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31.03.2016

We've been very busy fixing our place so I haven't added to the blog for several days. Some of the things we've been doing are putting in ceiling lights, prepping the kitchen for painting and adding an epoxy sealant to the counter and installing tiles on the back splash. The counter is currently a very ugly black hard tar-like substance.

We've also been assembling and determining how to stabilize a couple of tall cat towers. Our cats are 15 and 17 pounds so the tower needs to be attached to a wall to be more stable. The towers can be put together as one tall and wide tower or as two or more pieces. I will remove some small tunnels that are too small for our big cats. When we get the next set of kittens I will reattach them.

The light fixtures we ordered were delivered a few days ago. The existing wiring here comes straight out of a small hole in the ceiling medallion. It looks like the previous tenants spackled around the hole where the pendant light attaches to the crossbar so we will need to open that hole enough to attach the new fixture to the crossbar. The ceiling medallions are made of soft material but if the previous tenants spackled around the center hole then that will definitely be soft and we can enlarge the hole.

I usually do electrical repairs and carpentry stuff, but I've been having intense balance disturbances where I feel like I'm falling. John stays with me when I climb a ladder. When I looked at the wiring I thought I was falling and I almost crushed John's hand at that time. He said I wasn't even listing. Anyway, we agreed that he'd do electrical stuff and I'd provide info and a video for him. Here's some info on replacing vintage ceiling lights and a video.

For European lighting fixtures blue is the neutral and brown is the hot, green with a yellow stripe is the ground.

Some of my friends asked me some questions about our decision to move to Nice, how we deal with isolation since we don't speak French and cost of living stuff. My answers were the following (plus I added some additional information):

Cost of Living in Nice:

Comparing cost of living here to other places depends on what you are comparing. Housing here is one third less than in San Diego, CA, (where I lived for 27 years), for example. Transportation is cheaper here and public transportation here is very reasonable (usually only 2 Euros round trip for each of us). Compare cities and the cost of living in each city.

I noticed that flowers are super cheap here. You can send 40 roses for 25 Euros. Shops near us sell 20 roses for 7 Euros and 40 lilies for 3 Euros. Pretty amazing. I don't usually buy or send flowers but it would be nice periodically to have flowers around the house. Like when I finally host that dinner party I've been planning (dining furniture is FINALLY on its way to us via Amazon.fr after many tribulations with local furniture stores).

We will be renting the place where we now live for another 2 or 3 years, We don't and won't have a car -- we prefer to do mass transit or have stuff delivered. Driving here is not easy. Many cars are banged up and there's very little parking available.

Housing prices: On the image below "x" marks the location for our apartment -- barely in the yellow-green zone. Detailed information about those housing price zones can be found on this web page.

We want to buy a place in 2 or 3 years but it might not be in central Nice, That said, this place would sell for about 300K dollars (about 280 Euros). That's not cheap but it is doable for us. We're both happy here. I never thought I would be happy living in an apartment -- especially an old apartment (with 15 layers of interior paint) but this place is large, well built and energy efficient. Plus this one - as opposed to the two vacation rentals on Rue Meyerbeer - is surrounded by trees and birds. It's very cool. And we're only about 5 blocks from the Mediterranean. It also has floor to ceiling (very high ceilings) windows and glass-inlaid "French" doors. We are both pretty happy here. We'll evaluate the situation over the next few years and do research on other options as needed.

Flights here are dirt cheap if you plan at least 6 weeks ahead. We use EasyJet.com. Hotels are moderately priced -- easy to find decent 50 Euro a night rooms near centers of towns or tourist areas of town in Nice, Paris and Barcelona. We're going to do a lot of day trips so we'd only need to pay air fare and museum or tourist trap entrance fees. Planning 6 weeks in advance you can get a morning flight out and an evening flight back for about 50 Euros round trip for each person. You'd need to be flexible. On Easy Jet we often can only find the morning out evening back flights on a weekend. That works for us.

Why Nice?

We choose Nice because, in part, I fell in love with the place when I visited many years ago. But still it was a bit of a convoluted process getting here. I wanted to live on the Mediterranean for the climate and the culture. Although the richer areas of France are more conservative (Le Pen and her niece get most of their support from Alsac in the North (which is not rich but has a lot of immigration problems) and PACA (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur ), the region where we live (which is rich). Nice is not as rich as many other coastal towns/cities in PACA, but Nice does have large swaths of high value real estate.

