home sweet home

Well, it took over a week but we finally found it: a corkscrew, from the small grocery a few doors down from our hotel. We've put it to use several times, since the grocery also has bottles of wine for less than three euros.

We're still in celebration mode. Among other things to make life possible here, we've been gradually taking our belongings to our apartment. Our list of belongings has gone well past what we lugged across the ocean, & it's sad to think that much of it will stay here.

Luckily, we found Réjan, a place that is part Big Lots, part flea market & part bargain basement. It's where we scored our sheets, drapes & a candle-scented candle... not to mention our awesome but silent four-euro cuckoo clock. After our shopping excursion, we walked to the apartment. That goes something like this:

Walk up, up & up rue Jeanne d'Arc until it becomes our street. Go to our happy green door on the corner, below window boxes of red geraniums. Walk up the spiraling wooden stairs, pushing the lumiere light several times along the way because the hall lights time off.

Reach the top floor & walk back to our corner of the building, on the opposite side of the road looking of the hills & neighborhood. Turn the key. Oh, no. Turn the key the other way. Keep. Turning. The key.

Walk past our kitchen corner. (No, really. In French, it's coin cuisine, which literally translates as "corner kitchen.") Walk into our living room, which is also our bedroom. Now that we have our cuckoo, our candle & our nice, sheer curtains the place seems very much our own. We're still moving some things, but for now let's take a tour around the living room.

Joe is sitting in front of our bed. Laying on the bed, you look toward the door & corner kitchen. When Joe lifts his head, he looks at the other side of the room. Here, you see the table, the funky white chair with wheels that are more for decoration than function & (not pictured) a closet in the other corner.

 We're excited about our new home, and we get even more excited when we sit at the window together & look out on our view.

Getting our home ready, we made sure to buy the cheapest coffee maker we could find. That turned out to be an Italian cafetiere, & we set out immediately to find some delicious coffee.

Not far from our hotel, there's a coffee & Nancy specialty shop. We thought we would pop in there first. I'm so glad we did. There's a mystery candy that I'd seen advertised around Nancy, a specialty of the town called Bergamotes de Nancy. Along with our surprisingly inexpensive coffee, we bought a small bag & opened them immediately upon leaving the store. The citrus taste is great, light & perfect for the sunny weather we are having (finally).

After some research, it turns out that bergamots are a lemon/orange-like fruit, a native of Italy that also grows in parts of France. Don't these guys look just like summer? (source)

 Along with looking great & making great candy, they are eaten like the citrus fruits they are. Their flavor is "less sour than lemon, more bitter than grapefruit." I'm not sure what that means, & I don't think I'd want to eat it... I do, however, want to find the Earl Grey & breakfast teas that use it as a flavoring, which is apparently a good amount of teas. Which brings me to the other purchase at our Nancy shop.

Along with the rows of fresh coffee beans, this store was filled–I mean filled–with different kinds of tea. I've seen this brand a lot, haven't had a chance to research it yet & am continuously overwhelmed by the variety of flavors. I decided now was as good a time as any to start finding the tea that I like best for the yet. So, I grabbed a few flavors & we were on our way.

It's feeling like home already.