Time is racing by for us in our 6th year of living in Ceret. As I write this we have less than a week left in our favourite French town. The weather has remained fabulous, with day after day of waking up to clear blue skies and no wind. Temperatures have slowly got cooler in the mornings, but by afternoon it has still got to late teens and even early 20s. We've managed to get out on a walk or run virtually every day. With doing regular HIIT sessions about every 3rd day, we are the fittest we've been for years.
Autumn has brought beautiful light. There's something very soft about the quality of light here that we never see in New Zealand. No wonder Picasso and his mates spent time living here. The plane trees have all turned golden, and there are leaves everywhere. It's a particularly attractive time to be in town.
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| Looking upwards from Bar le Pablo |
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| Looking back into Ceret from our Le Ventous morning walk. Our apartment is at the centre of the photo. |
We've been enjoying our walking, and morning coffee at various cafes, though the Grand Caf' has closed for conges annuels for a couple of weeks. Thankfully it has coincided with Pablo improving their coffee remarkably. For some reason they are being far more generous with the amount of ground coffee they use, and the difference is obvious, and tasty. In a small community like Ceret word gets around fast if a particular place is not up to scratch, or is particularly good.
One very interesting but frustrating thing that has taken an inordinate amount of time over the last fortnight is the purchase of some cryptocurrency, Bitcoin being the current darling of the market though not what we have chosen. Our son has been suggesting trying the market for quite some time, and we finally decided to give it a whirl. We chose one we liked the look of - one of the less volatile ones. The hoops we have had to jump through to spend a little of our own money has been absurd. However by sending money from NZ to France, from France to a trading company and from there into our chosen currency, we finally were able to make a small purchase after many days waiting for the transactions to take place. Counting it up, there have been 9 money transfers, as we have done some very small test transactions to be sure of the systems. You have to get checked and verified at every stage, and many people must without doubt be put off by the complexity of it all, with total justification. I imagine that in five years time it will be like any other transaction, but at the moment it is awful. If we lived in the USA it should have been easier, but the NZ banking system refuses to deal with it at all as it can be used for money laundering, hence sending money halfway round the world rather than direct.
We had our first and only day trip into Perpignan for 2017 to pick up friends, but as it turned out they were able to find alternative transport. We'd a number of things to do, and enjoyed the visit. We'd intended to dine at a little restaurant that we know in the centre, but being winter their hours are reduced and we decided not to hang about until then, so headed back home earlier.
We've been packing a lot in over the last week. On Monday we met with friends at Restaurant Can Batlle at Gariguella in Spain. While it might sound extravagant to lunch in Spain, the prices are so much lower that it is easily justifiable. Not only that, but the food is always good and hearty. On the way back we'd intended to buy some cheese to take back to New Zealand, achieved easily enough, and to get our hair cut at Zig Zag in La Jonquera where the hairdresser seems to do a very good job on Karen's hair, and at a price half that of those in Ceret. As is the way in Spain, for some reason they were not open, so that was saved for another day. On Tuesday we did one of our longtime standard walks - up to Hermitage Sant Ferreol. Wednesday we went back to La Jonquera for haircuts - success this time, and ate a very good menu del dia, all totalling less than the cost of haircuts alone in Ceret. Sometimes it feels tempting to set up in Spain instead!
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| Entrees at Mar y Sol, La Jonquera |
On Thursday we walked with friends on the Batere loop we'd done a year ago. It is up high in the Pyrenees below Canigou, with fabulous views in all directions. We were so high in fact that there were patches of snow around us! It's a lovely walk, perhaps best done in spring for the flowers, or early autumn for the wild raspberries, but well worth it at any time.
One lovely thing that happened in the morning was a kindness from our boulanger under the arch. I'd been in the day before to order 2 jesuite pastries for the morning to eat while on the mountain. He said sorry, I do them on Wednesdays and Fridays, not Thursdays. I went into the bakery in the morning to see what else was available, and he popped out the back and brought out 2 jesuites. He'd made them specially!
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| From Batere looking east |
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| Snow! |
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| Time for a patisserie break at Batere |
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