An update... Part One...

I must start this entry with an apology.  As you know, there has not been a update on this blog for some time now as for a while nothing happened and then all of a sudden too much happened which meant that there wasn't enough time to update.  So I will try my very best to update you with everything that has happened over the past few months.

Laura went to a French Property Show in London which initially looked like it was going to be really good.  However, after a long and hard journey getting there it turned out to be a little disappointing.  She did manage to find out some good information and get some contact about finances and legal issues.  But it was more about buying a property rather than renting one which is more what we are after right now.

Around the same time I found a good website which has long term rentals (http://www.immostreet.com/).  This became a really useful website as most of the other websites generally give you winter rentals, or rentals where the cost increases over the summer.

So after searching through the website we were able to narrow down a selection of properties which we wanted to have a look at.  All we had to do now was to take a trip over to France.  We started to look at different flights and trains, Hotels and B&B's.  Trying to cut the costs down and keep it to a reasonable price.  As you can imagine it is very easy to get a little carried away and before you know it the price is sky high.  I managed to get a good deal on the car hire with Europcar, which was harder than I thought it would be.  For a start some car hire companies charge over £50.00 to hire a single child seat which was something that we needed two of!

For the flights we ended up using Ryanair as they are by far the cheapest option.  The only problem is the amount of hoops that you have to jump through.  For example; if you want to take luggage you have to pay extra.  If you want to reserve a seat, you have to pay extra.  If you want to pay by any other means than prepaid Mastercard, you have to pay extra.  However, we did manage to get the flights for a very reasonable £6.00 per person/each way.  So all in all we paid just £76.00 for 2 adults, 1 child and 1 infant for return flight from London to the south of France (infants have a flat rate of £20 each way).

So flights booked, car booked and we had also booked into a Première Classe hotel in Montpellier for the first night. 

We are ready to go!