SUCCESS!!! The Château d’Angers will be the view from the kitchen window of our new apartment for the next five months! Granted, it will be from a longer distance, at an angle, and we won’t be able to see the grounds from where we are, but all the same, there will be a castle in the distance across the river to look at while we brew our coffee. We’re planning to stay until the end of December while looking (at a more leisurely pace) for a longer-term place to call home.

Friends, we did not know the true difficulty we’d face in finding housing as retired Americans on a travel visa, which is renewable. Tenancy laws here favor the tenant and it’s nearly impossible for a landlord to evict a tenant. If a landlord had the opportunity to choose between a French person with a job and an American without one, they are going with the French person almost every time. We’ve been using the “friends of friends” networks here and that’s helped us make connections, but in the end, we took this 5-month temporary lease and are going to call it home and just relax for a bit. Maybe we can even be tourists for a while and go see the things we’ve not had time to do since we got here, instead of scrambling for the next 30-day Airbnb reservation.

I’ve been keeping track of how many places we’ve stayed temporarily in our quest to land somewhere stable. Since we sold our home three months ago and started traveling, we’ve stayed in:

• 3 Airbnbs
• 1 long-stay Aparthotel in California
• 9 Hotels

Some of these hotels were for fun trips to explore French cities (Paris, Limoges, and Rennes) and others were just for air conditioning to beat the heat around Angers which has been unusually hot. We are exhausted from finding new places to stay short-term, while looking for places to rent longer-term. We now have a medium-term success here and that feels great!

Next week, we are taking a fun trip to a beautiful inn called Bumblebee Manor in amongst the chateaus. We’ve got a wine tour day trip booked and a lot of relaxation. If we’re smart, we’ll not talk about apartments and houses and instead walk in the countryside, visit some chateaus, read some books by the pool, and enjoy some French wine, cheeses and baked goods. We’re driving, so wish us luck in those traffic circles!