Oh no....

We didn’t mean to. It wasn’t budgeted. Never crossed our minds. But 6 months before we moved to France full time we fell in love with a strange house on the outskirts of Bourdeilles.

Actually I had been in love from the very first time I walked past it years ago. It’s a house you can’t miss and it drives you mad to see inside it and know what it is all about. A house that is more Tunisian than French. A home covered in roses in the summer. Clearly a home loved by who ever lived there.

We found the house listed for sale one morning in the window of a local real estate agency. We were just glancing in to check on land some place in town for a studio for Tom. 

You could have knocked me over with a baguette. 

We made inquiries and met with the family of the home. 

We knew as soon as we set foot in the house that we were going to make this place home. The rooms have a lovely scale and are so flooded with light that there's little room for anything else. Plenty of space for living and working. 

Adding to the experience was meeting and negotiating with the 92-year-old owner, Monsieur Bazinette, AKA “le patron” (the boss), “le Chef” (the chief), or “Pepe” (pronounced ‘peh-pay’, meaning grandpa). If charm was a flower, this gentleman  is a garden.

A quick tour of the yard sealed the deal. Old fruit trees and roses all around. Perennials that we’d never been able to have in Vermont. And a great big space just waiting for a studio and gardens to surround it. 

So much for downsizing and living the simple life. What kind of mischief was our magical mischievous ‘travel genie’ up to that day?!