Now We're Legal!

Yes, we have permission to stay in France for another year.

 

There is a ritual we must go through every year: request permission to stay for another 12 months. Today we submitted our documents, and were told we’ll have our Carte de Séjour in a month or so. Yah! To celebrate we went to one of our favorite Places in Montpellier, Place de la Conourgue, and had a glass of Prosecco.

 

The newly-renovated Place de la Canourgue on a quiet weekday

This annual ritual can be quite stressful. The worst part is setting up the appointment, which can only be made on-line. Appointments are doled out in a rare and seemingly random fashion, so snagging one requires checking often. Not so hard, until the weeks slip away with no available appointments as the expiration date of our visa approaches.

 

It wasn’t bad this time around, and we moved to the next step, collecting documents. Financial records, proof of residency including our rental contract, copies of various official documents. Exactly what will be required is a bit of a mystery, and the fear is always that something will be required that we don’t have!

 

The appointment itself is sort of a cross between going to the DMV and visiting the dentist: dull bureaucracy mixed with fear of what might be found.

 

But this time all went well. We’d been in the building for a total of about 25 minutes (half of that spent waiting) before we were out with door with our récépissé, the receipt that will serve until our cards are ready.

The slightly famous unicorn statue in La Place de la Conourge

             Our Night at the Opera

And that night we furthered the celebration at the Concert de rentrée, marking the end of the summer and the return, or rentée, to “normal” (i.e., post-vacation) life. Traditionally, everyone in France goes on vacation in August. These days there’s quite a bit of vacation action in June and July, as well. But come the first week of September, folks are back, the kids are in school, and the routine begins again.

The Opéra Comédie/Berlioz in Montpellier

 

So this concert was a sort of tip o’ the hat to the September return, and the first event of the season. This concert was held at the old opera building, and I must say we went not so much for the music as for the chance to see the inside of the opera. It is a mainstay of Montpellier, holding down one end of the city’s main plaza, the Comédie, but we’d never been past the foyer.

 

Just for comparison, the somewhat more ornate Palais Garnier in Paris (image from Google Images)

Built in 1888 (according to the date over the stage), the building has an almost-opulence that shows a good effort with limited funds. Once over the initial amazement at the rich interior, our first thought, as we took our seats on this warm September afternoon, was that air conditioning had not been invented in 1888. It was quite warm inside! But we were thrilled to be there as the seats slowly filled, the musicians came on stage and tuned up, and the conductor’s baton fell.

 

Interior of the Montpellier Opéra Comédie

 

The fabulous ceiling and chandelier of the opera building

                    

                    Around Town

COVID is still big news here, as it is everywhere. A few months back Emmanuel Macron, président de la République française, announced that cafes, restaurants, museums, concerts, and other events would open again, but no one would be allowed entry without a pass sanitaire, a health passport, showing they were either vaccinated, or had a negative result on a COVID test no more than 72 hours ago. Over 114,000 people immediately took to the streets to protest; nearly a million more signed up to be vaccinated.

 

 The protests are on-going; before COVID the Gillet jaune protestors had Saturday afternoons reserved for their increasingly-violent protests against new taxes and things in general. The lockdowns shut off those protests, but these days they are back, now full of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. In fact, we get weekly emails from the US Embassy in Paris warning us of potentially-violent manifestations (demonstrations) all over France.

 

It makes France seem like a violent place, but as we learned in Paris during the COP21 talks in 2015, street protests are a sort of national sport in France. We just avoid the appointed spot for the manifestation around the stated kick-off time and go about our business.

Meanwhile, we noticed a line forming outside one of the tents set up for COVID testing; mostly young people. And I realized the strategy: if you can't or won't get vaccinated, just get a test before going out for the night: a negative result, and you're allowed in! Starting October, through, the tests will no longer be free. So the test will add another $30 to a night out. Vaccination, on the other hand, is free...

 

A COVID test tent on a main street in Montpellier

 

 

The weather is still warm, but cooling, with no danger of the feared canicule (heat wave). But summer is clearly ending, with shorter days and quicker twilights. The leaves haven’t started to change yet, but some trees are looking rather tired. And the calendar of events here in Montpellier, both musical and cultural, is filling up.

 

There is an upcoming guitar festival, lasting a month with venues both here in Montpellier and in surrounding communities; next weekend is Les Journées des Patrimoine, a celebration all over France of culture and heritage. Many municipal and some private sites that are not normally open will have a sort of public open house, inviting us common folk in to admire gardens and architecturally significant buildings that normally are closed off. We have a map of some 30 or more places; we’ll have to select them carefully, as there certainly won’t be time to visit them all.

 

 

 

Beyond that, towards the end of the month we’ll be going to Nice (the French city over on the Italian boarder) to see our expat friends Mark and Mary, who are considering moving there after several years in Paris. We were going to take the train down, but we’re hatching another plan: rent a car, and after Nice, keep going east to Italy… and Venice. Maybe stop in at the lakes (Lago Maggiore), re-visit the Dolomites? Plans are forming, stay tuned!

 

Expect to see some changes in the blog! We will be changing our hosting from Blogger to WordPress, which I expect (hope?) to give more flexibility in formatting and presentation. The good news is, we expect to see some interesting changes; bad news is, transitions are always hard! 