For many years I wanted to live in Nice but we thought that it would be out of reach for us financially, so we looked at other Mediterranean cities. We considered Marseille but it has serious crime problems and sections of extreme poverty where most immigrants live (Paris and many other French cities have similar areas of extreme poverty). People here have told me that Marseille is actually quite interesting in many ways. It's the largest port city on the Northern Mediterranean and as a result it's earthy with a very diverse culture and a huge shipping industry. I definitely want to visit a few times. Another contender for quite a while was Montpellier. Cost of living is less than Nice but it felt too far removed from the rest of Europe so I was never quite comfortable with it. I didn't realize then that I would be traveling cheaply, by air, so the rail distances aren't a factor after all.

Before we considered Montpellier we strongly considered Genoa Italy because it's housing is quite a bit less expensive. It's on the Mediterranean and Italy is filled with cool cultural and historical stuff. Genoa has an old population which is a negative because some of the more interesting happenings are usually brought to a community by demands of the young. Genoa has a great aquarium and a cool port area and the entire city is on a hill overlooking the sea - pretty much everyone has a view of the water. It seemed to be a good choice for us but when we tried to get info from Italian immigration about the requirements for a residence visa they told me there were no set amounts of income or assets required to be eligible for a residency visa. They said that those amounts would be determined by whoever interviews us. An interview for a residence visa is no small matter. We ran into other obstacles with Italy that we did not experience with France. French immigration was very pleasant, helpful, knowledgeable, transparent and efficient. We felt that we knew what was expected of us and that we were welcome to come to France. We felt the opposite after our interactions with Italian immigration. I have no idea why we ran into such difficulties with Italian immigration or if you would experience such trouble were you to move to Italy, but our experience is part of the reason we are now in France. Add that I am an atheist (John is a Quaker) and Italy is strongly Catholic and has blasphemy laws (although that situation is improving somewhat) and I definitely felt uncomfortable about moving to Italy. So we moved to France because my husband is so sweet and supportive.

The reason why I think the blasphemy situation is improving in Italy is that some Cardinals are lobbying worldwide, including in Italy, against blasphemy laws. The reason they are doing that is twofold: one is that Muslims are using the blasphemy laws against Christians who speak out against Islam. Another reason is that the Cardinals want to take away some of the justifications used by some Islamic religious leaders when they stone to death, burn alive, behead, throw acid in the faces of those who oppose even some teachings of Islam. The men who do that are extremists, of course, but they are also religious leaders. Exremist Christians in Africa also have blasphemy laws and behave much like Islamic extremists. Here's a map and some info on blasphemy and apostacy laws around the world. The information points out that the blasphemy laws in Pakistan were introduced by the British during colonial rule. And as we all know radical Christians in America kill abortion providers and discriminate heavily against gays and women in the name of their religions. Even though there are no blasphemy laws allowed in America (which is not to say local and state legislators haven't passed such laws which violate the US Constitution), we have very very few atheists in government and atheists there are often reviled, especially by fundamentalist Christians. That frightened me as I was growing up in Texas. Ted Cruz works hard to make America a Christian fundamentalist nation. (Boo Ted Cruz!!!).

France has the La Pen family who try to do similar Christian fundamentalist things here. Marie La Pen didn't gain power last November because the moderate and Left parties worked together to ensure that she won no districts. No one was sure that they would work together. The last time La Pen gained political power it was because the Left and middle did not work together. Note: the political middle here is known as the Republicans.

I hope Hillary and Bernie supporters work together after the primaries are over. The Republicans are working hard against Trump becoming their nominee but their doing so will probably ensure that right-wing Christian fundamentalist Ted Cruz will be the Republican nominee. Ted Cruz is dangerous. Read Robert Reich's take on that.

I voted for Bernie in the primary, but both John and I will definitely vote for whoever is the Democratic party nominee next November. There is a Facebook meme of a Quote by Ivan Hernandez ?@ivan_hernandez that beautifully sums up my sentiments on this:

I'm pro Bernie but would vote Hillary as I am a one issue voter and that issue is not opening the seventh seal and ushering in the apocalypse.

Peace.

I briefly considered Spain because it is cheaper than France, has many cities and towns on the Mediterranean and is the home of famous artists and museums and historical sites. Also, I know a lot more Spanish than I know French (but my Spanish is still crappy). John was adamant that we not move to Spain because of its government. Here are some links on what is happening there now (they don't have a government now):
Just a reminder that Spain still doesn't have a government.
Moscovici Says Spain Needs New Government Before Tackling Budget.
87 days and counting: Spain cannot form a government.

Neither of us were interested in the UK because of weather and because we wanted to live in a more different culture. Not the language so much as the different perspective on life. We are far from Anglophiles, although John loves the history.

