Bonjour!

                                                                      Our new home.

   Well after probably what can only be described as the most stressful week of my life we have arrived in Val d’isere. I will warn you now that this probably going to be a very long post.

   Where to start?? Obviously saying the goodbyes was just so sad but it had to be done and I think I’ve used all my tears up for now. But we have visitors twice in January so it won’t be long before we see some familiar faces. And then we had major headaches with the house sale, no suprise there eh? We did’nt exchange contracts until the Tuesday in the end, the buyers at the bottom of the chain had’nt signed or returned their contracts until Monday so you can only imagine just how unnerving that was as we were told by our solicitor that he was getting wary, not what you want to hear. But all was well in the end, we exchanged Tuesday and we left on the Wednesday morning instead. I say all is well, the lying robbing bastards that are also known as the estate agents , have taken more money out of our sale than they were meant to so we are now on the case of sorting that one out!!! When will it end???

   Anyway enough about that lets start on the good stuff. W e set off Wednesday morning at 5.40am to get the euro tunnel across to Calais. Half hour later and we were in France. I should probably mention at this point that it is a wonder that our car moved at all given the amount of stuff we had crammed into it, travel lightly? Capsule wardrobe? Bare essentials I hear you say??? Ha, I do not know the meaning of those wise words, I must learn though! But it was not just me, whilst unpacking Mr found that he had bought an odd sock and four watches, one of which does not work!!!!!! I on the other hand found that whilst unpacking myself amongst countless other things I have bought 3 black vests, 3 white vests, 2 white blouses, 3 black skirts and a pair of 5” peep toe Louboutins!!!! When will I learn??? Oh and my heated rollers!!! He he!!

   So after a straight forward, no getting lost and traffic free 12 hour drive we finally arrived in the mountains at around 6.30pm. It was -5 and there was snow everywhere! We then had the almighty task of unloading the car, our apartment is on the 1st floor but it’s a split level building because it is built into the mountain, so each load had to go up 2 flights of stairs to get to the lift!!! It was then that we once again started questioning why on earth we have bought so much with us, but hey ho it’s here now!

   The apartment is great, needed an almighty clean, even though Mr was saying it’s me with the OCD even he agreed that it was in need of a major going over. What is it with dirty people??? But as it’s only a one bed apartment it was sparkling in no time at all. It is so strange but after just one night here it really felt like home, I have’nt ever really felt like that anywhere before. Bloody typical, if we wanted to buy it its worth £320,000.00, bit over budget!

    The first morning we woke up to it snowing, I cannot tell you how great it is to lay in bed and look out at the mountains with snow falling all around. We have enormous windows (which were filthy!! I may add, not anymore!!) the width of the bedroom and the living area so the views are just amazing, beats looking out at rows of houses!!! That evening I assembled a celebratory meal of smoked salmon, pate, cheese, olives, bread and salad with a bottle of champagne, an aperitif on the balcony then back into the warm for dinner. It felt lovely, good food, champagne, surrounded by candles and looking out to see it still snowing. This is what living is all about!

   It is strange to be here so early, the slopes don’t open till next Saturday so the whole village is a hive of activity with building work being done on hotels, chalets, shops etc, but there’s not really many people living here yet. There are a couple of bars open, a couple of restaurants and one cafe so it is a bit odd. But Friday night we went to one of the bars and got chatting to some of the other early arrivals and they were more our age group which was reassuring, although It’s mainly men!! Yesterday there were arrivals of a few groups of very young people that are rep training for the holiday companies, good luck if they are in charge of your holidays, they look about 15!! They were out and about orienteering around the village, they looked like they were on a school trip!!

   The one problem we do have is that we have no internet access in the apartment yet so have to use the one cafe that is open, you can imagine how busy it is as it’s the only one open. So I am currently writing this on Word so that I can just copy/paste and publish when we pop out later on. We do hope that we will be up and running sometime next week, but we are now living a life that does not require haste, rushing or stress so we just got to wait until we hear what’s going on. We have discovered that there is wi-fi in the building but neither of us know how to hack in!! Any suggestions would be much appreciated!!!

   I did the 1st shopping expedition on Friday, 35 minute drive down the mountain to a small town called Bourg St Maurice, and voila, a supermarket, I should add the only place open to buy food in Val at the mo is a Spar shop in a garage, £3.74 for half a loaf of bread!!!! But in the Super U in the town the same bread was £1.09, what an incredible difference! That is one of the reasons we drove out, I was already aware that food in the village is on average 60% more expensive than at the supermarket at the bottom of the mountain, so we will be driving down there once a week . The food selection was great though, loads of choice and loads of very unusual bits obviously , you know the French eat anything! Tripe anyone???

   So that’s about all for now before I bore you senseless. We are meeting a lady regarding work tomorrow morning so hopefully that will sort itself out, but we have heard that there are quite a few people looking to employ so that is good news. Although I have been told twice now to go and do nannying!! There are plenty of nannying jobs available apparently and its good money and few hours. If things get desperate obviously I will do whatever is available, but bloody hell can you imagine me doing that????? “Oops, Cosmo stop stabbing Fenella with that icicle!!!”

Will be back more frequently once we have le web!

Au revoir mon amis.

E xxxxxxxxxxx

ps. there was photos of apartment and views etc but blogger is'nt working!!!