After two years and two months of pandemic seclusion in the US, we were finally permitted to return to our home in Banyuls sur Mer.  I had packed our suitcases a year and half before and they had sat in our home office, waiting for restrictions to be lifted.  Those suitcases got repacked several times as we reevaluated was would be most important, given the chances of my husband’s health.  Meanwhile my best friend’s health had taken a turn for the worse as she had been fighting cancer while confined in her tiny apartment in Perpignan.  We were very anxious to get back to France to try to help her recover.  Booking our flight was a chore as the company we had been using for many years had only credited us for our flight when the pandemic shut down everything—the only travel arrangement which did not reimburse our money—and now they were insisting on charging a large rebooking fee.  In frustration, I went directly to Delta to book our flight over.  The return two months later would be easy as that was a cruise back from Barcelona.  

After I made the flight reservation, I called the car lease company to book our usual Peugeot, only to find that Peugeot factories had shut down during the pandemic and now there was a shortage of cars!  I was finally able to order a Renault, but it would only be available 4 days after our arrival.  So I went back to Delta and changed our flight (I didn’t want to fly on 9-11 anyway!), to line-up with our car pick-up.  But several weeks later, we heard from Delta that our flight was changed and that there would now be a connection through JFK!  That was simply not possible for my husband, who had been failing for the past year.  So I called Delta yet again and was able to change the flight back to a direct flight, one day earlier.  Then I booked our usual hotel near the airport for the one night before we could pick up the car.  It wasn’t possible to change the pick-up date of the car as that would mean we’d have to wait another two weeks for a car!

Finally all seemed to be in place and I was busily working on getting us French health passes.  We also registered for Spanish health passes as that was all set up for us by the airline.  We registered with the French government for passes but only got a response saying that they were overwhelmed with requests and we would have to wait.  No further response ever came.  I then contacted our pharmacists in Banyuls who tried, but were unable to get through the computer red-tape of government regulations.

Meanwhile, I contacted another couple in our state who also have a home near Banyuls.  They were returning to their French home the same Fall and also needed French passes sanitaires.  They’d gotten the same response from the government, so had contacted a UK friend In their French village, who took all their information to a pharmacy in Le Boulou.  There he found a pharmacist who was also a bit of a computer geek and who was able to massage the computer system to allow Americans to get a French passe sanitaire.    I passed on his name and phone number to our pharmacy in Banyuls, and lo and behold, a week later we received our official passes by email from our friends at our pharmacy!  About this time, another couple we knew from many years ago who also had a French home near us for many years, had arrived in France and none of the pharmacies in their village were at all helpful in getting passes for them.  I sent them to our pharmacy in Banyuls and within an hour, they had their official passes!  Later they returned to our pharmacy and brought the gals a nice box of chocolates as a thank you.

It was about then that we heard that our hotel in Barcelona had closed temporarily because of COVID-19.  The hotel booking service had transferred our payment to another nearby hotel, one we’d used and liked many years ago.  I had trouble getting a response from the booking service to confirm this transfer, so ended up calling the hotel directly and was told that all was taken care of and we could get into our room as early at 10 a.m.

Then there was the limousine debacle!   When I contacted our local limousine service to drive us the three hours to our US airport of departure, I discovered that the couple who ran it had retired.  So I then explored other options, but most companies I called were charging twice the price of our former service.  Finally a friend recommended that I call a man who was always advertising his car transport service in a local publication.  That seemed to work, although the man seemed never to have driven to the airport and quoted me a price that was half of what we used to pay, so I was a bit leery of this arrangement.  Then I started getting calls from one of the other companies I’d called for quotes, who were trying to confirm a reservation for me!  I had quite a time with that as they didn’t seem to understand that I’d not made a reservation at all; I’d just asked for a quote.  Even as late as four days before our departure , they were still trying to confirm our pick-up!  