Isolation:

It turns out that MANY people here speak English. Many of them don't, of course, but many do. We will be attending tax and other classes provided by the American expats' Democratic party organization here (Democrats Abroad). We're members now and we plan to attend their events including one next week (April 6). So far there are 30 RSVPs for that event. The members all speak English and French so going to their meets should be helpful to us in many ways. Our making friends here is progressing nicely.

John and I frequently check out what events are happening in Nice and nearby and we go to some of them. So far, when we're out and about, we've met people who speak English and we don't feel at all isolated. It's only when we try to conduct business here - buy furniture, return a product or make a complaint, change our address on our visa (we are still working on that one), that we have had difficulties. We often use Google translate and write what we need to say in French. The problem is that we are slowed down a lot if circumstances change beyond what we anticipated. Using Google translate quickly when I'm on the phone is much too difficult for me. Forget about the speaking into Google translate -- it never understands what I say anyway. John and I are studying French -- he does that every day. John's working on Rosetta Stone and has built many sets of flashcards to boost our vocabulary (65 in number and grouped by subject matter) for our mobile devices using Quizlet.

John and I are happy to be doing new things with each other and we are doing many more things than we did for the 6 years we cared for his dad. Actually -- we're doing more things than we ever have together and we are both happy for that. John and I are also in touch with our families and close friends via email (sometimes I do via Skype) and when our friends read our blog they often comment and fill us in on what is happening in their lives. I feel connected and we are thrilled about having fun and great adventures.

Our apartment in Nice

Cat tree under construction	Ceiling medallion in entryway with no light fixture.	Ceiling medallion in living room with no light fixture.
Ceiling lights to be installed.	More ceiling lights to be installed.	Lovey and Dovey having lunch.

18.03.2016

The story of Lovey and Dovey

Some of this info is in the blog in early March, but I decided to consolidate it here for a complete intro to our dove friends.

On March 3, a ringneck dove landed on our kitchen windowsill. It was light gray/blonde with a white mark on its right wing. It was so pretty. I named it Dovey. We said it's a she but we don't really know. John crushed some bread sticks for her and I spread out some oatmeal. She came back again the next day hopping from the kitchen sills to the railing of our nearby balcony.

A few days later John bought some seeds for Dovey so she could celebrate my birthday with me. We watched as she ate everything except the black seeds. When we came back to the window a few hours later all the black seeds were gone. We wondered if she had invited a friend over who had different culinary tastes.

A few days later Dovey attacked a pigeon (twice her size) that was eating her food and then she flew up and was joined by another ringneck dove, They flew to the top of the building across the street where they perched briefly before taking off toward the sea. We named the new dove "Lovey" and assumed they were friends or more.

After that the other ringneck dove would show up alone every once in a while. It doesn't have a white mark on its right wing or any other distinguishing marks that we can tell. We're also still not sure of the sex of either dove, but we're working on that. The dove's behavior can help with determining sex, but even that is iffy.

Late today Dovey and Lovey both came to dinner at our windowsill. If they had babies then the babies leave home after a month, so maybe the love birds are empty-nesters now?

Lovey and Dovey.	A Galetini Roller pigeon who came by for a visit.

12 - 13.03.2016

We returned from Barcelona on Sunday. While we were there we visited Antoni Gaudi's Park Güell (a Doctor Seuss village on steroids) and Familia Sagrada, the Basilica he designed (which still has 16 years worth of work to go). When it is completed it will be the tallest church in the world at 560 feet. It was amazing to see with all of the modernist sculptures embedded into the structure. It had an organic, naturalistic feel to it. There are many other Gaudi works that we want to see on future visits. We also visited the Picasso museum, which is one of the most extensive in the world. We went to Park Güell Sunday morning before the 8 AM regular opening time. When you go in before 8 AM, you get in FREE and you can stay all day if you want. 18 Free Things to do in Barcelona. All the city-run museums (including the Museu Picasso, MUHBA and MNAC) are free on Sunday afternoons, from 3pm to 8pm. Others are also free on one given day of the month, often the first Wednesday or Sunday – check individual websites for details.

Everywhere we went we saw hundreds of Catalan separatist flags. The prime minister said there will likely be an election for separation soon, but courts and governments won't allow the Catalan people alone to make that decision. They'd have to get Spain's permission and Spain is adamantly against it. Last fall there were marches for independence and the Catalan separatist won a majority of seats in the Catalan Parliment. See more

There was almost no dog poopy in the streets of Barcelona, but there was a ton of graffiti. Almost all the graffiti was painted on the ugly gray metal roll-up security doors. The walls, windows and art were generally clear of graffiti. The graffiti was not artistic -- it was almost all fat text. Not attractive at all. I don't know if they were gang markings. I just know there was a lot of it.

