When Andy and I decided to buy a home abroad, Provence wasn’t even on our radar.
It was the tail end of covid and we were itching for some kind of adventure. Being cooped up at home really had led me down some pretty expensive rabbit holes and by March 2021, I had fallen in love with a little home in the South-West of France I had found while perusing listings and fantasizing about future vacation destinations.
To my surprise, Andy was receptive and together we would daydream about “the watchmaker’s home” (as we called it) when needing a little pick me up. We dubbed the house this because it was originally owned by the old village watchmaker, a detail that captured my imagination immediately upon realtor sharing it. The home was beautiful, with original, hand-carved fireplaces in each room and stunning plaster molding that wrapped precisely around the ceilings. It just oozed with charm and I was immediately smitten.
Between March and June, the agent and I had gotten well acquainted via email, with her sending videos and photos to accompany my many question that came to mind throughout the day. We finally made an appointment to view it once I was out of school for summer break, the second week of June. Since neither of us had ever been to the South of France, we decided to turn the adventure into the ultimate road-trip, stopping in 4 different locations as we inched our way across the bottom half of France. We used major landmarks as home bases and usually had up to 5 homes to visit while getting acquainted with the region and civilization again.
While we adored “the watchmaker’s home” and even at a certain point started also calling it “our house,”we knew we must do our diligence and look at other homes in order to compare and make an educated decision. So, we began our journey in Perpignan, picking up our rental car and driving north to our first major landmark.
Our first stop was Carcassonne, the beautiful, fortified medieval village that was the perfect location for the 4 homes, including “the watchmaker’s home,” that we planned to tour while there.
We were supposed to see “The Watchmaker’s Home” the morning after we arrived, but the agent had called us the night before as we were settling into the B & B.
“The owners had an emergency, they wouldn’t be home tomorrow. I have to cancel our appointment.” The American in me was confused. Why did the owners have to be there to show a house? This was my introduction into the quirky ins and outs of French real estate and just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the cultural differences and norms of agents and their clients!
Unapologetically, she asked if we could come back in a month.
Check back soon to continue reading about our roadtrip!
Our next stop was Uzès where, unbeknownst to us, we had two house showings NOT in Uzès (despite being listed there) by two different agents that were right next to each other. Awkward!
“Get in my car, I’ll take you there..” the agent said, tousled his hair and adjusting his sunglasses.
“Drive us? But I thought it was here, in Uzès,” I naïvely said, glancing over my shoulder at the town in my peripheral.
“It’s very close, but you can’t walk,” he said, trying to elude we were still seeing a home in Uzès. Andy shrugged, still trying to work out what was normal when it came to house showings abroad. We finally made an arrangement to follow close behind him and both shot each other a nervous glance as we saw the traditional French signs with Uzès written in deep, black lettering and a red slash going through it, pass our car on the side of the road, indicating we were leaving the town.
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Our third stop was Avignon, where we realized that neither of us had set up a showing in Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, leaving us with a free day we ended up using to see a listing from our “rejected” list of homes.
As we started to get closer and closer to the sought after Côte d'Azur, the less listings we were able to schedule. This is where the vacation part of our trip began to take shape as the home’s prices skyrocketed the closer we got to the Riviera.
Fountaine-de-Vaucluse was far enough away, however, to be reasonably priced and close enough to other attractions to give us plenty to explore, making it an easy choice for a future home.
Coming from Pittsburgh, that goes back and forth with Seattle as the cloudiest city in the U.S., the Provençal sun was therapeutic and something, we quickly discovered, we wanted in the location we chose.
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Vaison-la-Romaine wasn’t our last house showing, but it was the one that made us forget about “The Watchmaker’s House”
This was the listing photo for our home and somehow, it didn’t interest Andy in the least. For some reason, though, I held on to the listing’s link, not having the heart to delete it and not be able to recover it later, despite not making an appointment with an agent.
It had taken me weeks to set up some of the walkthroughs with the different agents. Some STILL haven’t even returned my numerous emails or calls. So, when I suggested we revisit the discarded listings we had, siting that we were specifically here to look at houses, I was a bit weary that I’d even be able to get anyone to answer my inquiry, let alone set up an appointment within three days.
Check back soon to continue reading about our roadtrip!
The Original Listing Photos:
Behind the Scene Photos From HHI
The house makes its debut on House Hunters International
Our episode was called, "Quibbling Over Quirk in Vaucluse, France,"
and aired January 26th, 2023.
It was around the beginning of May 2022 when I came home from work one day and Andy had pulled me into his office with some news. On a whim, and without telling me, he had sent our story into the House Hunters International casting two days before. Immediately, he had received a long winded, automated e-mail stating that they receive 1,000's of e-mails a day and it's standard to not hear back from them for weeks, if at all. The next day, however, he received a response asking if we could meet via Skype for an interview. I am a very private person in my day-to-day life and more on the reserved side, where Andy is the absolute opposite. As this would be our first summer in the house, he thought it would be a really fun way to document the experience. Needless to say, we took the interview.
The House After Renovations
