Walt posted a few photos of the gîte (vacation rental, pronounced "zheet") we stayed in last week over toward the Atlantic coast in the area called La Vendée. The first thing I did when we arrived there on that Saturday afternoon was to take some photos, before we messed the place up with everything we had hauled over there in the trunk of the Citroën. One exception: this first photo shows the kitchen in mid-week, after we had moved in. I took it from the top of the stairs that lead up to two bedrooms and the bathroom. That red cord snaking across the floor is an ethernet cable (see below). The door on the lower right opens into a half bath.
So the downstairs floor of the gîte, which is called La Petite Maison, consists of a large kitchen (about 200 square feet), a small WC (or half bath), and a large living room (350 square feet). The house has a front door leading into the living room, and a back door that opens into the kitchen. The price of a gîte like this one is 300 euros for seven nights, including a 40 euro cleaning fee that is optional but which we chose to pay, to avoid having to spend time cleaning the place ourselves before we left. In the living room there was a big flat-screen TV connected to a basic satellite TV service carrying all the standard French channels as well as some English language channels including Sky News and CNN-London. We discovered that some American movies on some channels were available with an English-language soundtrack (version originale, it's called — not dubbed into French).
Much of the furniture and kitchen equipment in the gîte came from Ikea, it seemed. I'm not even sure where the closest Ikea store is — in La Rochelle, maybe, which is an hour's drive south. The gîte's renovation dates back to 2006. All the furniture downstairs was comfortable, and the kitchen was completely functional. I liked the way the place was decorated, in a fairly plain style. It was spacious and not too fancy. I was glad to see that the staircase wasn't an open-tread model. That meant that Natasha was not afraid of running up and down from one floor to another.
We used the stove, refrigerator, freezer, and dishwasher while we were there. We were preparing all our own meals because we didn't want to go to restaurants with the dog. We packed a cooler and took a lot of our food with us from home. It just needed reheating, and we bought fish and some other things locally that were simple to prepare. French gîtes ruraux are really just a step up from camping in some ways. You don't expect all the comforts of home, but you want a place that's serviceable and reasonably comfortable. This one was fairly luxurious by gîte standards. There was plenty of hot water, and there was even a washing machine (un lave-linge) but we didn't need to use it. We also didn't need to turn on the heat during our stay because the weather was on the warm side.
We had some trouble with the internet connection, which ran off a PLC (power-line communication) unit plugged into an electrical outlet in the living room and connected us us to the gîte owner's modem/router, in a separate building, through the property's electrical wiring. It provided wi-fi but the signal it delivered was fairly weak and flaky, and it completely failed on the second day. Then the owner got it working again, and he also provided an ethernet cable that let us connect our laptop computer to a dedicated ethernet port in the gîte's kitchen. That limited where we could place and use the laptop, and our tablets can't connect via ethernet so we couldn't use them that day. I had wanted to set the laptop up on the table below, in the living room, but the ethernet cable wasn't long enough to reach all the way there from the kitchen.
First world problems, eh? I finally realized that if I plugged the PLC unit in upstairs in the hallway, directly above the coffee table downstairs, the wi-fi signal was much stronger than when it was plugged into an outlet in the living room. The living room ceiling was the upstairs floor. In other words, there was no insulation or brick or tile separating the downstairs from the upstairs, and the signal had no trouble passing through wooden floorboards. When I figured that out, the wi-fi mostly worked pretty well for us the rest of the time. Overall, the gîte was a good place for us, considering the price. I'll post about the bedrooms and bathroom over the coming days, just to give you an idea of what the place was like.
I'm not familiar with gites, but this one looks really nice. I like the style of the furniture, plain and functional.
ReplyDeleteFlaky internet and wi-fi, low beams, a tiny shower, and other inconveniences lead me to give this gîte just 3½ stars out of 5.
DeleteThe walls are what bring the charm!
ReplyDeleteThe wood ceiling in the living room and the wood floors were nice too.
DeleteA really interesting post. From either you or Walt I know how to pronounce gite. My sister stayed in one or two in France, including in the Loire region. Alas, we are perhaps too old now to travel rural France and may never stay in a gite. You are too old to be bothering with troublesome wifi. Surely you could have done something with your phones and had your own internet at a reasonable cost. I no longer care what it costs. I will have good internet wherever I go.