Most of the buildings and other architecture of the areas we visited are much newer than in Nice. John says that's because Franco bombed the hell out of the place during the Spanish Civil War. The streets in Barcelona are much wider than are the ones in Central Nice. Here 2 lanes are a luxury - there 4 lanes are common. They also clip the corners and put straight-in or angled parking spaces adding about 4-6 extra spaces per corner or 16-24 per intersection. Pedestrians have to walk farther to get to crosswalks but at least there's not a parking problem like there is in Nice. We also saw almost no dented cars, whereas at least half the cars we see in Nice are dented or have the sides scraped.

As in Nice there are orange trees on the streets with fruit free for the taking. The guerrilla gardeners in America who splice fruit onto public trees are making public trees into food for the poor. Here the government plants the fruit trees to begin with. The orange trees lining streets are a lovely site also.

The subway system in Barcelona was like the one in Paris -- you could go anywhere very quickly and it was modern, clean and, for the most part, easy to understand. There was a time, though, when I was whining into the S.O.S. intercom, "We bought our tickets to the airport, but we don't know how to get there."

Even more so than Nice, many people speak English in Barcelona. It was funny that John kept saying "merci" and "S'il vous plaît" while we were in Barcelona. I know some Spanish but not much, so I wasn't a lot of help. Plus many people there spoke Catalan (which is not Spanish, but has similarities to Spanish and French) which was nearly impossible for me to understand.

Catalan is a language in its own right. It does not derive from Spanish, or even from French, even though many people say that Catalan sounds like a mixture of both. Catalan evolved directly from common Latin. This of course explains Catalan’s similarities of vocabulary and grammar with French, Spanish and even Italian, because all of these languages fall under the so-called Romance languages, which branched out from Latin. Read more.

Everything in Barcelona is cheaper than in Nice. Here's a chart. From personal experience we found that a coke or bottle of water is 2.5 Euros everywhere in Nice and 1.8 Euros everywhere in Barcelona (restaurants, hotels, airports). Beer is 1.8 in Barcelona vs 3.5 or more in Nice. Restaurants were about a third less.

When we wanted to take a break during the visit to the massive Picasso museum we went to a Tapas shop but we didn't have tapas there. John had spaghetti and I had a Mediterranean salad with a think tasty sauce drizzled around the edge of the plate. It was excellent.

When we visited the Picasso museum we were at the eastern edge of the Gothic District. There are many shops, museums, restaurants and clubs there. We barely grazed it. When we go back we'll see more of Gaudi's work and we'll spend some time in this older section of Barcelona. We'll also spend some time at the ports.

The sun was rising as we left Nice for Barcelona.	Snowcapped Pyrenees Mountains from the jet.	The hotel we stayed at was nice enough to provide a foot bath for tired tourists.
The older buildings in Barcelona had great ironwork.	A performance artist as a living statue.	Ruth outside the Park Güell.
John in covered pathway at Park Güell.	Wild green parakeets near the covered pathway.	Ruth inside the naturalistic covered pathway at Park Güell.
John by the Serpentine Bench comprised of beautiful mosaics.	Closeup of the Serpentine Bench mosaics at Park Güell.	Ruth on the Serpentine Bench with early morning Barcelona in the background.
The Serpentine Bench circles the roof of the Market Place.	Going down the stairs to the Market Place.	Ruth inside the Market Place.
Park Güell had many paths with beautiful flowers.	Mosaic dragon.	John taking pictures of mosaic tiles.
Mosaic tile	Gingerbread caretaker's house at Park Güell.	Barcelona has many public water faucets.
The Basilica of the Sagrada Familia was started in 1882. Most of the large cathedrals take a couple of centuries to complete.	Construction continues on the towers of Sagrada Familia.	The Nativity Façade of Sagrada Familia.
The Tree of Life with doves	Metalwork plant at entrance to Sagrada Familia.	Part of the Passion Façade.
Snails as gargoyles.	The figure at the left of the Veronica group is modeled after Gaudi.	John to the right of the school that Gaudi built for the construction workers' children.
Ruth taking pictures of Sagrada Familia.	Butcher shop in Barcelona.	Some of the Spanish streets have very long names.
You never know what you are going to find when traveling. We turned a corner and saw a zebra mural.	Lots of grafitti but only on roll up security doors.	Catalan separatist flags widely displayed.
We were not allowed to take pictures of the artwork in the Picasso Museum, but I did take some pictures of the museum's buildings from the 13th century.	Another view of the 13th century buildings housing the Picasso Museum in old town Barcelona.	Picasso Museum street sign
Old town Barcelona	Another view of the Gothic District.	And still another view of the Gothic District.
Since we sold or gave away almost all of our belongings before we moved to France, we are restocking. Here are the household items we bought in Barcelona as souvenirs. Cups, salt shaker, spoon rest.	Gaudi style cat	Gaudi books
Prints from the Picasso Museum for John	More prints from the Picasso Museum for Ruth	Coasters from the Picasso Museum
Gaudi coasters to make a mobile	Picasso cubism salt and pepper shakers	Picasso prints

