Escale à Sète 2022

Every two years*, the tallships come to Sète for a week of parades, exhibits, song, dance, and festival food! The quais are mainly closed to cars, huge parking lots spring up outside of town, special buses come to play, and the usual bus routes change madly (but they're free for the weekend)!

We hopped on one, and wandered around for a while 🙂

Oh yes! We also had a very nice dish of brasucade (BBQ mussels)! 😋

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* Normally, it's every 2 years. The last one, 2020, was cancelled due to the coronavirus.

Inflation in Europe

Inflation in Europe

We hear about the inflation in the US (7.9%); here's a breakdown of the inflation in the EU (6.2% on average, ranging between 14% and 4.2%) by country.

For more details, see here:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/225698/monthly-inflation-rate-in-eu-countries/

We Voted!

We voted this morning!

It was my first time voting in a French election, so I'm more excited than you might imagine 🙂

This is the first round of the presidential election; the second round will be in 2 weeks (assuming no one gets an outright majority, which isn't likely). Today, we had a choice of 12 candidates! (Read this France24 article for more info).

"To vote is a right; it is also a civic responsibility"

The election is only for president, so there isn't a long and involved ballot - here's all there is to it:

1. You show up, show your election card and ID, they check for your name on the list. If you're on it, they hand you an envelope
2. You pick up a piece of paper with the name of your choice (and any other red herrings you wish)
3. You go into a privacy booth, *fold* the paper of your choice, and put it in the envelope. You fold the flap into the envelope, but don't seal it.
4. You leave the booth, hand the envelope, your election card, and your ID to the agent. He reads off your number, another agent checks his list, confirms your name, and you sign.
5. Then the agent deposits your ballot in the box, stamps your election card, and proclaims to the room, "a VOTÉ!"

That's how it usually goes. For me? Obviously, I had to be different! When I got into the booth, I noticed that the envelope is smaller than the ballot - I definitely didn't want my vote to be ruined and declared invalid, so I stuck my head out, and asked if I should fold it 🙄 - yes, of course. So, when I handed my envelope in, I explained that it's my first time voting in France - oh boy, were there a ton of smiles then! Even a "bienvenue" (welcome)!

US Rental Cars

Everyone knows how to rent a car, right? Well, things are a little more involved in the US when you don't already have a car there - and the usual insurance!

What we found out:

• we absolutely can not apply our French car insurance to a US rental, as you normally would with US car insurance.
• we could borrow a car from friends or family, and their liability insurance would cover us if needed. But the usual required amount of coverage is relatively low; if we really needed it, we might also lose our shirts!
• we could get the same amount of insurance on a rental car. In fact, if you don't have insurance already, they're supposed to provide it (and charge you, of course).
• we finally found a place that would sell us supplemental liability insurance, but it would only cover us in a rental car; we couldn't buy it to cover us in a borrowed car.

Well, so what to do? We ended up renting cars for two short periods, buying the insurance (RentalCover, $20/day), and getting rides the rest of the time. To be fair, no one made us feel like we had put them out, but it did feel like a loss of freedom. Just a bit.

Speaking of freedom! This Mustang convertible was one of the cars! Ahhh, top down, sun shining, wind in my hair... And a satisfyingly growly engine 😀😛

It seemed we hit the rental market at a strange time - both times, I was met with the statement: "it's all we have..."

OK - the first car we aimed for was a mid-size, thinking we might drive others around; we ended up with a Spark instead (which was actually pretty roomy). The shock was that they were going to charge us twice as much! They fixed that...

The second car was supposed to be a Spark (LOL), because we needed the fold-down seats for our luggage. That became the Mustang! We put the top down to load/unload our suitcases 🙄.

We also hit the near-peak of gas prices! We paid $6/gallon...

Both cars required a $200 deposit, and took 30-45 minutes to check out (gone are the days of my premium membership - here's your car number, and the keys are in it. Hah!). Both deposits were returned 🙂. Both cars had relatively minor issues - they had definitely been brought out of retirement! The nice thing was, returning the car to SFO, we got the platinum treatment! Just us in an SUV, driven directly to our terminal - nice chat while we were at it, too! 

I'm toying with an idea for next time. If I owned part of a car, I could probably get the insurance I need. And the cost for a year might be better than a month of temporary insurance - plus, I could borrow cars again! Anyway, it's something to think about...

Welcome Home!

I picked up this beauty for dinner this afternoon! You know you're back in Sète when you've had a tielle!

Pinky!

I brought home a new friend!

A friend has taken up crocheting - this pink elephant (🙂) has been waiting for a visit from me for *several* years!