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Well, we made it!

We arrived in Paris on Tuesday morning on a WOW Airlines flight from Baltimore by way of Reykjavik (more about the flight below).  We are each traveling with two carry-on size suitcases, which we checked through. We’re carrying a few things that wouldn’t pass security (liquids, corkscrew, cheese knife) and the allowance was only one carry-on on board.  In a later post, I’ll share the contents of these bags for those of you who’ve wondered, ‘Just what to you pack for a 6-month trip?’

After retrieving our bags and getting some cash from an ATM, we proceeded to the train station where we purchased Navigo passes that allow us to use the Metro, buses and RER trains. These are sold in weekly and monthly increments, so we got one of each to carry us through our time here.  The trip into town took about an hour and our Airbnb apartment is about a block from the St. Paul Metro stop.

The apartment is small but comfortable for the two of us…a living room/dining room, galley kitchen, bedroom (with a nice big, firm bed!) & 1.5 baths. We rearranged a few things to make the closet space work and were able to unpack!!

The weather has been glorious…sunny with highs in the mid 70s…great for walking as we reacquaint ourselves with this lovely city. We’ve located close-by a wine shop, a boulangerie (ahhh, the bread!), a cheese shop, a Franprix grocery that squeezes fresh OJ, and even a little foie gras shop! (Those of you who know Rick understand the importance of this…)

Review of WOW AIRLINES:  It is cheaper than the competition even with the extra fees…checked luggage (everything is weighed so pay attention to weight limits), extra leg room (worth it!). Food and water are for sale on board. I say bring a good sandwich and be sure to bring a bottle of water (it’s cheaper in the airport than on  board…).

This weekend we’ll be embarking on a Locavore City Tour.  Stay tuned…

 

Well, summer is over and we’re almost ready to launch. We saw lots of my family (including Julie & Levi, Andy& Nicole and, of course, Owen) at Alex Hartman’s wedding in Maine.  What fun!  FYI, Owen’s headphones are specially designed for babies to wear in loud places…like wedding receptions!

Now we are spending two weeks in Baltimore, seeing friends and tying up loose ends before we leave for Paris on Sept 19.  But since our house is sold, we’re staying in an Airbnb…the 3rd floor of a grand mansion on Chase Street in Mt. Vernon.  Many friends offered to have us stay with them, but two weeks seemed like too long a time to impose on their hospitality…and it’s great to try a new neighborhood where we can walk or take the Circulator to almost everything.

Stay tuned. My next post is likely to be from Paris!!

 

We made a day trip to Washington, DC last week to apply for our visas at the French Embassy. We flew from Buffalo into a lovely sunrise…and into BWI in less than an hour.

We both got long-stay visas, but only for 5 months, rather than the year we had requested.  The glitch was that the health insurance we had purchased was only effective through February 2017 and the requirement is that you present acceptable health insurance that is in effect for the entire duration of your visa.

We’re looking at this as a speed bump and not a road block.  We were already planning to come back to the US for a visit in late February anyway.  And, after that, there are plenty of places that we can go, including France, using the automatic 90 day visa that US passport holders get in most European countries.

In the interest of helping others to do this more smoothly, I will say that I knew this requirement but that I had great difficulty finding affordable health insurance that met the visa requirements AND that lasted more than 6 months.  However, at the Embassy I picked up a clearer description of the health insurance requirement (why can’t they put this on their website?!) and have now found two companies that offer longer term policies that don’t break the bank.  They are TravelSafe/Seven Corners and IMG (International Medical Group).  When we reapply, we’ll be better prepared.

One additional thought about health insurance.  We intend to keep both our Medicare and Medigap policies here in the US.  We’re both ridiculously healthy and don’t really intend to seek health care overseas.  The only provision of the required expat insurance that we see as useful is that it pays for evacuation to  your home country if you are really ill. That would put us back here with our US coverage if necessary.

I was reading an interview with the novelist Russell Banks in the Wall Street Journal last week in which he distinguished between a traveler “…tends to be running away from something” and a voyager “…tends to be running toward something.”  I believe that we are, finally, voyagers, with nothing to run away from and everything to run toward.

