This building in Cherbourg on an historic street (more on this in another post) is our new residence. We live on the "premier etage" (second floor), the "luxury" apartment with the sole balcony in the building. As you can tell by the photograph, it isn't exactly new construction, but we have ample room (except for a teeny-tiny bathroom) and more furniture than we need.
A glance out our backyard kitchen window is important each morning, especially if our front shutters are closed, to help tell if it is raining or has been raining during the night. Our gauge is to look to see if there our droplets on the clothes line. Because of its location, Cherbourg receives some precipitation about 260 days a year (in Montana we took pride in saying that we had about 300 days of year with some sunshine). One thing that Cherbourg is famous for is the 1963 French movie-musical entitled "Umbrellas of Cherbourg." (Every line in the film "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" is sung). We hope that the word Umbrellas doesn't portend seven months of drizzle. One entrepreneur has capitalized on umbrellas and his highly undestructable Parapluies de Cherbourg are "tres chic" and are sold in some of the finest shops around the world at prices between $100 and $200.
Once we have completed the daily routine of opening the front shutters (they don't open and close electronically, which unfortunately means the apartment's heat escapes every time we go through the several minute process), this is the view from from our dinning room window when there isn't much fog. Also, before we put up our lace curtains, we visually got to be good friends with our neighbor directly across the street.