Stick with us though, and we’ll work through it.

 

From France to California... and Back

 

Looking across the Elfin Forest and the Back Bay to Morro Rock in the far distance.

Yes, we are now back in France. Perhaps we will be seeing these blogs more regularly! 

Our visit to California was full and rewarding. We got some stuff done, we saw family and friends. We reconnected to this place where we’ve lived for so many years. 

And I was struck, all over again, by the physical beauty of the Central Coast—the open space; the view across the Back Bay; the rocky peaks, both close and far. And the “golden” (which is to say, brown) hills, empty of human-made structures, rolling off into the distance, fronted by the vast expanse of the Pacific, with its rocky shores and extensive beaches. 

Montana de Oro State Park

And all this just a short walk from our house! 

While in Los Osos—the small town where we’ve lived for a dozen years—we stay in the apartment on the ground floor. In the past we’ve had this apartment rented out, but now with the house on a long-term lease we keep it for family and friends. And for us. It gives us flexibility in our comings and goings.

We wanted to keep a low profile for our first few days back—COVID, for one. Jet lag, for another. And, to get some things done around the house. One task was to reduce our extensive collection of old photos. We filled the trash with old prints and negatives, and endless slides (remember those, a bit of 35mm film in a cardboard frame?). And I thought, However good a photographer I am now, I was much worse then… what are all these pictures, anyway??. 

Shortly after we arrived, though, was the annual Great Salmon Sale. A local fish market brought in tons of salmon from Monterey Bay and sold it in the parking lot on Sunday morning, $10 a pound, cut as you liked it. We waited, in a line stretching around the block, for almost an hour.

 

Waiting in line gave us  a chance to reconnect with this part of Morro Bay, with its small commercial fishing fleet tied along the dock, the sailboats moored out in the middle, and the massive, iconic Morro Rock in the near distance, mostly obscured, as it often is, by the fog lying lightly on the bay.

 

And it tasted as good as it looks...

Indeed, this fog—or, rather, the cool weather which brings it—was a prime reason we’d come back in July and August. Montpellier tends to be hot, with the so-called canicule (heat wave) driving the temps into the 90s for days at a time, with little cooling at night.

But in Los Osos we didn’t have that problem! Normal highs were 68° (20°C), and cooler at night. Humid, but cool. For sun we needed only to drive a few miles inland. In fact, after a few hours in the “big city” of San Luis Obispo, we were glad to head back to the coast, and always celebrated as we drove into the fog bank (technically, the “marine layer”), leaving the heat behind.

Mostly, we stayed home, working on the tasks we’d set for ourselves, and catching up with friends. Paula’s brother Mark stayed with us for a week, and we drove up the coast to Big Sur… but not very far, as the road is closed, again. (It washes out every couple of years, in spite of all the major improvements constantly being done by the State). 

We stopped at Ragged Point Inn for lunch, where our meal was accompanied by a band playing outdoors. It was wonderful, being the first live music we’d heard for, what, two years? And we reveled in the beauty of the rolling California coastal hills, fronted by the gorgeous rugged coastline.

Mark  and Paula enjoying the music at Ragged Point Inn

 

The start of the rugged Big Sur coast.

A few weeks later we had another visit from some long-time friends and travel companions, Sue and Alan. We headed to the south part of the county, to the Oceano Dunes, with its sand dunes stretching for miles. I think to get the real impact it’s necessary to arrive in the morning and spend all day. But we were there for only an hour or two, climbing and sliding, enjoying the sun on the warm sand. To the north we could see civilization: the encroaching suburbs; to the south it was empty to the horizon.

The Oceano Dunes stretching to the Pacific Ocean

Paula with friends Sue and Alan in the dunes; like a day at the beach but without the water!

We slowly make our way home...

We spent a few days in the city of San Luis Obispo, and I began to see it as another place to explore and appreciate, like so many other cities we’d visited on our travels. I was glad to see many restaurants had added outdoor seating. One of the joys of meeting and eating in Europe is the outdoor lifestyle. Of course, COVID has moved a lot of things outdoors, but perhaps this is one trend that will continue on after the pandemic.

 

Where it all began: Mission San Luis Obispo, established1772; one of the many missions in the chain started by Father Junípero Serra.

Much of downtown SLO retains the charm of its 19th century origins.

Now this is new: outdoor dining! A traffic lane has been given over to restaurant customers. I hope this idea carries on past the pandemic!

Then there was the family reunion. We hadn’t seen my many brothers and sisters for… well, a couple of years, at least. We’d agreed to meet in Phoenix, never my first choice of where to be in August. But our brother who lives there just couldn’t get away, so Phoenix it was. 

Yeah, it was hot, but not as overwhelming as we’d imagined. A few minutes outside was actually a relief from the over-refrigerated restaurants. Then we got in the air conditioned car and went back to the air conditioned hotel, to float around in the pool and chat!

 We survived, and were glad to leave the massive hubbub of Phoenix's Sky Harbor for the quiet tranquility of San Luis' own tiny airport, where we were off the plane and out to street in a minute and a half!

Social Distancing at the San Luis airport, explained in terms folks from the Central Coast can understand: the size of a wine barrel, the length of a surfboard...

And yes, we’re back in France now, and mostly recovered from our long flight. But more on that later….