No internet - bummer

Thursday, September 2, 2010 Day 64


We slept late and Roger went around the corner to a boulangerie for some breakfast pastries. English breakfast tea completed a delicious breakfast.

About 9:00, Mme. McGregor knocked on the door, with one of the airshaft workers behind her. She explained that he needed to check our pipes, and that someone would need to be in the apartment all day until 4:00 today and tomorrow to let the workers in should they need to check the pipes some more. We agreed that someone would be here all day – not how we wanted to spend our first couple of days in Montpellier! A bit later, the worker knocked again and told us that we could not run either the water nor the toilet until 4:00. Ack! Certainly not how we wanted to spend our first day in Montpellier! But we quickly toileted and put a basin in the kitchen sink so we could run water there. I volunteered to go out for an hour or so to explore, as I couldn’t bear to be cooped up in the apartment all day. Roger promised he would call Francis about the internet while I was gone. I located the local branch of HSBC and inquired about a “distributeur.” Amazingly enough, there is none in Montpellier! The clerk told me we would have to use the ATM at the post office. From there I wandered around looking at shops and trying to get my bearings, then headed for the halle, which is similar to a farmer’s market. I bought some strawberries and tomatoes from a vendor and made a friend of him when he asked if I was here on vacation. We discussed in his poor English and my equally poor French that I had moved here yesterday, and that I would return in the future to buy more from him. I also bought a couple of mysterious tarts and 200 grams of a ham and cheese casserole-looking thing for lunch from a charcuterie and returned to the apartment about 11:30. Roger said Francis was due to come around 2:00, so we settled into lunch. The casserole was pretty good. The tarts were seafood tarts and, while probably pretty good, not particularly to our taste. The strawberries were wonderful.

At 2:00, Francis buzzed from below and we let him up and into the apartment. He introduced himself and we began to discuss the internet issue. He tried a bit of everything, with no success. He said he had arranged for France Telecom (aka Orange) to call at 3:00 to test the line, but the appointed hour came and went with no call. He tried to call Orange, but only got a recording saying that they were too busy with other callers and could not take calls now(!). Finally he gave up, saying he would contact us later when he could arrange things with Orange. He sent us an email (at least we can check that on the cell phone!) and let us know that Orange will be calling us between 2:00 and 4:00 Saturday. Sigh! Another day of being tied to the apartment! And without internet!

After Francis left, we went out for a while to reacquaint ourselves with the city we visited last fall for three days. The streets were full of students, as this is a college town and it is our impression that the term just got underway. We wanted to go to Monoprix for some groceries, but when we entered, we saw that all the check-out lines were ten or so deep, so we changed our minds. There is nothing that we need that desperately. We bought a rotisserie chicken for dinner and returned home. It was not until I began to prepare dinner that I discovered a major issue in the kitchen – the gas stove lists a good deal to starboard, such that the oil in the pan in which I was frying the potatoes only covered two-thirds or so of the bottom of the pan. I had to continually rotate the pan to get the potatoes to fry fairly evenly. It was a good thing that the rest of the meal is an already-cooked chicken and a salad which needed no cooking and, of course, a glass of wine.