After a 'play day' yesterday, it was back to work today. It was our first perfect day here - sunny, blue skies, no wind, a warm temperature of 25 degrees and noticeably more people wandering around and enjoying the town. Yesterday and today are public holidays in France, and many people take the 'pont', i.e. bridge, and take Friday as a holiday as well, meaning they have five days to go on holiday. All of a sudden, compared to last week, there are many tourists, both French and foreigners, filling up the cafes and restaurant tables. It is really nice to see.
We kicked off the day with a walk, though rather shorter than yesterday's 14km, and subsequently enjoyed our first coffee at Le Comptoir in the sun. We actually got too hot, but we are NOT complaining. Yesterday, our friends Andrew and Marijke had suggested we put a For Sale sign on our front door, because the A Vendre sign on our balcony is only visible if you look right up high. We only realised this when we were all downstairs in the square below and saw that the sign is not particularly eye-catching. So, John and I took some new photos today, printed them on a piece of paper and taped it to our front door. The contract with our real estate agent allows for us to sell the apartment on our own behalf or with a second agent, so we thought this seemed a good option. Our front door is right next to the menu board for the restaurant on the ground floor of our building, hence, we figure our photos might get a good amount of scrutiny.
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| Photos on the front door |
If you look up at our apartment from the square, you really have no idea that our apartment is so light, modern and airy, which the photos clearly depict. The apartment looks so good when we can open up the doors and show the view down to the square below - this is why we have loved living here so much.
Before lunch John had done some work on sanding and plastering some of the ceiling in the mezzanine which was showing the effects of roof leaks in previous years. It wasn't much, but with some more tlc, and a new coat of paint or two, it came up looking much better. It was well worth doing, as was filling and painting a number of holes left in the walls where we had removed paintings etc.
After a full clean and tidy-up we started to tackle cutting down the enormous bike box we had picked up a few days ago. We want to use it to take our paintings back to NZ. John loves a challenge like this. So, with a tape measure, sharp knife, glue and brown tape we set to. It took quite a while, but after we'd managed to get the box cut down to the right size and the paintings tested, heavily protected by our squashable feather duvets, we felt as though we'd done enough work for the day. A glass of wine was in order......
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| The first incision ..... |
So there we were having a quiet glass of wine, enjoying the windows being open for the first time, and in flew a pigeon! It's a surprise that it's the first time this has happened, as there is quite a large pigeon population in Ceret, and a woman in nearby apartment throws food down into the square sometimes. Anyway, with some wild flapping and a few wrong choices flying into windows, the pigeon found its way back outside.
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| Pigeon sitting on our sheet drying on the mezzanine rail. Thankfully it didn't leave a calling card. |
The main task on Friday morning was to get ourselves to Perpignan and get two new tyres put on the car. Over the last 10 years we have often driven to Carter-Cash, where you can buy anything for the car and then the team of mechanics carry out any follow up work, e.g. change the oil, put on new tyres. We arrived in good time at 9.30am and purchased two tyres, but it was an unexpectedly long wait in the queue today. In fact it took two hours to get through the system, most of it waiting in the car in the strong sun. However, we had our e-readers with us, some nut bars and water.
The tyres were changed very efficiently and we were on our way to another part of Perpignan to visit Decathlon. The latter is a huge sports outlet, much like Rebel Sports but far bigger. The Perpignan store had also just relocated to a brand new purpose-built building. We knew we couldn't really buy much because we don't have the space in our bags to take it back home, but we did manage to find the one small present we were looking for.
By lunchtime the temperature gauge in the car had hit 30 degrees. The weather has changed immensely within just the last few days. The air conditioning in our car doesn't work anymore so we wanted to head straight home. However, en route we pass a second-hand car dealers yard so we decided to pull in and have a chat about potentially selling our car. John had seen that this firm was mentioned on Le Bon Coin and you can drive in and sell up at any time, just taking the price offered.
It surprised us both when the guy offered John 2000E on the spot. It was more than we thought we'd be able to start with as an asking price. (John had done some background research so had a reasonable idea of what the car is worth). The car dealer gave the car a very casual look over and said he was happy for us to use the car for another three weeks and just swing buy when we were ready to sell it. We immediately shook his hand. 2000E it is, mind you we'd just spent 105E on the two new tyres. What a surprise and a very welcome one. We no longer have to stress about advertising the car privately, we got a price we are very happy with and we don't have to do any of the fettling we'd anticipated. The latter was just as well because John had left the car polish he had bought at the Carter-Cash on their counter! We'll deliver the car in a very clean condition anyway, but are both thrilled that the pressure of trying to dispose of it is now gone.
By the time we arrived home we were both feeling very knackered. However, later in the afternoon we spent another hour resizing and gluing more sides of the bike box. We're using my weights to give the glue a bit of extra oomph. We now have three sides strongly secured, with one last side to trim down and secure.
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| Glued, taped and roped up to put pressure on securing the edges |
Dinner was a heated up shop-bought pizza!
