Lunch in Le Beugnon

Classy!

Caramel

That cat that is not ours but who suns himself on our terrace

Ideas...

Dessert at lunch in Menigoute

Yum! Miam miam!

Lunch in Menigoute

Time change

We turned the clocks back 1hour on the weekend, so my drive to work
was lighter, except the fog was crazy. At least it means that it
should be warm and sunny today.

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Car issues

The last two weeks have lead to a few problems with my car. Now I
don't mean a car accident, don't panic!

About 3 weeks ago now, I was driving along, when the knob of the gear
stick came off in my hand as I was chnaging gears. A little scary at
first admittedly! The plastic had cracked around it earlier in the
week, but as we were busy moving, I thought I'd deal with it later.
Well it turned out that the knob cracked into 4 different pieces and I
was stuck with just the stick. A cloth over the top of it made it
easier to change gears and so finally I managed to book an appointment
at Peugeot today. Yes I drive a Peugeot. How French. It is a 306, 1994
model, still running well and we'll keep our fingers crossed that she
keeps on going until we head back to Australia in a few years time.

The other car issue also got sorted today. I had to go to the
prefecture to change the address on my carte grise (registration
papers). French registration plates on cars have recently changed.
Until the change, the last 2 digits of the plates were the number of
the department that the car was registered in. Where we live, the Deux-
Sevres, it's 79. Paris is 75. Now, any new cars have plates without
the department numbers in the registration number. You can have a
sticker at the side of your plate with your choice of department
number, not just where you register it. However, if you don't ask, you
just get the default number, the one of your department. You can see
the 79 one below, although it shows the logo for the region, Poitou-
Chatentes, quite boring I think actually. For any cars changing owner
or even just changing address, you need to get new plates. I'd kind of
forgotten this, so when I went to change the address on my carte
grise, they gave me not just a change of address certificate, but also
new registration number. In France, you then take the paper to a
number of garages where they'll sell and fit the plates. So luckily
I'd decided to go to the prefecture before going to Peugeot for my
other problem. Unfortunately, it was just another expense I hadn't
been expecting. Fortunately, the guy at the Peugeot desk was very
smiley and helpful. Thumbs up for customer service at Peugeot
Automobilis in Niort!

One interesting thing I did see while chez Peugeot was that they had
courtesy bicycles to lend to their customers while their car was in
the shop! It does make sense. The garage is located in the big
commercial zone, which is actually quite large and it would be quite a
walk if you worked at the other end of it. A bike would be very
convenient. Vive la France!

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