Shopping in France-Online

Shopping Online

Things are expensive in Europe and it pays to shop around. The same Futon (599 Euros) at Lafayette Galleries in Paris can be found at Conforama in Flers (199€ ). Lamps and furniture vary greatly in price and style. By shopping online it is easier to get a feel for what things are selling for. Amazon has websites serving England, Amazon.co.uk and a website serving France, Amazon.fr. The difference in prices is often surprising and the delivery charges from Amazon in England are often very low.

Alice wanted to buy a crock pot like she had back in the states, but they were hard to find in the stores here. The few we found were smaller than she wanted and cost about 149€. That seemed ridiculous. I checked online and found crock-pots, called slow cookers, for 89€ on Amazon France. The same style and size crock-pot on Amazon England was 49€, 59€ with shipping. No brainer! I ordered that sucker right away. Three days later it arrived by post. No UPS man, everything goes through the post office.The postman pulled up in his little yellow truck, beeped the horn to let us know we had a delivery, and then he brought it to the door and waited for us to open the door and accept the delivery.

I was impressed, that was great service at a good price. We opened the box and there was a beautiful stainless steel crock-pot. Alice was excited and we ran out to buy a chicken and vegetables for a home cooked meal. After returning home with our “poulet,” I finished unwrapping the crock-pot and began to set it up on the kitchen counter. OOPS. England uses a different electrical plug than France. Oh yeah, I knew that. No chicken tonight.

The next day a trip to the hardware store (Bricoman, yes, its even orange like Home Depot) solved the problem. 

We have a converter that changes the houses 220v to 110v that the computer plugs into, an American-to-French adapter that the camera battery recharger plugs into and now a British-to-French adapter that the crock pot uses. We will soon have a house with every imaginable adapter.

Moving

packing and preparation

Moving

Moving to Europe has its own set of challenges. Expense is of course the primary factor. A quote of $5,000 and actual cost of $6,000 will ship a crate 7 feet high by 7 feet deep by four feet wide. These are loaded into a container that measures 8’x8’x20.’ You can secure an entire 20’ container for around $15,000. Shipping includes door to door delivery by most companies, but not all. We used Allied.

We set off a 7’x7’ area in the dining room and carefully packed our prized possessions in boxes until we had the area filled.  Then we called to let Atlas know we were ready to move.

“Hello, I am just calling to arrange a moving date. We are ready to go,” I told Ronnie, our contact.

“Great, we can send a crew to pack your things and load the crate on Thursday. Be sure and not pack anything into boxes yet, let the packing crew do that,” Ronnie informed me. He had said nothing about this on our previous discussions.

“What? We’ve already packed everything, Ronnie.”

“Oh no, anything that is packed by the customer is a red flag to customs. They will open the crate and tear into everything looking for contraband. It’s much better if our people inventory, wrap, box, and load everything.”

“Oh great, we spent a week packing everything,” I said, thinking of the small fortune my wife spent on bubble wrap. “OK, when can we expect delivery?”

“In about four to six weeks,” Ronnie said proudly.

Wow, I thought. They must be taking it over by row boat.

“I will give you the contact number for the receiving agent in France. You will need to call him to take delivery.”

“Thanks, Ronnie. Good bye.”

“Honey,” I yelled to Alice in the other room. “You better put everything you want to have with us in a big box and we’ll mail it to France. Mail delivery is in about a week.” I didn’t realize she would fill a 2’x2’x2’ box with Irish Spring bath soap, Pepto-Bismol, Ivory hand soap, Lipton Tea, Earl Grey tea bags, and twenty pounds of other everyday household items that we could have bought in France.  In fact we wound up mailing two twenty pound boxes (the other box contained clothing) and a new computer we had just bought for her.

That was in October. On November 7th the moving company came and packed up our must have stuff and hauled it away in a plywood box seven feet tall, seven feet deep and four feet wide. Our furniture would not fit in the new house in France, so all the furniture went into storage, along with many years of accumulated possessions. 

