Dreaming of France -- More Planning, Some Scheming

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

Today, I clicked on some travel sites and started searching for plane tickets.
What?
Yes, in a short 130 days, I should be headed to France.

Here's a sunrise picture out the window. Can't wait to see it again. 

Here's the screen in the seatback that showed me our progress throughout the trip. 

Okay, there are a few hurdles yet. 

The house hasn't sold. My husband hasn't retired yet, but, by golly, we're going.
My latest plan is to drive to my parents' house in Florida, store a few things, and drive to an airport down there -- Orlando or Fort Lauderdale or Miami.
Just entering those airports inn the travel search brought up airlines I wouldn't usually see if I flew out of Columbus or connected in Detroit. Where was Air France and Delta? Instead, TAP Portugal popped up.
And the flights would take over 11 hours with stops in places like Iceland or Dublin. Usually, we had a straight shot from Detroit to Paris.

A tired Earl on the tram through the airport once we arrived in Paris.
Pablo Picasso seems wide awake and a bit intrusive in the poster on the wall. 

Maybe we won't be able to fly out of Florida. Maybe we'll have to fly out of Columbus.
But what I do know is that once those airline tickets are in our hands, there's no stopping us.
We have so many things to figure out.
We need to order new birth certificates and marriage certificates and have them translated into French. We're looking at health insurance to cover us for the entire year. We'll need to share our bank accounts to prove we have enough money to survive for a year in France without working (which shouldn't be a problem once we finally sell the house).
The only catch is that we need to show we have a place to stay for the year. We actually are planning to move around quite a bit. As I shared a few weeks ago, we are scheduled to house sit for a menagerie of animals in January. So we'll start there and we are still negotiating for house sits in Aude and the Pays de Loire in February and March. (Fewer animals at those houses). And, of course, we can also rent a place to stay through Air B&B.

In Pezenas

In Beziers

Or in the mountains of Quillan. 

We actually want to stay some more in our chosen towns to see if they are the right fit for us.
I'm generally an optimistic person who thinks that surely the rules can be bent for me. I'm not sure why I think that since I can't recall a time when the rules were actually changed to allow me to do what I wanted. So I messaged my friend Delana to ask her what to do. Maybe she can claim she invited us to stay with her for the year.
Or maybe we can talk to our friends in Nantes and see if they will write a letter saying that we will be their guests. Can you imagine how complicated it might be to convince a French-speaking person to claim we'll be their guests but we won't actually be their guests? I can picture the hilarity that would ensue as our friends try to figure out how to tell us that they don't want us to stay for the entire year, or they expect us to stay and we never show up. I'm sure there's a way around this.

As the time grows near, I'm more and more excited and ignoring some of the negatives that loom ahead, like selling the house.
I'm sure we'll have all the visa details worked out by the time we make our appointment at the French consulate in Chicago and travel there for our appointments. How can they turn down a Francophile like me?
Thanks so much for playing along with Dreaming of France. Please leave your link below and visit each other's blogs to share your love for France.