Making Friends and Stocking Up

Our hostess at the Chambres d'hotes "Florence" in Riberac, is a delightful, petite middle aged lady with a distinct artistic flair in the decorating department, and excellent manners. She is also an extravert who loves to practice her English language skills given the opportunity. Marie Florence invited us to return for coffee any time we are in town, and we will be very happy to take up her offer and do so. We have agreed that I will speak French to her, and she will speak English to me. We are free to correct each other, in the best way possible, which we both welcome. How lovely to find such a friendly and engaging hostess.

The house is 3 stories tall, but we dragged our heavy bags only to the 2nd floor, which was sufficient, let me tell you.
The room was huge, and the heating was on, fortunately. Gorgeous bed and table linens and a round, single pillow that we were dubious of to begin with, but which turned out to be an inspiration for those of us who have 'trouble with pillows'. I think we might invest in one to take home with us! Yes, that good!
I thought you might like to see the room we inhabited last night. The bed was comfy and the sheets were a fine cotton with embroidered turn-down. Soft! There was a duvet under the white matelasse cover, and a microfiber blanket under that. We eventually took the white cover off because we were toasty without it.

 The wall that joins the neighboring house. This is typical of the age of the house, which dates back to the late 1800's. It has been nicely re-pointed/renovated.

 Heavy drapes on the single paned windows, also typical of it's era. Many people who renovate these lovely old homes will install double or triple paned windows.
Marie Florence has lived in this home for 30+ years, she told us. She lives here with her 22 yr old son who has trouble finding work in the small town. With a Commerce Baccalaureate  perhaps he needs to go to the city to find work? She rather hopes he will!:) He was the one who answered our ringing bell, last night and let us in, helped us upstairs and tried to find the words to tell us everything, before his mother arrived home around 9pm. MF tells us that he doesn't really make an effort to speak English, despite the fact that his current girlfriend is American. She speaks excellent French we are told, lol. He has no need to speak English then!

 Gorgeous original flooring.

 Heavy wooden doors leading into the bathroom, which had another use at some time.

 A modern electric macerator toilet, not unlike some of the loos on boats.

 An original styled hand basin and faucets, and a cake of Provence soap.

 We love the modern convenience of heated towel rails, which are common in NZ too.

 The hugely deep claw-footed bath tub with curtain surround. I had to have Waz help me out of it, lol. One could easily disappear in there, never to be seen again!

 Once, when I was working in France in 1981, I went for a short sojourn to a Chateau just outside of Lyon. In the Chateau was a bath tub twice as long as this one, and probably just as deep. It took forever to fill enough hot water to bath in, but I remember having a wonderful time sliding from one end to the other, as you do when you are kids...dont you remember doing that?...as the water drained down the plug hole. One of those delightful abiding memories. I have rather longed for that bathtub since:)

 A typical hand-held shower inside the tub.

 Lots of older buildings have their fireplaces plugged up. They are often not operable anymore, and they take so much wood to heat. With no servants to cart the wood and clean up the mess afterwards, I would do the same. Many open fires have been replaced with either closed fire boxes or Pellet wood stoves, which are ever so efficient.
Because electricity is so expensive in France, most people dont have heat pumps, which we would much prefer. I think we would opt for solar if we lived here and find another source of heat for top-up. Geothermal is reasonably common in some parts.

 Yes, the bathroom was almost large enough for a 'gathering'.

 Beside the bed and the room key. Pretty linen embroidered cloths everywhere.

 This pillow was magic! No fighting over the pillow, and we both slept exceptionally well with it.

 Fridays are market day in Riberac, and we watched out the window as the stall holders put up their tents along the road opposite. It was raining off and on. When we left the building to drive to Lidl, we had to take a circuitous route around the market, and saw people coming from everywhere with their baskets, trolleys and bags, going to the market.

We love the hardware on the doors and windows.

We left the lovely Maison Bourgois (according to MF it was built and owned by a Lawyer, back in the 1800's) - what we would call (from the outside, anyway) shabby chic - in the middle of town around 9.30am, and headed to Lidl first, just because it was the closest market. We did most of our food shopping here, leaving with three large bags full of fresh veg, dairy and dry goods. Spending only 75 euros (what a steal!), we headed then to the Super Intermarche on the other side of this medium-sized town. We spent another 50 euros there for not a lot, it seemed, but buying fresh Norwegian Salmon, Pork chops, 8 boneless skinless chicken thighs (to make the soup stock with and salad thereafter), mousse de Canard pate (Waz's favorite), chipolatas vin blanc (skinny white wine flavored pork sausages),  and a few other things which quickly added up. Meat will do that, no matter where you are. We buy so little fresh fish in the USA because most of it is farmed, and what isn't is seasonal and very expensive. Our two tail pieces of Salmon (wild caught) were 7 euros. An excellent price we consider. We ate one halved and kept the other for our lunch tomorrow.