07.03.2016

Today is my birthday, John sent me a bunch of ecards (as did other family and friends). One of the cards John sent today is my very, very favorite. He sent it to me last year for the first time, It's a tradition now: My favorite ecard

My favorite part is when he says "so count the happies and not the candles," I also love it when he says "attendez there's more" and then does that male Frenchie 'Ho Oh' (John does a great version). I also love how adorable the Frenchie guy and the Frenchie dog are. SO CUTE!!!

John bought some seeds today for our new pet Dove (a free bird I named Dovey) so she could celebrate my birthday with me. You can read more about Dovey in the 3 March entry of this blog. We watched as she ate everything except the black seeds. When we came back to the window a few hours later all the black seeds were gone. We wondered if she had invited a friend over who had different culinary tastes.

Speaking of different culinary tastes -- there are about 80 restaurants within walking distance of our place (we're in the center of a large city in France, after all). John and I went to a nearby Italian restaurant today and had some great pizzas (my birthday dinner). The restaurant has a lot of line drawing art about various movies. The name of the restaurant is "La Strada" (like the 1954 Fellini movie). Here's a map of some nearby restaurants but there are many others not designated on the map.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this before: there are bakeries and patisseries everywhere in our neighborhood and their wares are often fantastic. Everything is freshly baked. Yum. John bought a layered cream cake with strawberries for my birthday. It has the French word for strawberry (fraises) written in a tiny script font all over the whipped cream top. At first we thought there was a layer of plastic on top of the cake with the writing on the plastic, but the writing is actually part of the icing. It's a transparent gel layer. You can find those gel layers in bakery supply shops in the states (and here). They'll have script writing or images that can be gently laid onto the surface of the cake icing.

Yesterday we saw the recently released movie "The Revenant" which was in English with French subtitles. We couldn't understand the dialog of the native Americans because those subtitles were also in French. On the plus side of that -- we always expand our French vocabulary when we watch the movies subtitled in French.

Next Saturday morning we're going to Barcelona for 2 days to look at art stuff and visit their old town. We've never been to Spain. We are excited about this trip and we will, of course, take many pics and write a detailed blog entry.

Bird seed for wild doves.	Strawberry birthday cake.	John at La Strada restaurant with cook in background making pizzas.
Ruth's pizza on ultra thin crust.	John's pizza with a fried egg in the center. Probably the best pizza I've ever had.	John chowing down. The bottle to the left has olive oil with seasonings added.
Birthday Girl with Birthday beer.	Old French movie poster.	Ruth with translation app saying that we will be back many times.

05.03.2016

We went to Subway tonight and walked in on a Democrats Abroad event registering expats and conducting primary voting. John and I canceled one another's vote.

One of the guys helping us vote has been in Nice 6 years and the other one has been here only 1 year. The 6 year resident wore a scarf and a beret and looked very Frenchy. The 1 year resident has the same doctor we do.

We're now on the Dem party's email list and they have monthly educational meetings on expat issues, too. We will be attending some of them.

This vote was only for the presidential primary so I'm not sure if we forfeited voting downstream or if we can do the regular ex-pat voting for the rest. I suspect the former. I'll let you know when we find out.

The two Democrats Abroad volunteers with John voting in the background.	The ballot box	Dad takes care of the kids on the left while Mom votes on the right.

03.03.2016

A dove landed on our kitchen windowsill yesterday -- I named it Dovey. It was so pretty. We say it's a she but we don't really know. John crushed some breadsticks for her and I spread out some oatmeal. She came back again today hopping from the kitchen sills to the railing of the bedroom balcony.

Many of the rooms here have "French doors" to the balconies. I don't think the Frenchies call them French doors. It is so nice to leave the doors open at night 4 floors up. At sunrise all the birds go crazy singing, cawing, screeching, cooing... It's like living in an aviary. Too cool.

Ruth feeding Dovey.	Dovey is a little pigeon-toed.	Many sparrows, pigeons, doves and seagulls live in our area of town.