The Great Apartment Hunt

Sunday we woke up bright and early to actually make breakfast and our appointment at noon. Due to the festivities the night before, our Aussie friend Bethany didn't quite make the 10:00am train to Aix-en-Provence that she was dead set on catching; so it was nice to have one last breakfast and refuse to eat Veggie Mite with her. After some tearful goodbyes (not really, in the backpacking world, it's more like see you in another country), we catch the tram to take a look at the apartment. With only one wrong turn we manage to find it, but being that this apartment wasn't in an area that we originally desired, we were both a little skeptical and set on being critical. We came, we saw, and we told the landlord that we'd call her the next day after we viewed the other apartment. The rest of Sunday was very uneventful, as most things are closed in the city....are we seeing a pattern here yet?

Monday rolls around and surprise, the markets aren't the only things that are closed. Again, for some reason, people don't like to work on Monday either. I think we have it completely wrong in North America. Here, we take 2+ hour lunch breaks and don't work Saturday, Sunday or Monday. How anything gets done is beyond me. So, we head into town to register with the Canadian Consulate (which is only open from 9-12, apparently they too have adopted the French way). Little did we know that this lady would be absolutely no help. Like the Government offices at home, she directs us to a website and tries to get us out of the office as quickly as possible. We do however manage to ask her about the area of town where our possible apartment is located, and are thrilled to find out that it is a safe, up and coming neighbourhood. From here we're off to the beach for a lunch of baguette, green pepper and grapes (healthy I know). Seeing as though we arrived at the beach a little before lunch, we were shocked to hear a massive gun shot go off and the birds take off just minutes after our arrival. It took us about two seconds to realize that this is what they do to alert the town that it's lunch, and that it wasn't actually a gun, but rather a cannon...go figure! Being that it was such a nice day, we spend our lunch hours sleeping under the warm sun on the rocky beach. Upon waking up, we both decided that the apartment we viewed was in fact bigger, cheaper and nicer than anything else we've read or heard about, so we decided to call the lady and tell her we'll take it. And this Ladies and Gentlemen is the part of the story where things head south. Upon telling her this she proceeds to tell us the GIGANTIC list of things she would like from us before our 6:30 pm meeting. Where to start we don't know, but we head to an insurance company to find out about renters insurance and then back to the hostel to figure everything else out. As we do this however, we get another call from the lady telling us that she herself tried to arrange insurance in case we didn't pay and was told that she was taking a massive risk by renting to us, and therefore, she needed a few days to think about it and that she'd understand if we found something else. Translation: You're young, foreign and don't yet have jobs, I don't want you. Well this sends us into a furry of anger where we proceed to email every person that has contacted us about an apartment whether we liked the deal or not, book an extra night in the hostel and cross our fingers that apartment lady ends up with an empty pad for what she's done to us.

Tuesday morning arrives and with a clearer head I wake up and decided that we've been misjudged and that I'm going to let this lady know so. So I type and type and type, being as friendly as I can, while at the same time letting this woman know that she's got us all wrong. When Julie wakes up, I show her my letter and off the email goes. 10 minutes later we get a text message that say "OK, you can have apartment, check e-mail for details". We receive the email and find a list of things that need to be gathered, but they are reasonable and we accept. Now the task of finding money. First and Last months rent are one thing, a two month damage deposit and rent for the rest of the month are another. First we try Julie's debit card, max it out. Then we set on the task of finding a bank that will cash advance our credit cards with no pin code. NONE, we checked them all! So, I text home and make the Fam find the code for my one credit card, max it out. The other card, well I'm out of luck with that one. The code won't be sent to my house for 7-10 days. Still a few hundred short and no money to eat, we try the toll free number on the back of our credit cards to see if they cave and give us our pins. Collect calls are blocked on the French phones. No Luck. So we use the cell phone. Finally Julie gets her debit card limit increased, but the brand new minutes on our cell phone are gone. Regardless, the increased limit allows us to go back to the bank and get the rest of the money we require. Next is a trip to an Internet cafe to get some paper work off the Internet and photocopy some stuff, and we're done...and tired. We meet our landlady, sign the papers...and we finally have an apartment! YEAH!!! At this point we head back to the hostel for one last night and some really good lasagna.

The next morning we move in, clean the apartment from top to bottom and meet our landlady to do our walk thru, take count of the things in the apartment and check for damage. It's then that we find out that the previous tenant was wanted by the police, refused to pay rent, broke down the door when he forgot his key..all in a weeks time. Now the anal-retentiveness of our landlady makes sense, we assure her this won't be us.

Thursday we head to Ma Nolan's for Trivia night again, only this time with the help of our Kiwi friend's old Yachting crew we are able to tie for 1st! YEAH! The tie breaker however is not so yeah! Julie has to guess Chuck Norris' birthday and is shocked to discover that he's 68 years old. Still with a four-way tie, we managed to pull off 3rd and win a 30 euro gift certificate.

Friday we head to a HUGE market in Italia and wander around looking like lost tourists. They have TONNES of stuff at this market, from scarves to clothes to pots and pans. Overwhelmed by everything, we walk away empty handed after looking around for a few hours. We then head to the Gelato place outside of the train station and get real Italian Gelato. SO GOOD! With twenty minutes until the train back home, we venture back into the food market and come out with Parmesan Cheese, Spicy Olives, and Stinky Sausage for Julie....all for 10 euros. Later that evening, we head to Wayne's...the backpackers' bar with our Yachting friends from the night before. This is the part of our trip where Julie and I discover just how old we are, as we determine that we'd rather be in a pub sipping drinks and talking to friends while sitting down, rather than in a bar listening to really loud live music and watching drunk girls dance on the tables that once served as a resting place for our beverages. We eventually head home, and with the Tram 22 minutes away, we decided to walk and get to our apartment just as the Tram is arriving.

Saturday we sleep in and wake up at 11:30 to the couple upstairs having the most heated argument of life. Screaming, yelling and baby crying, we were up for good at this point. So, we head to the Patisserie for Chocolate Croissants and meet up with Katie and Sebass to head the the Wal-Mart of France....Carrefour. We get hangers, a hair straightener, and a vase. Then, we decided to go to Italy for an authentic Pizza dinner. First however, we hit up McDonald's to get an app (cause the French don't eat dinner until 9pm) which consisted of a Chicken McNugget meal and Lemon Crunch Sundaes (which by the way are the BEST! If they are in Canada, go get one now..it's like Lemon meringue pie and ice cream all in one!)

Dinner was amazing - we went to a pizzeria in Dolce Accqua - a small town on the border of Italy and France. Thank you kindly to Sebass for driving! :) Crustino for an appetizer, followed by delightful pizza, and marvelous dessert. Let me not forget to mention the two young men sitting diagonal from us - one of which was wearing a woman's pink t-shirt (we believe an XXS) and the other wearing a pink trucker hat, with a shiny gold jacket. Photo to follow. Full and exhausted, we head home to sleep, not before setting the clocks back an hour for daily savings time!

This finally brings us to today - a very relaxed day indeed. So so nice! We hang around the apartment a little, walk outside and go to the giant market just outside our doorstep and buy 2kg of potatoes, grapes, and bananas - everything for under 5 euros! A couple chocolate croissants, and some more groceries later, we come home to relax for the rest of the day, do some cleaning and catch up on our blog. Amazing!

So from now on, the blogs will be much much shorter and more enjoyable to read than a huge long passage that people say they will "read later". Later just never comes. But to those of you who are like me, and don't like reading long articles, you're in for a treat! Until next time! - April