France to Spain and back to France

I love moving, but I don't like packing and unloading a big moving truck.  We rented a truck that we hoped would be big enough for all our stuff.  Fingers-crossed.  On Saturday, we picked up the truck and drove it back to our house here in France.  We spent the afternoon loading it up.  And everything fit, even the ping-pong table!  We went out to dinner, since we didn't really have anything else in the house and I had no desire to cook.  We headed down to Gaillac and our little bistro and had a lovely dinner.

It all fit!

Sunday morning we were up at 5:30 because we had to leave the house by 7.  We had a meeting scheduled with the agency that helped us find our house at 11:30 to sign the contract.  They were nice enough to come in on a Sunday to do this for us.  Something that would never happen in France. Bruce drown the big truck and I followed him in the car (with the dogs).  It's about a 3.5 hour drive, but it took us 4 with the big truck.  We signed the contract, got the keys to the house and headed over to start unloading.

We decided to unload everything into the garage and then take stuff as we needed it into the house. That way we can be sure where we want everything and we won't be surrounded by tons of boxes. It only took us about 2.5 hours to unload, compared to 6 to load. We finished at dusk. We then headed into Girona to our favorite pintxo bar for dinner.  It was so so good and we toasted our new life in Spain.

These are only the cold pintxos, the hot ones are amazing too.

Monday it rained all day. The only rain in the forecast for the next 10 days. We had some errands to run and we had lunch out and then spent the rest of the day unpacking. We had a nice quiet dinner in our new home. On Tuesday we headed down towards Barcelona to visit IKEA.  I love IKEA but hate the IKEA fatigue.  We had to take the big truck because we were buying a new couch, chair, mattress and bed frame and of course we bought tons of little things.  On our way back, I mentioned that it was the 16th and Bruce said "What, I thought it was the 15th?" We then realized that our rental truck was due back an hour ago - mind you, we were 5 hours away from where we rented it.  So we rushed back home, packed up a few things and headed back to France.  Again, Bruce in the big truck and me following with the dogs.  9:00 pm, we got back home, exhausted.  They rental company was so nice, they didn't even charge us extra for bringing it back late.

Dashell not really understanding why we are at an empty house.

We are now back in our empty house in France.  It's cold and wet here.  We have had a fire going all day.  We don't have any heat, except for the fire, because we don't have oil in our tank.  We sold my beautiful range, that I'm sad to see go, but our new house had one almost just like it.  I'm going to take the money and buy a pottery wheel.  I haven't thrown in years and our new home has a great studio space for Bruce and I.  So I'll be back at it soon.  Tonight we are going to see our good friends C&T and R&T for dinner.  It will be sad to say goodbye, but we hope that they'll come and see us and we'll be back here for climbing too.  Tomorrow we'll finish cleaning the house and meet with our landlords to turn over the keys.  Depending on how we feel, we might head down to Spain tomorrow afternoon with the dogs and this time the 2 cats.  I'm ready to get into our new warm cozy home and start unpacking and getting settled. Exciting things coming our way.