Church and a Drive West to St Germain
Sunday, November 1, 1991
After another nice Church service at the American Church we decided to drive west of St. Germain just to check out the area. We discovered numerous neat, small towns and spotted a sign saying “U.S. Marines”. In checking it out, there is really a town of US, France, and Marines, France. Surrounding them were beautiful chateaus overlooking valleys and lakes.
Friday, July 12, 1991
Bargain Hunting in St. Germain
Strolled down the streets of St. Germain today looking for bargains?? In our city we have “little green men” we call them. Actually they are city workers in green uniforms, cleaning dog dirt, raking leaves, etc. from streets and alley ways every day. Really a clean country.
There was a market going on and I did manage to get some great potatoes for baking. Since we totally forgot our Sam’s hashbrowns at home, we bake our potatoes the night before and dry them as hashbrowns the next day. Now we must concentrate on buying a vacuum cleaner, flower boxes and plants and curtains. More shopping tonight.
Sunday, June 30, 1991
La Defense
sChecked out a new church in the La Defense area. More convenient to us but didn’t like it enough to go back. Discovered the market in St. Germain. Lots of vegetables, fish, meat, flowers - you name it, it’s here. St. Germain is a beautiful city. A castle in the center, beautiful gardens and a large forest.
Tuesday, June 4, 1991
Finding an Apartment - Tuesday, June 4, 1991
I’m exhausted. David walks to work. In the afternoon, back on the RER to St. Germain (1) to look at the apartment. The Gardien of the apartment speaks absolutely no English. We realize the apartment will not be ready until July 1. Very nice place.
Back to the office we go. Louis arranged for us to meet a realtor [sic] in the town of La Vesinet in the afternoon to look at apartments in Las Vesinet / La Pecq that would be available sooner. We’re a little early so we drive to La Pecq.
Realizing we need to be going in a different direction, we follow a lady who turns left and so do we. A policeman whistles at us both and we pull over. The lady argues with him (in French) and then he comes our way. It was early afternoon and as he began to speak, his breath told us he had just finished a nice lunch with lots of wine.
David told him in French that he doesn’t understand French and he says “American?” and waves us on. We did learn that you are not to cross a solid line at any time on the road. The lady’s argument was that the line was worn away and she was right.
We arrive at the Realtors at 2:30pm for our appointment and no one in the office knows anything about an appointment for us. We have the notes on which apartments we are to look at and the name of the person to see, so somebody had to have talked to somebody.
A person would be available to take us around but we had to come back in about 45 minutes. So we investigated the town and small shops and discovered a pastry shop with the best “Palmiers” around. The apartments were not at all to our liking so we decided to wait until July 1 for the one in St. Germain.
Editor’s Notes
Since this journal was written far before the creation of a blog I will from time to time add a few links in this section [editor’s notes] or other pertinent information.
(1) Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a small town in the western suburbs of Paris, France.