A week before departure, I called the man with whom I had made our reservation, and confirmed with him; I even called the day before to make sure he would be there the next morning.  Yes, he said, he would be there to get us.  Four hours later, he called back to say sorry, his car was still in the shop and he wouldn’t be able to take us to the airport after all!  PANIC. I asked if he could rent a car to drive us and he said he didn’t have a credit card.  Well, that did it for me.  I told him to forget it, I’d get us there myself.  GROAN   A neighbor kindly took me to our small local airport where I picked up a rental car—another long process as cars were scarce, so this took over an hour.  And the next morning, I loaded the car with five suitcases and a walker, got my husband comfortably ensconced ,and we took off for the three hour drive to the airport.  I was worried about how I would handle getting from the car rental center to the airport with my husband, who would need a wheelchair, and all the luggage, but that turned out beautifully handled as our car rental company provided a driver for us who drove the car with us and all the luggage still in it from the car rental center directly to the airport at no additional cost.

Getting through the airport was a bit of a trial this year, as we patiently waited for a wheelchair and then someone to push it to get us through a long check-in line, through Security, and into the sky club.  The flight was not as comfortable as we’d hoped it to be in First Class.  We dutifully kept on our masks except when eating or drinking.  My husband decided that a glass of scotch was a good thing to order as he could keep sipping that for hours, thus avoiding the mask!  

Arriving in Barcelona seemed to go smoothly.  We had our Spanish passes scanned and were permitted into Spain.  Our wheelchair pusher took us directly to the taxis and we were soon at the lovely hotel nearby.  We decided that from now on, we will always arrange one night at the hotel so that we have a nice rest before the drive up to France.  All went well until I went to check out the next morning.  I knew that we should only be charged for the breakfast buffet and for drinks from the minibar, but the clerk said that my credit from the previous (closed) hotel had been reimbursed to my credit card, not transferred to the new hotel.  This was not what I’d been told when I called them to confirm everything.  She assured me that the refund would be on my account and proceeded to charge me for the room as well as breakfast and the minibar.  Just as I signed the receipt, she said “that was room 817, wasn’t it?”  NO. it was room 127!!  She’d just charged me for someone else’s room!  So then she realized that my credit from the other hotel had, indeed, been transferred to them and that I only owed for breakfast and the minibar.  So she had to do a reimbursement on my credit card for her error!  Thankfully, it all worked out okay.   

A taxi took us over to the car leasing office nearby and we had a small reunion with our agent there, as he was so glad to see us again, and we were delighted that he was still at work there!  No problem getting the car; they loaded the luggage for me and off we went, stopping first for gas, as the lease cars are almost empty when they are “sold” to us.  We had to drive into France via the highway this year, as our little mountain pass above our village is still closed to vehicle traffic.  Apparently there is now a political battle going on between our mayor and the Prefet of the region.  One morning the mayor ordered the cement blocks to be removed from the road at the top of the Col de Banyuls, and then in the afternoon, they were once again replaced across the road.  The prefet informed our mayor that it would be his decision when to open the road, nor our mayor’s decision!  All the other mountain passes have been opened, and when we crossed the border on the autoroute, we breezed straight through into France, with no stopping at the border, no passport control, no showing of our passes sanitaires.

When we arrived at our apartment complex, I was surprised to find that someone had turned on our electricity.  This meant that the garage door opened for us immediately, and I could quickly get my husband up to the apartment to rest, before I dealt with the rest of the utilities.

I was delighted to find that the gas heater (chaudiere) seemed to be working.  We had hot water and the gas cook top was working, but no heat!  Our gas heater company up in the city, had made an appointment for us to check out the heater the following week, so we had to wait until then to find out what was the problem.  Meanwhile, the temperatures began to drop as Fall set in.   When the technician finally arrived, he found that the pump was seized up, probably from sitting idle for over two years, and would have to be replaced.  Unfortunately this would take a devis (estimate) to arrive by email, which wouldn’t happen until the following night, and then I had to go to the bank to transfer a deposit to their account (which was faster than sending a check in the mail), and then they could order the pump.  After another week of no pump, thus no heat, my dear 90-year old husband was suffering greatly from having no heat for his old bones and was complaining constantly about the lack of service we were getting.  Numerous calls to the company netted no results.  We then decided that maybe ordering a new gas heater was the way to go and maybe this would be get installed more quickly than waiting for a new pump for the old heater, which was getting quite old.  I called the company and asked about ordering a new heater and was informed that this could take a two or three months!  So we went back to waiting for the pump.  Then the company called me back to say they had found one heater in stock and could install that in about 2 weeks.  So we cancelled the order on the pump, waited for the new devis to arrive, then off to the bank to send them more money!  Two weeks later, with a very angry husband in the background, I was continually calling them every day to find out when the heater was to be installed.  I was told that they were waiting for a missing piece to arrive!!  Another week passed.  We had now been in our lovely apartment for a month, with still no heat.  Then one morning I was told and to “give them hell.”  Well, I did what I could in French and they insisted they were still waiting for the part to arrive.  That afternoon, when the woman called me back, I was so shocked that I said “Mon Dieu!”  She laughed and told me that the missing part had arrived that morning and someone would come to install the heater in two days.  

