Cooking, planning, and chores can sure mess up sketching time, but at last now we are near Paris. We originally reserved this apartment as a place to stay while we sold our car – three weeks seemed like plenty of time to get it done, while allowing us to just live in a French community that was not a tourist stop.

Our first surprise was that selling the car was quite easy thanks to Sarah our consultant recommending vendezvotrevoiture.fr. Translated it is “sell your car.” We filled out some info last week on line, they gave us an estimate and we set an appointment for them to check the car out and make an offer. The short of it is that we drove from Torchamp to Nanterre yesterday and after a couple of hours at their office the sale was made and the funds were on the way to our bank. However there is more to the story…

We spent our last days packing and cleaning, but of course we found time to cook, and Sunday lunch is a must. We love grilled salmon but we miss the wild caught Alaskan Salmon of the Pacific Northwest. If salmon is cooked correctly, which means not overcooked to the point of being dry, it does not need anything other than a dash of salt. Methods that involve baking (except on a cedar plank) or a thick sauce just don’t entice us much. Grilling or roasting salmon that is moist allows the wonderful flavor of the salmon to shine.

We served it with classic braised French Lentils. When you braise lentils the aromatic veggies are simmered with the lentils resulting in an intense flavor. Since asparagus is still in season it was a perfect accompaniment.

Spring is beautiful in Normandy. This is a photo of the field from our backyard. And a sketch of the old stone ovens so ubiquitous in Normandie.

However, the story got more interesting on Sunday afternoon. The warm sunny weather changed into violent thunder and lightening accompanied by torrential rain. Tricia took this video looking out our front door.

When there is lightning, we, as most all of rural France does, unplug our modems. For some reason they do not use surge protectors here, no one has been able to explain to me why. So since the modem for our group is in our atrium I am the one responsible.

When the weather turned bad and the thunder got closer I dutifully unplugged everything, which ended the movie we were watching since it comes across the internet. The storm moved away so I reattached everything. About an hour later we heard thunder and saw more flashes so I headed out to unplug again. Just as I opened the door, standing about three feet from the modem, there was a huge flash of lightening followed by a loud pop as the modem blew. Soon neighbors came over, curious if the wifi was done for now, it was. Thankfully our phones work as hotspots so all was good, except the movie will have to wait.

Monday the plan was to leave about 11.00 to take the three hour drive to our rented apartment in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris. We would check in, drop our things, then make a 17.00 appointment to sell the car. About one hour out as we were approaching an A route I check to see if my wallet was easy to reach, but alas, no wallet. As Tricia explained to our friends “Terry has never done that.”

Thankfully we actually left about 10.00 because we were ready to go, a good thing since we had to drive back to La Thebauderie to get my wallet, all the way hoping we would not meet up with a Gendarme for any reason.

We made it to Nanterre by 15.45, figured out the lockbox and the doors to our apartment, dropped our things and easily made our appointment.

All went well. The friendly technician checked everything out, they made us an offer that was considerably more than we had initially thought we would get, all was going well, THEN… We gave her our banking details. Money transfers are so frequent here that everyone has their IBAN number close at hand. I gave her ours along with the required BIC info. (For non European folks your homework assignment is to find out what these are. Your US bank account has them it is just that we don’t use them like they do here.)

The helpful woman got one of those looks that you don’t like to see when doing this kind of thing. “Your bank is Revolut? It is an internet bank.” She did not think they would use that. After a bit of scrambling, explaining that it is what we use for everything here her head office in the Netherlands approved it, whew. We signed everything and headed for a celebratory meal, what else would you expect from us.

We stopped at one of the first French restaurants we saw, we are in a rather diverse part of Île-de-France so there are places from all over the world here. We found L’Apostrophe, a place we will visit again soon. Amazing duck with mash and a spicy sauce for me, Caesar salad for Tricia, and one of the better Chardonnay wines we have had in a long time.

We were ready to chill a bit and head for bed, and with a bed as inviting as this how could you blame us, not to mention the fact we had dealt with a bit of stress and walked 6,272 step, 2.5 miles, 6 flights of stairs; for our friend Dave that is nothing, for us we were tired.

Beautiful yes, but have I ever mentioned how much I hate duvets? For the life of me I do not know why people use them. Check the Airbnb descriptions and people proudly announce a duvet as a selling point. I dont get it.

I have never slept in any hotel that was cold enough to need a duvet – and I used to go to Fairbanks in the winter quite often. They even use them in Phoenix, yes Phoenix where it is hot, even in the winter.

The only thing worse than being a bit cold while sleeping is being too hot, so I kick the duvet off, then I get too cold so try covering a bit, only to get too hot again. What is wrong with a good old blanket?

So on this comfortable queen bed I did the duvet dance. Tricia was also too warm so the duvet ended up piled up between us taking up half the bed. At 0200 I moved out to the couch in the living room, nice looking and comfortable enough when sitting but a near torture divice for sleeping.

Thankfully Tricia was patient with my grumbling this morning and we found a light blanket to replace the duvet tonight, I am already anticipating a better nights sleep.

We are settling in and getting ready to go to Paris tomorrow for an appointment and lunch. I like this neighborhood so far, sketches and stories to follow.