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!

Every adventure has a start...

We are at the start of a new chapter in our lives. As a family we have lived in both Canada and England and now we are looking to move again. It isn't because we have been unhappy in any one place, in fact there are parts of our lives in both Canada and England that have been great and we have had some wonderful times in both places. However, since I work at sea, it means that we can live anywhere we like. We firmly believe that we can enhance the lives of everyone in the family if we experience different cultures.

Since Laura is fluent in French and there are also a number of airlines (including the budget ones!) who fly between Scotland (where I work every other 3 weeks) and France we have decided that this would be a great place to start looking. We are thinking towards the south, probably South-East. The likely area is a triangle between Toulouse, Perpignan and Montpellier. This is a large area, but we are keen to make sure that we find the right place and right area.

At the moment we want to move over and rent for about one year so that we know that we are going to the right place and that the whole family settle in. This will also give us the chance to get all our french bank credit sorted out.

As with any big move like this, we are looking into it with great detail and believe me, there is a hugh amount of difference between the two countries even though we are both part of the EU. Renting, mortgages, healthcare, utilities, general living all seem to have a slightly different twist to the way it is done here in England so there is a lot of research to be done. The more we read and learn about France, the more excited we are to experience the culture. We will keep you posted as we go along!

Adam.