We do so love combing the aisles for special things that take our fancy, but not necessarily to purchase. These ones were a surprise, but wow...did they look yummy! At first glance they looked like desserts, but they are savory. Not inexpensive, but we might be tempted another time.
Fois Gras and fig puree. 2 pieces only. I remember they were about 3.49 euros each box.

 Avocado, and shrimp

 Smoked Salmon!

I want to show you where we are living for the duration of our stay, this time. We feel most fortunate to be trusted with our host's lovely Hamlet property. Homes are much better when lived in, and we will certainly enjoy living in this one. Typical of it's type, it is a farmhouse style property that has two floors above the ground/entry floor. Steps and stairs everywhere, and low ceilings. Waz has already made a dent (several, actually!) in his forehead, forgetting to duck!
It is Pierre, or stone, with two foot thick walls, on average. The owners have fitted new double pane windows everywhere for efficiency, and the renovations have been well done for the most part. There are always projects to do be done on any house, but some of these old buildings require more maintenance than others, we find.
So, here are some photos of our location.
We are 20 mins north of the town of Riberac, in gorgeous undulating countryside. We smiled all the way here!:)
Coming into the small Hamlet of about a dozen homes, we saw this animal feed. Maize. We were fascinated by the system they might have of releasing the food. Planks of wood at the bottom might let them all out, but that looked clumsy. We will have to ask someone, obviously!

 This is our little Hamlet, as we turned the corner to enter. It is actually the back side of the Hamlet.

 Looking out the living room window. That is a Chateau in the far distance, right of middle, in the far trees. You can just see it.

Now, I have to tell you about our efforts to explain to Marie Florence what an Hameau is in English.
An Hameau is a Hamlet. We joke about the word Hamlet, meaning 'little ham'. Anything with a 'let' or 'lette' at the end is usually a diminutive form.
Marie F asked us what hameau is in English (as I said) and we tried, in Frenglish, to tell her. Pigs (conchon) and Jambon (ham) came into the conversation and it took a while, but I think we got the message, if not the joke, across.:) We had more fun with this exchange than most of our others, this morning.
I forgot to tell you about our delightful breakfast (petit dejeuner) in a parlor painted deep coral pink/orange, that was the perfect color to display MF's many modern artworks. Next to the parlor was a sunroom, or conservatory, to be more exact. The conservatory looked out over a glorious walled garden complete with a rectangular pool. I bet it is divine in summer. Lots of greenery outside the windows would keep the room cool, I imagine. Rather a romantic setting for our early morning repast. It was still dark at 8am, so we ate in a slightly dim lit room (romantic, as I said!) until it got light outside.
Fresh large croissants and petite baguettes from the boulangerie around the corner (literally), with confiture (jam/jelly) and butter. Strong coffee (stand your spoon up, kind), orange juice and fruit/nuts (crack your own). All this served on nice china with a gold charger plate underneath (for drama) on a gold embroidered fabric tablecloth, covering a classical round French metal table. Comfy chairs with embroidered fabric coverings and Chinoiserie cushions (Chinese embroidered) completed the décor.
I forgot my camera! oops! and then we were talking so much as we paid the bill and walked out the front door....well, you get the picture! ha!


Back to the Maison we now occupy.
See that long black beam running the length of the kitchen? Waz's nemesis! He stood up after eating (sitting at this end of the table) and hit his head yet again. At 5ft 11 he is just about 3 inches too tall for walking underneath. I duck, but (so far) my head reaches the beam without any problem...at 5ft 9. Hopefully we dont get permanently bent backs out of all these low places...including doorways. Such are old French ) houses. The door to the right of the photo leads into the laundry room and then out back to the pool deck, which from here is up a short flight of stairs. There is a dining table in here, with a bench seat (like a pew) to the left, and another chair at the far end, and an old school bench type seat on the kitchen side. Not very stable, but I sat on it to eat my dinner safely enough.
Next door behind me is another dining room, but it is the room you walk into at the entry.

 One of three living rooms. This one is the only one with a fireplace, and next to the master bedroom to the right of the blue jacket. We have a space heater on in the bedroom and left the door to the bathroom open to warm that up somewhat. The heated towel rail is on for our showers and to dry the towels afterwards. Timers are great things when there is expensive electricity burning.

