Only 2 and a half weeks since we left NZ !!!!!
Well, it is early morning here in Villebois Lavalette (or should I say Garde, as we are actually 4km from the village of Villebois Lavalette, in a hamlet called Garde le Pontaroux, complete with its own Eglise). We are now 10 hours behind NZ Time, after the change to daylight saving. The sun is shining and Moya has been out for her walk/run, mentioning that it was freezing cold, but she sighted yet another deer on the roadside (on a previous walk she sighted 3 deer crossing the road ahead). We also seem to have a resident in our ceiling, and are told it is probably a squirrel or a dormouse. The grounds around our property are very uneven and look as though they have been rotary hoed and not levelled out. We are told by neighbours that this unevenness has been created by moles !!!!! It is another world over here….and seems months since we left NZ.
Well, what have we been doing since our last “post” one week ago….weeellll……..
We made a trip to Angouleme, which is the city of the Charente area in which we are residing. The main purpose in going this time was to check out the Gare (Railway Station), as Sue has a friend Maurice arriving from NZ to stay for a couple of weeks, and we needed to check location and how to get there and back without getting lost again !!! which we are very good at doing, but we are getting better and not getting lost now !! We feel we didn’t see the best of Angouleme this visit, due to approaching it from the Railway Station side of town, so we intend to spend a bit more tiime there when we return to collect Maurice, so haven’t taken any photos of Angouleme yet.
We are pretty good at walking to the Village now and it takes approximately one hour, tend to go to our local restaurant for coffee and do a supermarket visit while we are in there, usually with one of us doing the pickup by car for the return trip. Saturday mornings are Market day in the Village Square, so this is becoming part of our Samedi (Saturday) routine. Further French lessons have been checked out and we ponder as to whether we will enrol in them. We had our first restaurant meal at our local Restaurant “La Lavalette” last Friday – a lovely restaurant, very friendly staff and we will return again and again. We are having a little difficulty in observing the opening hours of French life. Most places open from 10-12, close till 3.30 and then stay open until 7pm or through to 10pm, are closed a good part of Sundays and all day Monday.