I know you might be expecting more about our new apartment in Paris but would you believe that we are back in Provence? We had company coming so had to get back and we will spend the rest of the summer here. The apartment is more or less put together but we will still have a lot to do when we return. In the meantime:
We are right in the middle of lavender season here. Our yard is exploding with it-it looks so bare when it comes time to cut it back. We took a friend to Valensole to see the lavender fields, always a treat.

Doesn’t it look great in rows? They are actually separate little round balls when you cut all of the lavender off but they grow all together when in bloom. You can hear thousands of bees buzzing as you stand there looking.

This purse and scarf, so creative, were for sale at a shop in Valensole. I thought they were so pretty. I thought about buying the scarf but there is no way I could wear it in this heat and I’m not usually here in the winter.

This field of lavender was below the village of Banon in a different area from Valensole. The sky turned black behind us and there was lightening and thunder but it never reached us.

Yet another field of lavender. This was on another day but again there was a black sky with distant thunder. The day before we went up into the mountains where it was dark like this and it poured. We saw this field when I was searching for the exit for a nunnery where they sell really good lavender honey. I found it but was disappointed in the looks-it wasn’t rustic or religious looking at all and there wasn’t one nun out in the fields cutting lavender. A nun sold us the honey though. I think they could make a lot more money with some good marketing since the nearby lavender festival in Valensole is so huge but I didn’t tell the nun that. My, that honey was good.

A few views of the exterior area of our new apartment.

The entrance to our new apartment.

This incredible doorway is right down the street. I’ve always loved it.

We enter into this great courtyard now. They always have flowers planted. It’s nice to see plants that aren’t in pots.

And, best of all, our elevator. It is really small but so nice when carrying groceries or suitcases.
You know, we never would have found and bought this apartment if it hadn’t been for the Paris board on AOL before they changed to their current system. I really miss my old boards. Anyway, I used to post on the Paris board especially when I was new to Paris and one day I received an email from a lady who said she thought she lived near me. We met for coffee one cold winter day and I met her husband that day in her apartment. We became great friends. One day I told her that if she ever wanted to sell to let me know. She told me that she didn’t think that would happen as she was sure that her children would want it. Then later she called and said she would sell it and here we are. It’s really hard to find apartments right now. We were so lucky.

I think I’m finished with my posts about my visit to England but I may post a few more photos. It was such a great trip. I came back to Paris on a Saturday for our move to our new apartment on Monday.(Let me just add that the trip was planned long before the move. As Murphy’s Law would have it, the move fell at the same time.) Maurice had done some packing but he was suffering from back pain and wasn’t able to do much. So I packed like a mad woman even putting the coffee maker in a box which Maurice discovered when he went to make his coffee the next morning. The men arrived and quickly got everything downstairs and into a truck. They didn’t use one of those machines that move things from a window down to the street thus saving us money-poor guys. They seemed to be okay with it anyway (The owner of the business was the one who decided not to use the machine, not us). Then we raced over to the new apartment where at least there could use the elevator for smaller things, tiny though it is. Boxes were stacked all over the place in our new apartment but really, it seemed to go very quickly.

So goodbye number 4. It’s been a great nine years.

Goodbye living room that we enlarged two years ago by knocking out a wall.

Goodbye kitchen. I really liked how it was set up and will miss the great dishwasher. The blue thing to the right is our air conditioning unit. The new owner bought it from us. I was sort of glad as it takes up a lot of room but I sure did miss it as Paris got very hot after we moved. We have good cross ventilation when we open the windows and a fan helps but still. We aren’t in Paris much in the summer right now so maybe it won’t matter.

Goodbye stairs. I won’t miss lugging groceries or suitcases up these. It got to be hard although good exercise. We got so we had groceries delivered and the delivery guy couldn’t believe we didn’t have an elevator. He informed us that all of the other buildings in the area did. What are you going to do? In our case, move.