ReplyDeleteYour gite was quite big enough, as I would have guessed.😘
You live in a major city, and the infrastructure for wi-fi and internet is in place. In rural France, it's not a given, though things are improving. And don't think you can count on reliable mobile phone service for internet either. That's improving too, but it's not available everywhere. I do care what things cost. I hope to live for a long time still, and I don't want the money to run out.
DeleteOh, by the way, I retired at the age of 53.
Delete"I hope to live for a long time still, and I don't want the money to run out." This is a good strategy.
DeleteI had heard that improving internet reception and speed in rural areas is a priority for the Macron government.
ReplyDeleteI've heard from neighbors that our internet speed will be greatly upgraded in November. I hope it's true. We have friends who live 12 or 15 miles south of us who can't get DSL at all. They also have only very spotty cell phone service. We're lucky that our mayor, who's our neighbor, has given priority to internet access across the commune.
DeleteLOL .. "old" is Not a word I would use to describe Ken or Walt ... however old you actually are ... these are not 2 old men :)
ReplyDeleteI don't feel old... most days. But the clock is ticking. We certainly are not too old to travel around rural France. Or to garden, clean house, and take walks with the dog.
DeleteMy husband was what I called a freak of nature. He never looked his age and had people argue with him when he told them how old he was. I begged for a transfusion, telling him I needed his blood to look younger too ! lol
ReplyDeleteHe always said, You have to keep moving. The people that park themselves in front of the tv / computer and never move are the old ones ..eventually .. All that you do, and your open minds and sense of adventure/exploration will keep you young for a very long time .. so say I :)
Let's just hope it's true. As long as I can keep walking, I'll be okay. I hope you will be too.
DeleteI like the gite. We've stayed in about 20 gites in France over the years, and this one seems pretty typical, if not more spacious than most. As for Internet connections, I've found that if the house has it, it's almost always good. If it doesn't, we knew that in advance. As to cell phone reception, often that's spotty or non-existent, especially in very rural areas. But that's generally unimportant to me, since we rarely use our cell phone in France. More important is a baking dish big enough to roast a pintade!
ReplyDeleteIn the late 1980s and through the '90s, we mostly stayed in rental apartments in Paris — every year. But in '93 we spent two weeks in a gîte in Provence, and in 1995 10 days in a gîte in the Lot in SW France. Then in 2000 we spent a week in a gîte in Vouvray (Loire Valley) and loved it. We returned to the same gîte for two weeks in 2001 (CHM spent a week there with us). In 2002 we spent a week in a great gîte in Pocé (Amboise area). Then we came to live in France in 2003 and stayed in a gîte across the river in Thésée for a week before cleaning up and moving into the house we still live in today. Since then, we've spent time in gîtes in Burgundy, the Auvergne, the Perche, the Ile d'Oléron, the Allier, Champagne, and last week in the Vendée. Some experiences have been better than others, but all have been good.
DeleteI think we started staying in gites in France around 30 years ago, and it all started for one reason: we had gone to France several times, staying in hotels and chambre d'hotes, and when we went to the outdoor markets, we saw all the beautiful produce, meats, and so forth, that we couldn't buy. We wanted to stay in places where we could cook and enjoy platters of cheese and local wines. Then on our one-night stay in Collanges-la-rouge, we saw the book "Les Plus Beaux Villages de France," and that book led us to the discovery of Gites de France.
DeleteWe don't do a lot of heavy-duty cooking in gîtes these days, but when you come here for a few weeks from the U.S. every year or so I certainly understand wanting to be able to roast that pintade and enjoy other local products in a way you can't do in a hotel room or even a restaurant.
DeleteI love staying in gites in rural France. We've stayed in several good ones, non?
ReplyDeleteYes, the one in the Auvergne was great, as was the one in the Perche. Good memories.
DeleteThe gite looks attractive. I like the stone walls and the sisal flooring - I assume that's what it is. A tiny shower though is difficult to maneuver.
ReplyDeleteThe floor covering was some kind of vegetable fiber — sisal or coir, I don't know. It was a nice feature. The owner of the gîte, whose name is David, and his father, a retired stone mason, did all the restoration work on the buildings that include his house (huge) and two smaller gîtes, starting in about 2004. He said everything was in ruins when they started and had been left to disintegrate since the early 1970s. The roof had fallen in in many places.
DeleteIt sounds like this place was a perfect example of why the whole gite rural system was started - to get people to fix up decaying properties.
DeleteTrue, Bob.
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