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Everything you always wanted to know about France |
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Rentals-France Newsletter December 16 1999. Number 14 Contents.Before the end of the year I thought I would change, a little, the way I wrote this newsletter. My aim has always been to make it informative, useful and readable and I have thrived on your valuable comments and advice (well most of them). I still hope it will be a valuable source of news and opinion about France for you and that you will enjoy reading it. By the way I just realized that November 19 1999 was the last upside-down date for thousands of years, until Jan 1 6000. ==
1. Comments from the South of France =========== 1. Comments from the South of France I say on our websites which offer you vacation rentals here in France that we are different from other vacation accommodation sites, we only list properties which we know personally and which we can truthfully recommend as being good value. We do not take any paid advertising, we charge a commission to the owners if you are satisfied. Our customer is you, not the property owner. We have taken some properties off our sites for next year where we found that the value given was not the best available. == By next year (15 days ouch!) I hope to have finished a small group of Internet sites which offer you vacation accommodation properties here. The idea is to have a selected number of homes listed and to describe these homes in more detail and provide links to local activities and interests. Each site will have a local manager to help and advise and we are always just up the road as well to help. The first of these sites has just been put on line. It is managed by a friend of ours, Barbara Heide and you can see it at You can read about Barbara on the site. She is a real asset to us as her knowledge of the region, it's history, food, wine and places to visit is vast. Barbara speaks English French and German fluently. == Another site just launched is I have not put a local manager on the site as Provence is a large region. I do have excellent contacts in most areas there and will introduce you to them when you inquire about specific properties. == Our usual site RentalsFrance Is still there, it is due for an overhaul and I am taking off a few properties next year and adding others. During the last two years renting properties here we have begun to learn what you want and what services to offer. This is why we only add properties to our sites where we believe you will be satisfied with the value and quality and as we never accept paid advertising we are completely free to decide what homes to offer. The fact is that there is an increasing amount of rental property being offered here in France. By only selecting the best homes and by advising and negotiating a fair rental price with the owner, we get satisfied clients who come back to us. The increasing competition from more properties on offer and many more Internet sites advertising rentals is very likely to drive prices down. I have counted over 50 new Internet sites advertising vacation rentals in the last two months and I am sure the number is much higher. I am constantly researching comparative rental prices and encourage owners to be competitive with their prices and generous with their services, no extra charges, no hidden costs, we guarantee this on our sites. All these new sites and more properties will mean that to find your perfect vacation home gets harder and takes longer. We are beginning to offer a personal search service and we are finding other sites which help you find the right accommodation. Some of these are on our links page at All the links there are ones we have checked, there are a few property listing sites which I like and believe offer a good service A1Vacations and VRBO for example, plus services like CeeFrance who will help you find accommodation. Other sites on our links pages give information about France or are just fun like i-spy. ======= 2. Telephone Charges and France Telecom (again) If you are a regular reader you may have (correctly) got the impression that I am not a great fan of France Telecom. They are very expensive, arrogant, indifferent and make Microsoft look like the Easter Bunny. They have already got into trouble here by advertising their own cellular phone systems when they sent out their bills, now they are plugging their own (awful) ISP service "Wanadoo". Other service providers here are protesting I am pleased to hear, anti-trust has nothing on France Telecom who are a monopoly for most people in France. However, I am striking a blow here in this newsletter for Liberty and Equality (not too sure about Fraternity). In the last two newsletters I have mentioned Americom, a call back service in the USA with a good selection of providers. It works very well. I can now call the USA for about 16c a minute and France Telecom does not get a penny. Before this service, in October, I made a long a business call to the USA and the charges cost me the price of a (discounted) airline ticket. It may have been cheaper for me to have flown to LA , had a meeting in the airline terminal and flown back. Now I can call for about $10 per hour. I have put a link to their service on every page of our new sites, if you make any long distance calls from anywhere than you can save money We get a commission, about 7% I think, on your calls but this is not going to make us rich, the small blow for a fair phone system is worth the effort. When you come to Europe this service will save you a lot of