Our First Morning (Notre Premier Matin)

We just got back after our first morning outing. It was chilly but nice. We found our location on the map and started to walk out to the main plaza. It was about 9, but the town was just starting to wake up. We are smack dab in the middle of the old part of town, now called Le Quartier de l'Ancien Courrier (The Old Postman's District). We wandered around a bit and eventually found the main plaza. People were everywhere walking around the plaza, drinking coffee in the cafes surrounding the plaza, coming and going. We went over to the tourist information center and got some information on the place including a brouchure with many apartments of the sort we might be looking for.

We passed by a McDonald's and I checked my iPod for WiFi. Nothing that wasn't locked. And nothing that appeared to be McDonald's WiFi. There is a ton of WiFi called Wanadoo. I'm wondering if I can subscribe to Wanadoo and get WiFi through them.

We decided to get a coffee at a place right on the plaza. Cafe and Toast for each of us. One Coffee + Toast costs 2,60 euros! And the coffee was a little espresso shot thing. The toast is 3 slices of white bread toast. Elena wanted a croissant but they didn't have croissants. So between the not-real-coffee and the white bread, Elena didn't get what she wanted at all. I would have liked more coffee, but I was OK with the toast. Elena looked through the apartments and I looked at a free newspaper we were handed and the map of the place.

After that we went to get groceries:
coffee beans 1/2 lb for 2,91 ($4.50)
6 rolls of toilet paper 1,89 ($3.00)
soap 0,60 ($1.00)
6 X-large eggs 1,53 ($2.25)
2 bananas 0,97 ($1.50)
bottle of wine 3,39 ($6.00)
liter of milk 1,00 ($1.50)

Then we came home for real coffee, a shower, and to get ready for our day. Right now Elena is looking at opportunities like the Alpine Club of France. Last night she declared she didn't like MOntpellier, but that's OK because on our first night in Barcelona she declared that she didn't like Barcelona. It takes her a while to warm up to a place. But now she is getting convinced that this is a nice place to hang out for a while. I hope our apartment hunting goes well. We have to move out on from our tiny digs on Saturday.

So we have seen The Gap, Body Shop, and 2 McDonald's so far. We checked out the bicycles at a sports store--the cheapest was about 140 euros or $250. I still owe Elena a bike from Christmas 3 years ago.

A few notes on our apartment: it is in an old building. By old, I mean it was built when George Washington was traipsing around the forests fighting the French. The very first inhabitants of this building were probably horrified that George Washington assassinated one of their diplomats. (He signed the confession, but maybe didn't know what he was signing.) The toilet works on a pump. When we flush the toilet, a very loud pump pumps twice for about 6 or 7 seconds each. We have a window that opens onto a "courtyard" that's about 10 square meters and totally enclosed. The 13" TV has only about 12 channels, but most of them are copies. I haven't checked to see how many unique channels there are. All French--no English on this TV. The stone spiral staircase has a timed light at night that turns off before we can reach the our place 4 stories up. It's charming, though.

It's a good thing Elena knew how to buy produce. Apparently it is weighed in the produce section and a sticker is stuck on. It's not like the USA where it's weighed at the register.

We also tried to see if we could get internet somehow. When I look at my WiFi list, I see tons of wanadoo and livebox access points. I thought maybe these were something we could log onto if we had a password and user name. However it turned out that these were modems that people own that connect to the internet through the cellphone network. Seattle has a system like that called Clearwire or something like that. Anyway, we went to France Telecom (Orange) and looked into our options for that. Without a 2 year contract, it is prohibitively expensive! So we won't be doing that.