Where to begin - Jan 14 2015

As many of you know, or not, we have been committed to travel for over 35 years.  While we've had many wonderful opportunities to go all over the world there has been an overriding desire to "spend a little time".  Three years ago we did get to spend a little time, a three month sojourn in Madrid.   Of course our goal in that was to spend six months with three months in Spain followed by three months in France.  We were just ignorant of a little treaty called the Schengen Agreement which limits on non-European citizen to 90 days within any consecutive 180 days.   Didn't each of the guide books say that you could spend up to 90 days in their country?   In our other blog www.wadsysspainandfrance.blogspot.com I detailed how this revelation came about 2 days before our departure.   But back the story, for over 30 years now it has been our dream to live abroad for a year.  We've been to Paris several times and loved it each time, our first visit was in 1977 and our last was October of 2014 (to look at an apartment).  Twice we have done house exchanges, once two blocks from the Arc de Triomph and once in Antony (a suburb).  As well we've both worked in Paris on short projects so we are familiar.   But as any born and bred Parisian will tell you, "if you weren't born here you're a Plouc"  A Plouc is a bumpkin from somewhere else, ne c'est pas?  Thus our title.

Deb spent over 3 months assembling the required documentation for obtaining a long-term visa to live in France.  This was not a trivial manner, for example we discovered that one must have official copies of finances sufficient to support your stay.  The official copies must be bank statements and not from any investments such as IRA's or 401-k's.  One provide copies for 3 recent consecutive months to bring to the interview at the consulate.  Once again this revelation came about with a 3 day window of opportunity.  So necessarily there was a scramble of electronic funds transfers as our interview was scheduled for the beginning of January 2015.  There were a few emails to the consulate with questions such as; "How much money would be considered adequate for spending a year?"  With a beautiful French bureaucratic reply of: "This information is confidential".  Nonetheless we ultimately prevailed and two days ago received our visas.   So we are about to live the dream.  Above is our apartment building, we will be on the 8th floor overlooking the Parc de la Villette