On December 7th the plywood box was loaded onto a cargo ship and began its voyage to France. Estimated arrival date in France: 23rd December. Estimated delivery date to our house? Unknown.

Shopping Day

We have a house, now we need stuff to put into it. Where do you get stuff in France? Why Paris of course.

Bagnoles is 3 hours from Paris, two and a half if I'm driving and singing the Beatles.

The best strategy to shop in Paris, is to drive to a town outside of Paris, park, and then take the RER and the Metro. We drove to Versailles, which is a twenty minute train ride from the shopping in Paris or a one hour or more drive by car.

The Samaritaine is France's oldest department store. It is currently closed for renovation and will reopen in 2015.

The Galleries Lafayette is currently the largest shopping "mall" in Paris with everything you could want, except reasonably priced furniture that matches our tastes.

All the furniture we looked at that day was contemporary, wild art, or just chrome and glass. It would take more shopping to find the Georgian style furniture we had in the States.

Kitchen ware-knife block

Lunch across from the Opera.

Lunch across from the Opera.

Not a productive day in Paris, but what a great place to spend the day, even a rainy day.

The Renault Twizy electric car.

Opera Garnier

Laundry Day

After ten days in France our clothing selection was severely reduced, so it was laundry day. I told Alice we could just take it to the local dry cleaners (which was in the next town). Her reply: "No, way. It's mostly underwear. I'm not taking underwear to the cleaners, that's just weird." So, off we went to buy detergent and find a laundromat.

The local grocery, Super U, had a small, and I mean small, laundromat out in the parking lot in front of the store. It was next to the carwash and before the gas pumps. We parked next to it and went in to check it out. There were several machines along the back wall. We loaded our clothes into one machine, and opened the top to pour in the detergent.
"How much do I need to add?" asked Alice as she poured in the detergent.
"I don't know, not much." I replied as she continued pouring in detergent.
"Do you think that's enough?" she asked, still pouring detergent. "I can't see how much is going in, because it just flows on into the tub."
"I think that's enough."

She put the top back on the detergent. There was a money receptacle along the side wall. By pushing a button that corresponded to the number on the washing machine and then depositing money, four euros,  the washer came alive and went to work. We had selected a laundry detergent that had a fresh smell.

Fifteen minutes later, we pulled out the clothes and threw them into the dryer (or what we thought was a dryer). I selected the numbered button, slid in 2 euros, 4 euros, 6 euros, finally after depositing 8 euros the machine gave a shutter and started. It started alright, it started pumping water onto our clothes. It was no dryer, just a bigger washer!

"Stop, stop, stop," Alice cried, pulling on the handle to open the machine, the door was locked. She hit it on top, she hit it on the front, and she finally hit a button to cancel the wash.
"Ooooh, they're all wet!"
I couldn't help myself, I laughed a long belly roll of a laugh. "Just part of the adventure."
Fortunately, I still had more coins and we were able to feed the money wall another eight euros to dry our clothes, which took a lot longer, since they were now ringing wet.

Still not dry.

For days after our laundry experience, our clothes smelled so strong of laundry detergent that we could hardly stand them. We even smelled like soap after we took our clothes off.
"Honey, I think we used too much detergent."

October 1, 2012 A New Lease

Entering Bagnoles de l'Orne, France.

Bagnoles is known for its unique architecture.

Back in Bagnoles we continued our search for a house to lease. We were fortunate to find a local realtor named Laure. She was an angel. She informed us that a three year lease is the normal contract, but that it can be terminated at any time with a registered letter to the owner and 90 days advanced notice. She not only helped us find a suitable house, but also came to the bank with us as an interpreter to help us set up our bank account. And when we went to the local Hotel de Ville (the town hall), she even helped the official there by translating over the phone. In fact, when we suggested to the lady at the government office that we call Laure, the lady said she knew her personally. Gotta love small towns.

