A Month in Pau: ALLONS-Y!

What better excuse to fire up this old blog than the amazing opportunity we have - a month in Pau, France?! Thanks to the generosity of our hosts, David and Fernand of Villa Hutton, and the bevy of miles we had with American Airlines, we arrived yesterday for a month in the foothills of the Pyrenees!

I won't go into the history of Pau, since it is quite extensive and there are plenty of sites that do the job much better than I would (click here), but I'll give my two bits. Surprisingly, it has a lot in common with Portland, Oregon. Both cities are close to mountains, are at about the same latitude, are about the same distance from the coast, have very similar weather (I think Portland actually has more annual days of sun), and are both lush, green and moist. And they both have really great coffee and beer (dark beer drinkers, do your best to track down Pelfort Brune).

Wine is cheap, gas is expensive. A gallon of gas costs $9 - as much as two bottles of good Bordeaux wine. There are no Starbucks, Targets, Wal-Marts or any other big box stores. The cars are tiny. The flowers are huge. People are very nice, and a little intrigued with my American-ness and horrible French. Spain is a stone's throw away (almost literally).

In our first 24 hours, I've been to a drug store and two markets, both to stock up on provisions and to get some emergency diapers and allergy pills, since our luggage decided to spend a night in Paris. But even our luggage realized that Pau is really the place to be, and joined us here this morning, so we're all ready to hunker down for a month near the snow-capped mountains.

Chloe was an amazing champ on the 17 hour journey here, sleeping a lot, crying very little, and generally amazingly very amenable. If American Airlines had behaved half as well as Chloe, our travels would have been much less stressful, but that's behind us now. Today Chloe has not felt like venturing out - perhaps absorbing her new surroundings before venturing further - but that is fine. We'll just hang out at our little pad, listening to French jazz on the radio, the grown ups drinking Pelforth, and Chloe reading fairy books while we watch the clouds roll over the mountains. Life is good, and we're so thankful. Salut!