We haven’t been to France in years, not since 2009 in fact, and we have missed it sorely: the baguettes Americains, the pain au chocolates, the salades au chévre chaud, even the snooty waiters and sour coffee. Well, we are finally going back again. This will be the first time our son sets his foot in France, even though he is actually a third French and carries a French passport. So he will, in sorts, be coming home! We will be driving from Malmö, down via Amsterdam, into France and then, we shall see. Our goal is to find a house! An old, rambling house, somewhere nice, somewhere we can call home, somewhere we will want to stay for  a few years and if we ever move on we can keep it as a vacation house.

We are so eager to start a new renovation project, to restore something that needs and deserves a gentle restoration. We can’t wait to bring something back to its former glory.  We hope this will work out. We have a long list of houses to look at, starting just in the south of the Loire, through the dordogne, down in Charentes, Aquitaine and finally Languedoc. It will be quite the trip. As per usual in France the most difficult aspect will be finding good accommodation on the road. We are quite wary of old, outdated, dirty French hotels. And no, we are not prejudiced, we have done road trips in France before, and we know from experience what the state of some accommodations are like. You would be surprised at some of the worn, dated, crusty looking hotels and B&Bs we have come across. It does seem however that even France has been touched by the Internet and modern accommodation through Airbnb (as much as I hate their sucky, nonexistent customer service) and its likes have popped up, making finding comfortable and clean accommodation much easier. At least I hope so.

I cannot wait to look at houses again. It has been a long time (well a year to be precise) since we had a house. The last one however was no fun, little charm, nothing spectacular. This time we want to find something worthwhile, something grand, something fun to really care about and make spectacular! Let’s see, who knows what we will discover. Vive La France! Vive les baguettes and pain au chocolates!