Banks also had a wonderful definition of the perfect traveling companion, “optimistic, energetic, not easily discouraged, not inclined to depression (and yet not naive or sentimental either), skeptical and up for anything.” As I talk to friends and acquaintances about our upcoming adventure, I have become very aware of how lucky we both are to have found in each other the ideal traveling companions!

Our time after Paris (post 10/23) is beginning to take shape.  We think we’ll head south toward Chinon, in the Loire Valley, for a couple of days, then to the Moulin du Roc near Brantôme for a romantic dinner and overnight, and on to St Emilion for a few days.  We are planning for our next long stop to be in the Languedoc, north of Spain near the Mediterranean.  With help from a friend of Ray & Tori’s who lives there, we expect to spend November exploring the entire area, probably from a base in Narbonne.

So…the next step in preparing for our adventure was to get our long-stay visa for France.  I spent a lot of time carefully assembling all the required documents and we made appointments at the Consulate in Chicago because it was the most convenient for us to get there from Chautauqua.  What I did not realize was that each Consulate only accepts applications from certain states.  Needless to say, we were disappointed to have gone all the way to Chicago only to be turned away!

We now have appointments in DC in August (they handle Maryland residents, which I guess we sort of still are …we have MD driver’s licenses…).  We can do this in a day trip and this will still give us enough time to get the visas before our planned launch date of September 19.

The best part about our Chicago trip, though, was visiting Ray Hofmann and Tori Simms, our former neighbors on Patterson Park.  They live in a gorgeous arts and crafts style condo in the Uptown neighborhood.  It was great to catch up and Rick had a chance to get his ‘cat fix.’  We walked to dinner at Appellations in the Andersonville neighborhood.  There is so much lovely architecture in Chicago.  It would have been nice to have more time to explore, but we flew back to Buffalo on Wednesday afternoon.  Onward!!

As I’ve talked with friends about our plan to shed possessions and travel the world, I’ve promised to create a blog through which you can follow us on our great adventure.  Here is the first installment.  I promise they’ll get more exciting…

We have accomplished a lot in the last several months in preparation for our Nomad Year(s).  We sold our house in Baltimore (settlement was July 15), gave away an incredible amount of furniture and stuff (to friends, our children, the Butcher’s Hill Flea Market and the new owners of our house), and put the rest of our things in storage.  We even found a storage facility for what is left of our wine.

We are spending the summer in Chautauqua, as we have for many years and it has given us time to sort through things like how to handle our mail, how to apply for a long-stay visa (more on that later), and deciding what we REALLY need to carry with us (much less than we originally thought!)

MAIL:  Beginning in April, I diligently called every company that sends us mail that we no longer want to receive and asked them to remove us from their mailing list.  We immediately saw a decrease in the junk in our mailbox.  We then registered a change of address with the Post Office to our P O Box in Chautauqua.  At the end of our time here, we’ll change this to a P O Box in Bend, OR, that Andy has agreed to monitor periodically.  Since we do all our business and banking on line, we don’t expect to receive much snail mail…

LONG-STAY VISA:  We learned that one can apply for a long-stay Visa (up to a year) for France.  This will allow us to travel throughout the Schengen Zone pretty freely and should also allow periodic trips back to the US without the need for anew Visa.  The process is not easy.  We have to appear in person at the French Embassy or at a full service Consulate and bring with us a whole list of documents.  We have our appointment on July 27 in Chicago (since this is closest to Chautauqua) where we’ll have a chance to visit our old Baltimore neighbors, Tori & Ray, who’ve agreed to put us up for the night.

WHERE WILL WE GO FIRST?  Paris, of course! We’ve secured an Airbnb flat in the Marais (4th arr) from September 20-October 23.  It looks like a nice space and we know it’s a great location.  Lew & Pat Mastrobuono will join us in Paris toward the end of our time there.  And we really hope that many other friends will do this as we move around. (We’ll keep you posted through this blog).

Stay tuned and let me know how I can improve this modern means of staying in touch.