This is a short post, as we’re tired and heading back to Tortola. We hate to be leaving Les Terraces and the life that we’re building in Sainte-Foy-La-Grande, but needs must. I haven’t cried (yet) but there have been a few moments where the back of my eyeballs have had that nasty prickly feeling that often heralds tears.
We’ve left Les Terraces with 2 sets of house-hunters in residence. J&J have now graduated from the status of house-hunters to “signed on the dotted line and waiting to close”, for which we congratulate them …. and look forward to taking them up on their kind invitation to visit next time we’re back.
M&S have been searching Sainte-Foy-La-Grande looking for a retirement bolt hole that will allow S to have an atelier for his painting. I spent a lovely afternoon walking around the town finding properties for sale by owners for them before they arrived and learnt a lot about the bastide in so doing, which is great. I’ll have a gallery of images of Sainte-Foy-La-Grande up once we’ve cleared the 3′ stack of mail that we know awaits our attention tomorrow night.
So, back to the things we’ve learnt. A short list:
- Sainte-Foy-La-Grande’s taxis are a rip off on a Sunday. 9€ for a 1km ride from the house to the station.
- Don’t expect the Bar-Restaurant-Hotel de la Gare to be open for a quiet, restful beer after 12 on a Sunday. They’re closed.
- Don’t catch a late-afternoon TGV from anywhere to Paris on a Sunday – they’re packed.
- Do take your own bottle of wine and lunch on the train. It’s a pain to start with, but the savings are well worth it and the quality is way better.
- Do pay the extra to travel in 1st class on the TGV. It’s worth it, particularly when you’re tired.
So, tomorrow we brave the misery of a flight in cattle-class with Air France. What odds do you give me for the meal? Will it be a rice salad with one lonely dry black olive to start, followed by card-boardy chicken with rice (or pasta) in a mystery sauce, and chewy bread and fromage blanc plus a heavy-as-a-dive-weight “tarte tatin” to finish the meal? Do yourself a favour and don’t spend your money. It is almost guaranteed. Sadly, it means that I’ll be travelling with a grumpy man. I think I’ll buy him a sandwich at the airport, just in case. So this hint: have a decent breakfast, if your hotel serves one.
Right, that’s it from us – for now. Bon voyage!
Post-travel update
Breakfast at the hotel (20€) per person was appalling. The worst I’ve encountered yet. If it weren’t for the fact that we had pre-paid for it we’d never have partaken.
We sat in a bus on the tarmac for close to half an hour waiting for the cleaning crew to fix their hoover and finish cleaning the plane. This mean that we were an hour late taking off. However, there were strong tail-winds so we arrived in St. Maarten on time.
I was nearly right on the in-flight meal: It was a pasta salad followed by chicken tahjine and cous-cous is at the very top of Graham’s hate list. To make it worse, the coffee shop adjacent to gate 88 in CDG’s terminal 2C was closed, so I couldn’t even purchase a pre-emptive sandwich!
Still, the people sat in front of us on the jam-packed flight westwards were only mildly antisocial with their seat reclining and those behind us weren’t seat-kickers, and the kids around us weren’t screamers.
In spite of all that we hate about the trans-Atlantic flight we were sorely tempted to board the flying sardine-can-torture-chamber back to Paris and return to Sainte-Foy. But we turned our faces to the LIAT desk and obtained our boarding passes for Tortola. We’re counting the days until our return in March. At the time of updating this post it is 160 days, give or take a couple.