The boxes piled up and waiting at our new place. I’ll show you a bit of it in the next posting. We only had a few days to unpack as a friend was arriving but we managed. I unpacked 32 boxes in two days. I’m still not sure where everything is.
The day everything was moved out of our old place, I did a finally cleaning, making sure the bathroom was all sparkling clean and vacuuming and then mopping the floors. I took the bus over to our new apartment with a mop sticking out of my little grocery cart on wheels. The next day, somehow, I managed to get our vacuum cleaner into the cart. Maurice, who couldn’t walk well because of his back pain but could ride a bike, offered to take it in the basket of the bike. I would love to have seen that-the body of the vacuum stuck in the basket, the hose wound around his neck like a boa. However, when the time came, it slid into my cart like a hand into a glove. The hose sort of slid in too and just the handle stuck up over the edge. I got a few looks on the bus. I’m sure everyone thought I was with some sort of cleaning company but I managed to move it pretty easily. I thought I was completely done when the guy who bought our old place called to inform us that I had left some clothes in the built-in dirty clothes hamper. Sigh. So one more trip back up those stairs with my cart to get the final load. I’m so glad I won’t have to take that bus back and forth anymore.

On my last day in Kent we made a stop at Leed’s Castle. It has a long history and was last owned by Lady Baillile. It’s been used in several films as well as in old Magnum, PI episode which I plan to try and find on YouTube or somewhere similar. It is situated on enormous grounds and it was a long walk from where we parked to the entrance of the castle. Along with the castle is an aviary for various birds, a set up for weddings-we saw photos being taken there-and a dog collar museum which didn’t do much for me. This wasn’t my favorite castle that I saw and it was very expensive to get in but it’s another thing that I’ve checked off my list of things I want to see.

This photo just shows a very small portion of the castle.

A very friendly peacock greeted us as we walked to the castle, proudly spreading his tale. I think he was hoping for food.

There were black swans there too which have become the symbol for Leed’s Castle.

Can you see the two black swans on the towels in the bathroom? The castle, by the way, had been decorated by a French decorator for Lady Baillile. There was a painting of her and her two daughters looking rather haughty but she is remembered fondly by injured soldiers who stayed in the Castle during WWII.

Look at this old bathtub, probably left from days of yore as they say. They had to use those buckets to fill it.

In a tiny village in Kent called Tudeley, in a very small church, you can find an unexpected treasure. My friend, Mary, said that she had a surprise for me. We pulled in front of the church and she opened the door and as soon as I stepped in and saw the stained glass windows I said, “Chagall!” What a surprise! The windows were done by Chagall when a mother, grieving upon the drowning death of her daughter, somehow talked him into one of his last creations. Old Victorian windows had to be preserved and moved and structural changes had to be made, but the mother got her wish and I had a delightful time looking at those windows.
Isn’t it funny how you see something more than once, in my case, the ceiling of the Garnier Opera, done by Chagall? I even posted some photos here of that ceiling. I was in St Paul in Provence and saw his grave after seeing these windows. I wonder what’s next?

Some of them were yellow. I love his yellow windows. Maybe I just like yellow.

I like blue windows too. Blue is the color of love according to Chagall.

The woman who died. All of the images of her in these windows made her look at peace.

An angel. Chagall was always doing angels.

The mother with her two children.

His signature.

I was talking to a friend who really knows England well and asked her what her favorite places were in Kent. The first thing she said was, “Chartwell, the home of Winston Churchill” so that was on my list of places to visit while there.

Churchill who became very famous during the WWII time in England was always seen with a cigar. One of my favorite photos of him is one of a Frenchman lighting Churchill’s cigar with a huge grin on his face. As Mary, my friend, and I turned into a tree lined lane leading into the grounds of Chartwell we had the windows of the car rolled down and, honest to God, we could smell cigar smoke. We both realized it at the same time. Was Winston greeting us, two Americans like his mother?

The grounds were just lovely. I think I’ve seen a photo of Churchill painting in this chair. He loved to paint and he was very good at it. I loved seeing his studio. We weren’t allowed to take photos inside though.

The outside of the house. It had a very cozy and comfortable feeling.

A very persistant duck on the grounds there. He was so pushy that he would stick his head in your purse or lap, if you were sitting down, looking for food. You had to push him away to keep him from searching your clothing and body for food.