A wander through Europe to find that ideal nest . . .
For those of you who are new to this website, you should know that your host has spent much of his life wandering, seemingly from one lost cause to another, feeling thwarted and dissatisfied by so many of his life choices. Yet at the same time he has had some wonderful experiences, has visited many exciting, interesting places, has had many delightful friendships and has stored away a host of memories that he likes to pull out from time to time. Two aspects of his life have proved particularly frustrating, the first being to find the ideal mate; and then, having achieved the first, to identify the ideal nest to suit the needs and aspirations of that special person, without the old cycle starting once more. This sounds like a simple logical process, but as we all know where affairs of the heart are concerned it is depressingly easy to go off course at the first fork in the road.
Happily, his ideal mate has now entered his world and all he/they have to do is find that elusive nest, so that both may live happily ever after, unfettered by any of the aforementioned doubts and problems. But where to begin? For starters he joined such organisations as International Living.com and devoured their advice and offerings. Then he and his new mate started to experiment by visiting some of the places he had become so enthused about, starting with Costa Rica, then Ecuador – where they took a wonderful side tour to The Galapagos Islands. They also both brought their earlier travel experiences into the mix and began to conclude that somewhere in Europe would perhaps be the ideal; and so began several months of considering their options, deciding how best to travel, when to travel, and for how long, and what language they wanted to use the most. French coming out on top, for reasons we shall learn as we go along, they then considered the likelihood of acceptable weather patterns and opted to go on a six months Grand Tour covering nearly all of the south of France, with possible side tours into north Italy and the Basque country on both sides of the Franco-Spanish frontier. It all made wonderful sense, and so with approximate dates decided, a rough itinerary mapped out, only a few minor details remained to keep them well occupied for the next six months, and thus the great adventure began.
At long last all the planning, the despair, the frustration, the excitement of travelling again, that we had gone through since this wonderful idea had come into our heads so many weeks and months ago, had come to fruition as our half-year long sejour in Europe began with time to explore at our leisure, Lyon, France’s second city and self-styled gourmet capital. Variously frustrated by, tired of, bored with, Californian life Long Beach style, we had formulated a campaign to see as many as possible of those parts of France, and hopefully also a sampling of Italy and Spain, that we believed might offer us the ideal location to put down new roots sometime in the not-too-distant future. Not having any great desire to experience quite the same cold and damp climates of our Polish and English birthplaces, whilst still wanting to benefit once again from the vagaries of four distinct meteorological seasons, we had set our sights on a narrow band across the south of France from Provence-Alpes to Pyrenees-Atlantique, with the hope of possible detours eastwards into the Italian Riviera and south-westerly into the Basque Region of Spain. But first we needed to acclimatize ourselves to ‘la vie francaise’, and a relaxing month in this beautiful city looked like it would do the job perfectly.