Pandemonium

So, the apartment was a hell of workers, sanding, plastering patchwork and destruction. After 3 days with Mme Lassoued, I had to get out. Not that it wasn’t thoughtful and kind of her to allow me to stay, it was. And not that it wasn’t just a whole lotta fun, it wasn’t. But I had to get there early in the morning and get working. I had only a month before I was to return home. Chez Lassoued, it was early morning pandemonium, followed by breakfast pandemonium, followed by getting dressed pandemonium, you see where I am headed. We’d arrive at the apartment at noon. The workers in the meantime stood around smoking and commenting on everything. the French love to comment and opinionize about everything no matter if it concerns them or not.

So I moved in. It was freezing, the bed was filled with plaster dust. The whole place smelled like linseed oil which is not my favorite odor. I had to ask the workers not to smoke in the place.

Dedans

The interior of the apartment was a mess. There was a massive amount of work to do when I arrived. Although I had been led to believe otherwise, it was not habitable and I was forced to stay with my business partner and her husband Samy and their 3 children. Besides the obvious problem of living with 3 undisciplined children, the weather was abominable. It was freezing cold. Less then a week before when I asked about the weather I was told it was "beach weather." This apparently meant colder than a son of a beach.


Loralyn, who proved to be virtually of no help at all, is shown here pretending to scrape a wall. In reality she had some sort of illness that resembled consumption but probably was not because it did not leave her gaunt and operatically beautiful. Not that she isn't beautiful in her own way. As you will see.

The word bordelle comes to mind

The apartment was built in the 1600s as a convent. My apartment has 2 bedrooms and a nice terrace which overlooks the street which winds very steeply down to the original old gate of the walled city it once was. Hyéres is a port city but the port is not in the midst of town as it is in most of the cities on the coast. For this reason and because it is built on a very steep rocky hill as a fortress it has architecture that is different from the rest of the cote d'azur. 

When I arrived, this was the terrace. The inside only slightly more sightly.

Toute suite.

My friend Loralyn didn't need to be too persuasive. Within days I was in negotiations speaking to bankers and notaires in French. They were very polite and long suffering since my French, while passible, does not extend to things legal. Eventually I bought the damn place and made arrangements to go, in the middle of February, (Loralyn said "Oh it's always beautiful here".) for a month. Hyéres is in the south of France. It has a climate like Florida. The city itself is known for the millions of palm trees it exports to the Middle East. So I went.

Here is Loralyn looking smug. Which may have more to do with the fact that she is having a beer in the middle of the day and not attending to her 3 children for a change.

I bought an apartment in France

A friend who lives in France called me one morning 5 years ago to tell me that she'd found an apartment I should buy. This was not such an outrageous thought since: A. I speak French. B. I've been there many times. C. I have thought about doing something like this for a long time, even going so far as to attempt to buy something on a French speaking island in the Caribbean. So she calls me to tell me that she'd found this perfect place that: A. I would love. B. Was not expensive, and C. She would buy it with me and manage it for me.

The apartment is in the city of Hyéres, a small town on the coast of the Mediterranean about half way between Nice and Marseilles. The address: 15ter rue Fenouillet.