Our adventure begins!  David and I started planning this trip about a year ago.  It was a lot of research and planning but . . . we know it will all be worth it.  

We left Charlotte Friday afternoon, September 5, 2014, at 4:45 p.m.  We asked out friends, the Salatas, to drive us to the airport.  At the allotted time the door bell rang, David opened the door, and there stood my baby friend, Colton!  All by himself, looking adorable!  His grandparents were hiding around the corner so Colton would surprise us.  I told  David he should have closed and locked the door quicker and Colton would now be a French baby!

Here we are at the Charlotte airport about to check in:

We checked in without incident and made it through security quickly.  We had a light dinner at Chili's and boarded the plane at 4:00 p.m.  The plane was almost completely full but David and I had two seats to ourselves on the left side of the plane.  Very comfortable.  We planned to sleep but first I watched two movies:  "Draft Day," which I thought was very entertaining and "The Other Woman" which was typical.  It was an eight hour flight and pretty smooth.  I finally slept a few hours but David only slept maybe two hours.  It is definitely an advantage to be short when you are trying to get comfortable in an airplane seat!

We landed in Paris a little early at 6:40 a.m.  We went through Passport Control quickly and then picked up our bags.  We did not have to go through Customs for some reason.  I had booked our train tickets to leave directly from the airport so we made our way to the train station which was about a 10 minute walk.  We boarded our train at 10:15 a.m., changed trains once and arrived at the local St. Aignan train station at 2:45 p.m.  I could not stay awake on the train and poor David fought sleep all the way so we would not miss our transfer station or our final stop!  We took a taxi to our "home" for the next two months . . . LaBoulangerie!  It is even more beautiful in person!

We were met here by the house manager, Nathalie, and her two daughters.  They are all delightful and very helpful.  They showed us all around the house and explained how to use the washing machine, etc.  This 300 year old former bakery has been renovated gorgeously while maintaining it's charm.  Wooden beams on the ceiling and brick floors.  The bathrooms are modern and very cool.  It exceeded our expectations!

We wanted to start exploring the town but we couldn't help ourselves and had to take a nap!  After our nap we went out to find a restaurant for dinner.  We ran into Nathalie and one of her daughters again and then she introduced us to one of our neighbors, a British man named Douglas.  Rachael, who owns La Boulangerie, told me that we would probably meet Douglas who is a friend of hers.  In fact he and his wife are going to be the French witnesses at Rachael and Trent's wedding here next year.  Douglas is very friendly and helped us chose a restaurant.  He explained that most of the places would be booked on a Saturday night and he suggested we go to a fairly new Chinese restaurant here named Delices D'Asie.

Now I am married to the only vegetarian on earth who doesn't like Chinese food, but he thought it sounded good.  It was delicious!  David had a salad and a vegetable rice dish and I had noodles with chicken and an excellent beef (cooked in red wine) dish.  We had ice cream for dessert and headed home because we were still very tired.  David stopped and bought us some bottled water and Coke light and then we were in for the night.  

What a great way to start our vacation!