Found a Place to Stay

17 Dec 2012

We have a place to stay on our France sojourn! At the suggestion of our friends, we joined the Anglophone organization in the area we want to stay in, and put an advertisement in their newsletter. A fellow who has a house in Montigny-sur-Loing, about fifteen minutes south of Fontainbleau, responded. He has a three-bedroom house, fully furnished, in this small village. The house looks wonderful, with an enclosed yard and room for Craig and Annie and Clara to stay with us when they visit. It’s about a ten-minute walk to the train station, where trains leave for Paris every hour - about a 55-minute trip. Monday, Jamie and Hervé Rufin, our friends in nearby Samois-sur-Seine, visited the house to check it out for us, and pronounced it comfortable and livable. Good enough for us!

Here are some pictures of the house we’ll call home for at almost five months next year.[gallery]

Laurie and I have long said that we really love the small villages of France (which does not, of course, mean that we don’t also love Paris; we do!) and that we’d like to live in one for a while. Montigny-sur-Loing certainly fits that description: it’s about 2,600 people, one main street, bordered on the north by the Fontainebleau forest and on the south by the Loing River (it’s large enough to have two pizza places, fortunately; gotta love a nice Italian pizza in a small French town). Maybe after a few months we’ll decide that visiting a beautiful village and actually living in one are two different things, but…we’ll take that risk.

Now that we’ve found the house for next summer, we just need to wrap up a few minor details: booking flights, leasing a car, packing for five months, and learning French. Piece of cake!