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Auntie Awesome’s Travel Log

I came to France after my truly absorbing travels through Egypt and Istanbul, to see if there is an apartment I could buy within my 100,000€ budget, with costs I can afford, somewhere I want to live.

Sitting in Cuenca, mining through real estate aggregate sites like Bien’ici, it seemed there should be lots of possibilities. Not in Paris of course, or bigger, more sophisticated cities like Lyon, but in smaller cities like Beziers, or Bordeaux. I was intrigued when I came across Saint-Etienne in my researches.

I am in Istanbul, after eighteen wonderful days in Egypt. What an experience. I have thousands of photos and hundreds of stories about that, especially the magnificent tombs.

Just three short days in Istanbul have resulted in lots more photos and stories. That is the Topkapi dagger up above. For now though, I’ll leave off the sights, historical and architectural monuments, art, jewels and treasures, and move to a lighter topic – shopping!

I had arranged to be taken to the post office. I had 13 postcards to stamp and mail. Abul, my guide on the day I made this request, complied with good humour. But I have no doubt he was thinking loudly to himself “For this I got a degree in Egyptology?” I figured we go in, we buy 13 international stamps, stick them on and off we go.

Not quite.

Abdul took a number. Next thing I knew, he was standing at the counter – without me. I hadn’t heard a number called. He had suggested that I stay in the car too, which I didn’t. I think he thought things would proceed more smoothly without me. He might have been right.

I came to Egypt because I was accepted for a housesit in Cairo. Due to my uncertainty about whether I’d even be able to get out of Ecuador, I suggested to the homeowner that he try to find someone else while here was still time. I didn’t want to leave him with no one if my Ecuadorian residency visa and passport issue didn’t get sorted out, and I never arrived. He did get someone else, and even though my issues also got sorted out at the last minute, it was the right choice for me to back away and ensure he would not be left in the lurch.

Montpellier is in some respects an outlier among cities in the south of France. Unlike Toulouse, Nimes, Avignon and others, it has no Roman or Greek roots. It is a newer city (by the standards of Europe), having been established about 1000 A.D. when the local lords, the Guilhems, combined a couple of villages, built a castle and surrounded the whole thing with a wall.

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In Europe there is almost always an interesting thing or two to know about even the smallest and least famous town or village.

The first recorded interesting thing about Pezenas is that in 980, the Vicomte de Beziers gave the town to his daughter Garsinde as a dowry, on her marriage to the Count of Carcassonne.

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This is my second visit to Tourbes, a tiny village in the south of France. I housesat Cassie and Nousha here in March of 2016 and the homeowners kindly invited me for a return engagement.

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We resume our walking tour of ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Markt at the Stadhuis (City Hall basically).

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