Adam:  For the past several days, we have been staying at a house in the Alsace-Lorraine district in France. I found this place online and it turned out to be a better selection than we had hoped (some of my choices do NOT turn out that way..) This is a 2 bedroom 1-bath house that was owned by the landlord’s parents who (we think) recently died. The place is basically untouched since they previous owners left, which gives us some fun insight as how an older French family lives. Brenda immediately took to the laundry services, full kitchen and enough space for all of us to get away from each other for awhile. It has a nice large backyard, sot he kids could finally get in some proper outside play. It comes with good WIFI and a place for me to set up and get some work done. We went to the grocery store, bought supplies for breakfasts and dinners to keep expenses down and moved it. It has been great, but it is now time for us to head out again.

Meanwhile, back at home, we got reports that our upstairs air conditioning unit had quit working. Temps got up into the 90’s upstairs, preventing our housesitter from sleeping in the bedrooms. She has tried to open all of the windows at night, but the temps aren’t dropping enough overnight to bring things down to a reasonable temperature. I called an AC repair shop in Acworth today and he went out there this afternoon to review. I’ve been sitting up late in France waiting for his call. I finally got the word that a busted capacitor + a new charging of freon was all that was needed and things should now return to normal. It’s a bit unnerving to try and manage these things away from home, 6 time zones forward, but we got it done.

Brenda:  Right now we’re in Metz, France. Out of the past three days, we spent two nights in Amsterdam and last night in Koln (Cologne) Germany. Both are heavy party towns, so we were a bit out of our element and the nights were really noisy for sleeping. For tonight and tomorrow night, Adam found a house in a tiny town in France, down at the end of a quiet street. It’s incredible. It was built in the 1950s, and we’re guessing it belonged to the parents of the guy who rented it to us. We think they died and he inherited the place, and decided to use it as a rental. Anyway, there is a sweet little back garden with a cloths line and a kids’ playhouse, and behind that is a huge field and a lake. We have more space here than we have since we left Atlanta, and it feels really good. I was able to wash a bunch of clothes and peg them outside rather than drape them over furniture in a dinky hotel room. Luxury!

We’re having a fantastic time in spite of several setbacks and issues (mainly with the car and bad weather) and got to feeling rushed for time, so Adam called the airline today and extended our trip another 8 days. Now we will be going home on July 20 instead of July 12.

Cathedral Saint Étienne de Metz in downtown Metz.

View of the backyard, open fields and hills in the background. This shot was taken around 9pm, giving you some indication of the long day here at this time of year.

Living room, dining area.

Isabella in the kitchen.

Finally, room to park this monster!