Martha and I have been back in France for two days and we have much to share …
Peter's birthday party
This is only our second trip to Mirabel and I forgot how much easier it is to travel to a familiar place! The Portland-Amsterdam, Amsterdam-Marseilles flights were uneventful, and our drive to Cairanne was already like putting on a pair of good, old shoes. We are staying with Margaret and Peter Pigeon, who generously offered us their guest room for a few nights while we prepared Chez Mirabel for our stay. Margaret had told us that she would have dinner waiting and that Gerard and Danielle, who we met last Fall, might be joining us. What she didn’t tell us was that we would be celebrating Peter’s birthday. We had a lovely lamb dinner with lovely wines, and were also joined by Judy Harrison from Cairanne. Jetlag was completely forgotten and, before we knew it, it was midnight.
The next morning we drove to Mirabel and walked in to see the gorgeous new tiled floor on the main level. And the newly extended wing wall separating the front door from the kitchen area was perfect. We found our mason, Francois, grouting the new wall & shower tile in the downstairs bath and loved his work in that room as well. We were disappointed that the bath was not yet fully functional, but knew that Europe’s recent very cold weather could have caused things to slip a little. However, most importantly, the kitchen area was ready for the fitted kitchen’s installation on March 27th — floor done, walls and ceiling patched, plumbing moved, & electrical wiring installed!
We then went upstairs and found that Francois had finished my tiling of the bedroom level — laundry closet, bath, and entry off of landing alcove were all in! I had given him the go ahead to tile the bath if it would otherwise keep him from tiling the walls in that room, but for some reason I didn’t expect it. My back was feeling better already! Coving and grouting still need to be done, but they are a piece of cake. The bath’s walls are mostly ready for tiling and the dryer duct had been installed from the laundry closet and across the tub’s ceiling.
It was clear that the critically needed work was now the downstair’s bath plumbing and the electrical which had yet to be done anywhere but in the kitchen. About the time I was beginning to worry about the availability of M. Lopez, our plumber/electrician, he’s there! He explained that he had been busy for weeks repairing frozen/broken pipes, but was now able to return to his work on our house — bath fixtures installed in the next couple of days and then all the remaining electrical will be done.
Even though we will soon have a functioning bath, Martha & I decided that the copious dust still to be generated precludes us from setting up a bed and living in the house :-(. So we will again stay in Lynda & Jim’s house’s apartment in Cairanne, at least until “the dust settles.”
We have also purchased an inexpensive mobile phone for local communications, ordered phone line+internet+TV service for the house, scheduled installation of the bedroom level doors for next week, and prodded our ferronnier to begin on our ironwork. But the best developments of all were seeing friends made in November. We were greeted very warmly by our neighbor Andrée, who was of course tending her garden on our Impasse des Fleurs. She looks healthy and fully recovered from her recent hospitalization.
Vew from Piégon toward Mirabel
We were also visited by our friend Dick, who lives in the neighboring town of Piégon and has been our eyes and ears in our absence. Dick invited us over to their house for a mid-day drink and to see Laura, so we did (it didn’t take a lot of arm twisting on a 70F sunny jet-lagged day). On the drive over, Dick motioned to follow him on a new-to-us route where we climbed a narrow dirt road to a knoll above their house – with an amazing view over Piégon & Mirabel nestled in their beautiful valley, with Piégon’s church, cemetery, vineyards, olive trees and starting-to-blossom apricot trees in the foreground. Years ago this location had written up (in Conde Nast?) as one of the premier picnic spots in the world … I wouldn’t argue with that judgement! I took a couple of quick snapshots out the car window … I hope to get up there for some serious pictures some early, clear morning.
Mirabel from Piégon
Then on to Dick & Laura’s house, and a warm welcoming embrace from Laura. After a tour of their gardens (this was our first daytime visit), we sat on their valley-view terrace and had wine, lovely conversations, and a late omelet lunch (after our stomachs started rumbling). At one point they said that, because of their curiosity about our project, they had looked at some timeshare/fractional share listings in the region and, in their opinion, didn’t see anything that even approached the quality of Chez Mirabel. More than three hours later we called it a day and drove back to Cairanne for a late afternoon nap.
More to come …
– Rick