money. =========== 3. Our free e-mail service. Another link you will see on all the pages of our new sites is on for a Free e-mail service yourname@zestmail.zzn.com Zestmail is just us, I liked the name and zzn is the Zap Zone Network. A Free e-mail provider. There is no money or commission involved. It means that you can access your e-mail account from any page of any of our sites from anywhere in the world. Another big advantage is that, as we are amazingly small (compared to Microsoft), you can likely chose a good name for yourself, instead of being Mike3782@hotmail.com you can, if you are quick just be Mike@zestmail.zzn.com. So get in quick and get the name you always wanted on your e-mail account (DanBob take note, you can have Danbob or even Fruitcake@zestmail.zzn.com). ========= 4. Bring you Dog to France From April next year UK residents can bring their Innoculated and micro-chipped dogs into France. Unless it specifically says so on the property page, all our homes will accept pets To bring a dog from the USA has always been simple and not expensive, we have had dogs from many States here and never had a language problem with our two dogs, we are looking forward to the British dogs to arrive. ========= 5. Methods of Payment All through this year we have accepted credit cards for the payment of your vacations. You will notice on the new sites we do not advertise this fact any more. This is because the service costs us a lot. The charges in France are not too bad, but they add up and rather than pass this on to we are looking at other ways of payment. Some property owners do have their own card facilities and in these cases we will arrange the best deal for you, reserve the property and then introduce you directly to the owner. In other cases we can either introduce you to the owner and negotiate and sort out any rental agreement for you and you can then pay them by direct wire transfer. If you prefer you can transfer direct to our bank either in the USA or the UK in your local currency. This will be the most efficient and not involve any charges commissions or currency fluctuations for most of out clients. If you have any queries please let us now and I am sure we can find an efficient solution. The important thing is to reserve the property you require as quickly as possible. you can still do this on-line with our booking reservation form. ======= 6. Year 2k for your Computer For months now I have been downloading about every Y2K test and promising myself to upgrade and get all my hardware and software ready. The problem I have has is that all the tests show different problems and offered different solutions. I became convinced that all they were trying to do was sell me an upgrade for $18 or $60 and I was not convinced that this was going to fix all my listed problems. Microsoft have their own site and, as it seems I had over 40 problems with my Windows 98 operating system, I have tried 8 times to download their upgrades, every time their site crashes after an hour or so and now it tells me I have not upgraded but that I cannot download as I have already done this and it did not install. I am now planning a trip to the USA early next year and will return with a case full of standard USA version software as the combination of France Telecom and Microsoft has taken it's toll. However, the Norton site at Symantic.com offers a Free hardware test and upgrade so, as I have always liked Norton and use their anti virus software, I will rely on them to tell me what is wrong and what I must change. By the way, I download the latest virus update from Norton at least once a week. So far this year I have isolated 6 virus attacks on my main computer, all in attachments from people I know. Needless to say my France Telecom software does not conform. ============= 7. Kudos of the week
Dear Tony And Carole ============= 8. Resto and Recipe of the week, from Barbara One of the restaurants you should not miss while you are strolling through the country of mussels and oysters is the BLUE COAST (la Cote Bleue) in Bouzigues, near Sete. It is located the long side of the "Thau Lagoon" right in the cradle of the oyster production, gives a wonderful introduction to local gastronomic events. Bouzigues is a small village of fishermen and oyster growers. Typical Languedoc village with it's Marina and the Museum of Oysters, recalling the history of Shellfish growing in the Etang de Thau. The restaurant is referred to in the guides : Gault and Millau, Hubert Sud Guide Jean Claude Archimbeau and his sister Sylviane Sagne prepare the food out of their family owned seafood production. You will find an easy recipe hereunder to give you a Mediterranean taste while you are looking forward to your stay... FILLET OF SAINT PIERRE WITH CAULIFLOWER CREAM AND ROASTED HAZELNUTS
4 Fillets Saint Pierre (Sea fish) of about 170 g each
Cut the cauliflower into pieces and cook them in salty water where you add the juice of the lemon. Drain when cooked and pass it through a vegetable mill (fine grind). Add 50g of butter to 2 thirds of the mashed cauliflower, 5cl of cream and seasoning; keep it warm. Take the other third and mix it with 5 cl of cream, seasoning. The sauce must be consistent but fluid. Keep warm. Fry the fish fillets (first the skinny side and then the fleshy one. Form out of the cauliflower paste small sausages, put them long side to the fish in the plate, pour the sauce in a ring around... Scatter the hazelnuts on the plate and decorate with chervil. Bon appetit Thank you to the equip of La Cote Bleue for this recipe.!
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