Well, it’s been awhile since Martha & I have had a travel adventure that we thought was worth sharing with you. But we’re now in the middle of a doozy — we bought a house in Provence a little over a month ago! But let me back up and start at the beginning…

Last Spring we received an email from a good Portland friend saying that she was in France with a friend and they were looking for a house to buy, renovate, and then fractionalize into 10 ownership shares (five weeks per year usage). They were about to make an offer on a house, but they were having second thoughts about the viability (sanity?) of what they were doing. So they first wanted to gauge the level of interest friends might have in buying shares down the road. Well, we emailed back that it sounded very appealing to us. That was actually a pretty easy “decision”since we knew Dory (& her husband, Steve) so well, having traveled with them in Europe and Asia. In fact, we awoke the next morning with the possibility foremost on our minds; actually we were thinking “why hadn’t we thought of that!” And I went into my “engineer” mode, asking lots of questions and giving feedback. One thing lead to another and we soon found ourselves joining them in the venture. That was last April/May and the last 6 months have been spent on purchase due diligence, setting up the U.S. and French legal framework for the purchase and fractionalization, and herding (I mean working with) all the involved French parties. And that work all culminated at the end of October when we closed on the purchase. We then spent all of November in Provence deciding on the renovations to be done and kicking them off. We hope to finish that work by next Spring or early Summer and then find seven other parties who want to join us in enjoying the fruit of our labor: Chez Mirabel.

I won’t go into any more detail here … you can read more at our burgeoning website, www.chezmirabel.com. And it includes a “Happenings” Blog that describes our journey.