A very nice technician arrived a little after 9 a.m. and was done by early afternoon, delaying his lunch break in order to finish. 

But there was a little hitch.  New government regulations require new gas heaters to be installed where there are TWO  air vents, one has to be high on the wall and the other has to be at the bottom of the wall. 

So while all radiators were working and the water in the tap was boiling hot, we were still expecting more work as we waited for yet another appointment with the guy who would come and knock yet another hole in a wall.  We were told this would only take an hour or so, but we knew what that meant!—-waiting around all day for someone to show up, and then, invariably more problems would arise!  This is not pessimism; it’s simply the usual French experience talking!

While all this gas heater business was going on, we were also discussing an air conditioning system with our local plumber.  He’d given us a verbal estimate several years before, but now we wanted to make a final decision.  When he heard that we had no heat this year, he suggested a dual air conditioning/heating system, as electricity is cheaper than gas in France (the opposite of the US), so heating by electricity would be more economical.  Plus if we ever again had trouble with the gas heater, at least we would still have heat through the air conditioning units.  We decided to go ahead and get the dual system and to put it in all three rooms.  This would be a large expense, but hopefully make it much nicer for us whatever time of the year we came to France.  

It took only week for all of the materials to arrive and for the plumber and his various assistants to start drilling and breaking holes in the walls of all three rooms.  Drilling a large hole through ten inches of solid cement takes two days, which seemed like two weeks!  It took a week for all  three units to be installed, plus the large machine on the balcony. 

The plumber returned alone on the final day to turn everything on and check that all was working.  The remotes controlled the doors in the units, opening them on command.  But that was all!  The machine on the balcony was not working!  After numerous calls to the manufacturer, it was decided that the circuit board was defective and would have to be replaced by a technician from the company.  So we still had no heat, as we were at this time still waiting to hear about arrival of the new gas heater.  Our plumber had loaned us a small electric heater to help keep my husband warm while we waited for either the chaudiere technicianor the air conditioning technician to arrive, and that was a saving grace for us.

A month later, just as we were leaving to return to the US, a technician arrived with our plumber and replaced the defective circuit board.  We were assured that all was now well.  It wasn’t until we returned to France the following year that we discovered that the drain lines had not been connected and that one of the pump motors was defective!  

Our third project of the year was the replacement of both large sliding glass doors in the two bedrooms and a new shutter in our bedroom.  I had ordered the windows a month before leaving the US because I knew that they typically take two months to be delivered.  But when we arrived, our local man from the window company had to come and remeasure to be sure he had the correct measurements.  It had been almost three years since his first devis so everything had to be redone.  That meant that nothing was ordered until we arrived and we planned to stay only two months this year.  In addition, there were huge delays all over France because of the pandemic;  manufacturing had simply shut down during the duration.  So it was touch and go as to whether or not we would get our windows and shutter before we departed. And in fact, they did not arrive until after our departure.  Our French friend and her husband kindly took care of supervising the window company’s work to replace the windows and shutter while we were gone.  They did the same the following year when we finally had the small door to the balcony replaced.  So now all the radiators and the windows and shutters have been replaced, the bathroom has been renovated, the toilet has been replaced, the oven and cooktop have been replaced, lights in the WC and the hall and the master bedroom have been replaced, the washer has been replaced several times, and the small refrigerator has been replaced.   

And through all these trials and tribulations, I continued to cook wonderful meals and try out interesting recipes.  The fresh food available in this area and the joy I find in my kitchen as I create new dishes keeps me alive and looking forward to the next day.