Chez Nous

 For those of you that are curious about the place we're currently calling home in France, then this is for you! It's a tradition for me to write a post about the places/apartments and neighborhoods I've called home abroad... see Jerusalem, Strasbourg, and Haifa here.

First of all, it doesn't quite feel like "our" place because it literally isn't. The apartment actually belongs to David's mom's uncle (who's in his 90s and is now in a nursing home) and his son, David's mom's cousin, who is unfortunately in the hospital after a nasty car accident. 

Everything is up in the air right now concerning how long we'll end up staying here (most likely a couple or even several more months)... but for now it's a great place and we're lucky to be here. The price is right ;), and they are very kind and generous to let us stay here. It's convenient because it's only a 10 minute drive to David's work. He gets to come home and eat lunch with me every day since it's so close. And because it's France and they have a mandatory 2 hour lunch break haha

If we were renting our own place, it would be a tiny shoebox studio apartment, since our goal this year was to save money for travel. The downside is that we can't fully make it our own since we don't know how long we're staying (can't really decorate and it's full to the brim of stuff that's not ours). I would also prefer to live in a bigger city... but for now the positives far outweigh the negatives!

As I've mentioned before, we're living in a small town just outside of Cannes called Mandelieu-la-Napoule. By far the best thing about this apartment is the huge balcony and the amazing views. We're on the top floor of the building- the 8th floor. The balcony wraps all the way around the living room, kitchen, and our bedroom. We love looking out at the Mediterranean and the cute village of Mandelieu. My personal favorite part is being able to see the castle.

The other great thing about this place is the space! We were mentally preparing ourselves for a TINY 1-room apartment (especially when we thought we'd end up in Paris), so being in a big (by French standards) 3 bedroom place is pretty cool.

Here's a few pictures of the place...

Entryway

Living room

Kitchen

The only ghetto thing about the apartment is that instead of a bed we have a lumpy mattress on the floor- hoping to improve that situation soon. Although it's not as easy as it sounds when you live on the 8th floor and the elevator barely holds 3 thin humans.

If you haven't been in a French house before, you might not know that a lot of houses have a tiny (claustrophobic) room with just the toilet, and then another room with the sink and shower. I don't really know the reasoning behind that, but it's pretty common.

Also, note the bidet in the corner haha 

You have to smile at the psychedelic vintage wallpaper ;)

Here's a little collage of the village/neighborhood right outside. It's pretty small and quaint.

Hope you enjoyed the house tour! And I hope to be blogging about some travel plans pretty soon! We have to go to David's hometown in Gap (in the Alps) the next 2 weekends to get the car fixed, and it's been too rainy and stormy this week for me to go on day trips... but I've been planning away and there's exciting things coming.