Moving to France

This is a story that started in 2005/6 when Huw and I met. I had lived in France for a few years many years ago and love everything French; Huw loves everything Italian. We went to Italy for two weeks in the height of summer for a second honeymoon, in the same year as the first honeymoon, for him to sell Italy to me and I had a long weekend in Nice in December to sell France to him. We both love both countries but I’ve always wanted to go and live in Villefranche sur Mer just outside Nice again. We knew we wanted to live on the Mediterranean one day so for a long time we talked about our future in ‘Fritaly’.  

Villefranche sur Mer, France

Taormina, Sicily

In 2016 we’d both had enough of living in the UK, London had served us well but it was time for a big change. Over the years plans for ‘Fritaly’ became plans for France as we had been to Villefranche sur Mer many many times and Huw had also fallen in love with it. During one visit we went to my old local bar ‘Le Cockpit’ and were delighted to see Philippe, the bar owner’s son who had taken it over, it was 20-something years since I had seen him, so it was great to be reacquainted. 

There is no connection between le Cockpit and this tree; we just like them!

We then started to look for an apartment to buy and lo and behold Philippe had decided to sell his childhood apartment. He took us to Place de la Republic to see his flat and we both fell in love with the flat and its superb location. It was really close to where I lived years ago.

After a great deal of thought we decided to go for it and the fact that it would be a private sale was an added bonus. We made a gentleman’s agreement and went back to London to organise finances. All was going well and we booked flights to Nice the day after the Brexit vote to see Philippe and get started on the sale. We have never been so embarrassed in Le Cockpit as Brexit was discussed by the locals. To cut a long story short, we lost the flat because as the £ collapsed so did the plan to buy our dream flat… merde.

We visited many flats with various estate agents (agent immobilier) mostly French speakers with one exception, a lovely young English lady from a Nice agency. It was so refreshing to discuss realities and truths about buying property in a foreign country with someone who speaks your language.

We learned that in Villefranche there are two ways of letting property; a three-month summer lease and a nine-month long-term let. Because of the precarious state of the £ we decided it would be wiser to rent for a while and see what happens. In the meantime I’d been sending my CV to various language schools in the Nice area (I’m a TEFL teacher) and I was invited to attend an interview at International House in Nice. I went to this interview with low expectations but an hour and a half later I came out of the interview feeling quite overwhelmed. The director of the school informed we that they hadn’t had an English department for 15 years (I really should do more research before sending my CV!) but on seeing my CV he felt inspired to reopen this department and we’d discussed the possibilities. Huw and I got very excited and talked about actually moving to France all evening. The next morning we were waiting for the train to Nice when Huw received an email from our London landlord giving us two months to quit our flat. So after enjoying approximately 12 hours of joy we felt like we’d been kicked in the gut yet again. (It had been a tough year one way and another) We had planned on staying in London for the summer because of Huw’s job and then moving to France late August/early September. Now we had to get out of our London flat on June 7^th!

Initially Huw wanted to stay in London for a few months but having had far too much experience in moving in London (rarely my own choice), and the way landlords and their agents no longer care about their tenants, I couldn’t bear the thought of moving twice in a few months. The decision was made and we chose to move to France on June 8^th 2017. All the signs were pointing to us that it was indeed time to go, so why not? There’s a whole exciting world out there and it was time to make our next big life change.

After much searching we found a great little flat in a wonderful location, with a substantial terrace and breath-taking views and signed a three-month contract from June 8^th to September 7^th 2017. We left Villefranche for the last time as tourists on the day of the French presidential election and returned as residents on the day that Britain told Theresa May that a hard Brexit was a really stupid idea and she’s an idiot and an embarrassment to herself and the country.

There was an awful lot to do in a very short time and after dismantling our London home we watched our worldly possessions go off in a van. We had packed seven, 30-kilo boxes to be couriered to us in a few days and everything else was going into storage. 

With two extremely heavy suitcases each we headed to Gatwick and stayed the night in the soulless, airless and basically horrible Premier Inn, au revoir Blighty.

Day 1 (Thursday)

Gatwick – North Terminal. Up at 6.30am and it’s cold, grey and miserable – perfect conditions to leave London. We have had a tradition from our very first flight together to have two large gin and tonics, no matter how short the flight. It was only about 9am but we couldn’t possibly break with tradition so a breakfast gin was drunk. On arrival in Nice we got a taxi because of our ridiculously heavy baggage and we were soon in the agent immobilier signing on the dotted line. The lady who we dealt with during our last visit welcomed us warmly for about three seconds then immediately told us that someone was interested in renting our new flat in September – did we want to stay another month or not? We hadn’t even set foot in it and she asked us that! She needed a decision today; I was appalled but Huw very diplomatically told her we’d let her know by the end of the day. Our new home was even nicer than we’d remembered. Another agent did a very quick inventory with us and didn’t know how to turn the water on or the cooker and claimed that we couldn’t have a letterbox key. We had already paid to have our mail redirected so were quite put out by this. Luckily all these issues were remedied quite quickly and we were home. Before unpacking we went to our local supermarket Casino and got supplies and were intrigued that in this region, famous for that healthy Mediterranean diet, every single breakfast cereal in the shop had some kind of chocolate in them. Anyway we bought the usual supplies including the ever-present cheese and ham. Have you ever noticed that no matter where you are in the world (other than Muslim countries) there is always ham and cheese? It doesn’t seem to matter how famous the cuisine, France, Italy or wherever, the basic staples are ham and cheese. Unless of course it’s America where cheese comes with everything, even if you don’t want it. 

“I’m sorry sir the ham is in our other store, we had no room here because of the cheese”

Within two hours we had unpacked, rearranged furniture and hidden a lot of the ugly fixtures and fittings; it already feels like home. The flat is a summer rental and as in many airbnb properties the landlords/ladies seem to put everything they don’t need/like into these flats. There is so much tack and so many useless objects to be hidden but at least it looks a whole lot better than it did two hours ago.

As has become the norm during these stays in Villefranche we had ham and cheese baguettes sitting on our wonderful terrace washed down with rather nice red wine that comes in a 5-litre box and costs a mere €9.50. As the sunset and dusk came on, we were delighted to be greeted by a full moon welcoming us to our new home. We watched ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ looking directly at some of the film locations seeing how the rich people live in our town.