Our little three bedroom house in France.

Success, a new address.

September 30, 2012 St Malo

St Malo

One of the towns on our list of possible places to live in France was St. Malo. It is a fortified town situated on the coast to guard a major harbor. Much larger than Bagnoles, it qualifies for the title of city. We drove around and quickly decided it was too large and too busy for our tastes. So, we were free to spend the rest of the day as tourists.

We walked along the top of the wall that completely encircles the medieval town.

At low tide the rocky shore is exposed and several small sandy beaches. In 1693 attacking ships ran aground on the hidden rocks that were just below the ocean's surface.

The buttresses along the inner wall were used for storing cannon balls.

Well known for their fresh seafood, especially huge plates of crab and prawn.

After spending the day at St. Malo, we were ready to return to our hotel in Bagnoles and continue our adventure of house hunting in France.

September 27, 2012

After a nine hour bumpy flight, which consisted of two movies, a nap, a book, a nap, and two small unidentifiable meals, we landed at Charles de Gaul airport in Paris, via Air France. We picked up our rental car and headed for the little town of Bagnoles de l'Orne. We had planned on taking the little back roads to the town because the country side is so beautiful, but we were tired and just wanted to get there. We hopped on the highway and headed west. Big mistake. I had forgotten to get any money converted to Euros and we only had dollars, OOPS. At the first toll booth we learned that American credit and bank cards are not read by the toll booths. European credit cards have a chip in them. The booths read the chip, not the magnetic stripe on the back. The attendant smiled, spoke French, no English. Cars began to line up behind us. I put on our hazard flashers. After much pointing and gesturing, I came to understand that I was to back up and pull over into the far right hand lane that was blocked off. The attendant told the other drivers that had lined up behind us to go to another toll booth. We backed up followed hand signals to a side access road that led us off the highway and into a little village. Amazingly, no one had yelled or honked their horn. They just went about their way, as if this happened every day. C'est la vie, such is life.

After driving around for what seemed like forever, we spotted an ATM. Back in the money! Then it was just a matter of finding our way out of the town and back onto the highway. Thank God, for the GPS on my iPad.

We passed through the automated toll booth, no problem. They are all automated, with attendants hiding in a little side office off of the road. I really wanted to show the guy I really did have money, but I never saw him again.
Three hours later, we checked into our little hotel. The Hôtel Gayot in Bagnoles.

Hotel Gayot

We spent the next driving around the little town and getting to know it. It was just as beautiful as the pictures on the internet. Several houses caught our eye. Several were for sale, but our plan was to lease a house for a year while we traveled and learned more about Europe.

The original house that we wanted to see.

The house we originally were interested in, turned out to be on a steep hill with no where to park a car. It did have a garage, of sorts (a place to store lawn equipment), but no driveway!

Other houses caught our eye and we diligently took pictures and wrote down addresses and phone numbers of the realtors. All the signs were for sale, only two were for rent.

We found a realtor and told them we wanted to move to Bagnoles. We were interested in leasing for a year.
"The standard lease is for three years." We were told.
"Can we lease a house that is on the market for sale?" We asked.
"No."
"Can we lease with the option to buy?"
"No."
"Can we ask the owner if they are willing to lease?"
"Yes, but they will say, no."
"What is available to lease?" we asked.
"Apartment. Maybe small house."
So we asked to see the largest apartments and the small houses. The apartments had no parking (nor kitchen oven, refrigerator, nor stove). Tenants had to find a place to park around town, if they owned a car. The houses we saw were small, dark and not so pretty.

Our feet dragged as we went back to our hotel room and flopped onto the bed, discouraged. We decided to take the next day off. It was Monday and it seemed like everything in Bagnoles was closed on Monday, including the realty offices.

Our hotel room.

There was nothing else to do, but have a glass of wine, the Plat du Jour, and get a good night's sleep. Maybe two glasses, or three.