turns out that acquiring a rental is a special form of torture in France. Without a dossier that includes about 30 pages of documents, references, and someone to guarantee they will pay your rent if you don’t, you can’t even look at properties. Our hosts are willing to bypass those steps. It would be great to have a long term rental for the first 6-12 months. It will even have A/C! It is 2 houses from a bus line and 3 blocks from Parc Saint Nicolas. Exactly where we wanted to be! Nothing in stone, but pretty likely.
Anyone want to buy a house in Salem? When we return, we will begin the process of selling everything we own!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Sorry, these are a bit out of order…
Kouign Amann A Bretagne pastry. Pronounced queen-a-mahn. We tried our first one on our walk in Lèhon. Now we understand how people get addicted to meth. One bite. One bite is all it takes. This pastry is like the flaky layers of a croissant basted in a sugar water syrup with extra butter and then is caramelized so that it is just crispy and buttery on the top. They serve them warm. Crack cocaine could not be as magical as this.
John took his first bite and looked at me and said, “I bet this has lard in it.” and I replied. “I don’t care if it’s made from kittens.” Oh my God ! This is a high we will never experience again.
On our last Sunday in Dinan, we decided to walk back to the bakery for one last hit of our crack/meth/pastry. Fisherman lined the path with super long fishing poles. They would chum the water and then pull in little tiny fish. One after the other. It looks like they had thousands of dollars of equipment to catch something smaller than a sardine.
Angers to Bouchemaine.
OK, I know this is stupid, but when we returned to Angers and talked with our host about renting, I made a little bet with myself that if we found a coin in Angers it would be a sign to move there. We haven’t found a spare coin anywhere in France. An hour after the thought, look what appeared.
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