 A nice reading nook behind the sofa in our living room. I will call it 'ours' because it is going to be the only one we use. This is a large house, and we want to keep the heat in the smaller spaces, obviously. Plenty of reading material if we ever get bored.

 Master bedroom with the door to the bathroom. We will have to remember that there are two steps up, in the middle of the night:)

 After opening all the shutters to let the light in, we made the rounds of the house to check everything out. This is the Master en-suite. It also is a large room.

 On the right side of the windows is the shower over the bath tub. That stainless thing at the top of the photo is where the handheld shower will fit for a shower shower, if you know what I mean.

 Looking out the en-suite windows you see the swimming pool. It isn't a large yard, so the pool takes up most of it, but what more would you need? Those are the steps up from the Laundry room and out the back door.

 With so many levels in this old house and steps and stairs everywhere, it is a little challenging to remember what comes off which room. The deck to the right there is a lovely covered space off of the 2nd living room. About 5 steps above that is a TV room/salon with a large screen TV and a full bathroom with shower unit instead of a bath. There is a bar-b-q which we might be lucky enough to enjoy once Spring is sprung, towards the end of our tenure in April.

Looking from the en-suite into the master bedroom. Yes, the tiles are cold with no underfloor heating.

 We didn't go outside for a walk because every time we thought of doing so, it was raining again. I took these through the windows around the house.

 Most Hamlets are created around farms. The farmland fans out around the homes/barns for the most part, and people then share the road that winds through the hamlet. Many hamlets are now home to foreign people who have holiday homes there.

 This is very typical of a roof that is about to cave in. The wooden substructure will have just rotted through. We see so many that need new roofs, and there are plenty of old homes for sale that need new roofs. These can be had for a song, as they say, with some as low in price as 16,000 euros. yes, Sixteen thousand euros. That includes the land. You would obviously end up spending a lot of money on the refurbishment.

 The fire was roaring, and did it ever need to. Getting rid of the damp is a bit of a mission, but I think we have somewhat conquered that today. It is now nice and toasty up here in the salon.

 The stream runs at the bottom of the hill, which is about 10-15ft down below the house. With so much rain recently, there is much flooding, but this obviously isn't over it's banks. Good drainage somewhere.

 The skinny road we wound our way along to get to the house. It passes in front of and behind most of the other homes in this hamlet.

 One of the neighbors must own riparian rights to this part of the river, because they have bothered to place a lovely seat on the banks. What a lovely tranquil place this is.

You will have to forgive me for not taking photos of our delicious dinner, but my camera was upstairs, and I was downstairs in the kitchen, and Waz couldn't hear me from there, to ask for him to bring it down.
That Norwegian Salmon I mentioned earlier was pan fried - no salt or pepper (I forgot...merde! It was so cold in the kitchen my brain wasn't working well!) and served with steamed fresh and sweet carrots, leeks and baby green beans and topped off with a Hollandaise sauce which can be found everywhere here, ready made. I am forever grateful! It was delicious!
Easy and nutritious food, and finished with a cup of coffee and a Yoghurt for dessert.
You may not believe this, but we did not enter the aisles in the supermarket with the chocolate or cookies in them. We are determined not to even start with those things, so we will challenge ourselves to stay away from them. Instead we bought some California (yep) pistachios which we buy for less here than in Florida! We also have some lovely fresh walnuts to eat, so we are feeling very virtuous.

It is our intention to walk plenty, drink plenty of water...oh, did I not mention the wine?? Yes, we did go down the wine aisle at Lidl, and purchased a Vin blanc and a Rose, both from the Bordeaux region...well, that's where we are, so why not!...so yes, we will drink wine as well, but water is good too:)...trying to convince Waz of this!

Waz has plonked himself on the sofa for a pre-bed nap (yes, there is such a thing...really!), and the fire is now burning low in the hearth. I guess that says it is time to put this computer away and read a book before turning in.
I need to finish the Nora Roberts steamy novel before I start another book. Somehow I find it hard, even when the novel is NOT good literature, to start a new book without finishing the first. Must be my obsessive streak, lol.
We look forward to exploring more of our region tomorrow. One of the small towns nearby is supposed to have a good Boulangerie, and we only have enough croissants for breakfast tomorrow. We need to keep enough provisions in the house to see us through until Tuesday. Sunday and Monday, most stores are closed.
We are in happy, food heaven, per usual.
What a joy to be back!!!!

A bientot.