Ep.9: Life in France – Furniture deliveries & cycling around Amboise

What’s Beth been getting up to in Amboise over the last week? Finally getting some furniture and other housewares to make this old townhouse a home, for one thing. She also had some cycling (mis)adventures!
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If you love renovating old houses, finding antiques, and all things French, come along on our adventure! We’re an American couple renovating a maison bourgeoise in the historic town center of Amboise, in the Loire Valley of France.
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#movingtofrance

I’m very excited because uh the first of our furniture deliveries is about to show up in about half an hour um I’ve been ordering for weeks now I’ve been ordering furniture on uh auction website and uh the first of it is going to arrive today so I’m very excited it’s going to be a sha along and a a big chandelier for this gr Salon here it’s not very big but that’s still what we call it and um it’ll be very exciting um can’t wait to see it and to show you and uh it’ll be nice to have some more furniture in here uh right now we literally have two chairs and a little table a box um we have a little table in the kitchen and a bed upstairs and that’s it um there’s nothing else in the house so it’ll be really nice to start getting some furniture and making it uh into our home so stay tuned to see it salute we’re Beth and Patrick and we’re moving to France we’re transforming an old townhouse into our home and in artsy event space so come on along my goodness you guys um got the first delivery um it’s this incredible um I forgot the name in French but it essentially translates to a broken Duchess broken cuz it’s in two parts so chair and the um footrest so it makes a really cute little couch oh my gosh it’s so cool it’s comfy and very cool uh a little dirty a little messy but um we can Spruce it up and it’s super comfy like you know it’s really crazy you could you could be sitting here watching TV in this and to think the people who made this and the first people who owned this and for many many years after they couldn’t even imagine watching TV in this it’s so so interesting the furniture the age of a lot of the antique furniture that’s so easily available here in uh in France and in all of Europe just just so different than how it is in the United States um where this would be like a Priceless antique that I’d never be able to afford but there’s so much of it here it’s way less expensive and even even um having it shipped the amount of that that added to the price was still made it very affordable I love having this kind of antique furniture it’s amazing it’s but it’s still very sturdy and usable you know it’s not something that you just look but don’t touch we’re totally going to use this so very cool very cool and then we also got a very nice chandelier oo it’s uh um it’s all wrapped up really well so I don’t know if I’m going to unwrap it yet but I’ll show you that it’s on point too okay I want to show you some of the detailing of this chair it’s amazing The Carving and the upholstery is really pretty too the way it’s done it’s really nicely done with this braided trim that’s alternating gold and white and it’s done in sections very cute um obviously this isn’t the original upholstery I don’t know when it was last redone but uh uh the wooden base the structure of the chair is from the 1850s and it’s just [Music] amazing look at this floral carving on the top I mean how gorgeous is that it’s on each of the Wings at the top Edge just so pretty [Music] [Music] so like I mentioned in my last video I runed a bike an ebike just for one week the first thing I did was ride out to the m which is um a charity shop um it’s a particular organization uh similar to like Salvation Army or um Goodwill or something which we have in the US um so it’s a thrift store um and there’s typical stuff you would find there like the sign says brick aat this pretty black and gold box caught my eye inside was an awesome vintage Singer sewing machine but I didn’t take that with me on my bicycle here’s what I did get for a whopping €3.90 just a few little things um some little pretties and uh a useful glass jar that was only 20 cents [Music] on another day I took out the silly um smartphone neck holder to try to record some video while writing um are you enjoying the view the uh view of my handlebars in the street um because I I uh did not have it aimed up high enough obviously so uh that didn’t [Music] work here I’m trying to show you the pretty view of the castle um see it there oh there it is oh oh almost almost there it is okay I got it I figured it out and then I continued on the ride with you you can see a bit more now here I tried to look at some poppies growing on the side that were really pretty and then I rode on down to this little point that has an awesome sculpture so this is considered to be a sculpture of Leonardo da Vinci but it has a lot of unanswered questions and odd mysterious things about it and instead of a usual depiction of the renaissance man he’s depicted as a Greek god so there’s a lot going on here that’s really interesting and I’ll probably do a separate video about the sculpure I was trying to figure out how to use my new selfie stick to get a selfie with this uh Larger than Life Leonardo and took me a minute but I figured it out this little island is called Leo do which is the golden Island it has a cute P putut golf course it’s next to a big camping site I ate lunch at this little broery and of course had a cafe gourmand and then continued on my ride I went back to our local Broan tesor we’ve showed it before in past videos it’s just a really fun um pack to the gills store with lots of cool stuff we saw this Buffet last time we were here and really wanted to get it but there wasn’t enough time for us to ship it before we left so I was really excited that it was still there and I got it hey anybody need a hoof lamp no shortage of hoof lamps here come and get your hoof lamps I kind of really love this old couch it’s like so ugly it’s great and it looks really comfy and I love the cute Fringe but don’t worry Patrick I did not buy it I only got this floral one which is much more appropriate for the salon and I got this armoir this beautiful beautiful armoir with some cool details and a great mirror on the front I did not pay that much for it they actually gave me some great discounts because I bought quite a few things and this will be really helpful in our own bedroom because there’s no Closet in in that particular [Music] room get a load of these amazing drawer poles they’re like lions or some some kind of animal kind of want it just because of those drawer PS and then there’s always a lot of really interesting old radios and things like that I haven’t seen before um just so many radios record players there’s another radio I just think they’re so cool look at this one is that like a that’s like a a real toore um tape deck on top my last stop that day was Aldi where I got a bunch of groceries had my bike loaded down did not make it home before the downpour got caught in the rain but I did make it home without breaking anything which was my number one concern a Lemo porcelain little pedestal fruit bowl 5 per I can’t say per nicely but we all know what it is cute little glasses all three of them for 4 and little strawberry salt and pepper [Music] shakers uh that weren’t priced so we agreed on son the furniture and other larger things I got will be delivered following day wasn’t quite as fun I took a train into tour to deal with our bank account um I’ll spare you the details but the look of Anguish that these guys on the city hall have that’s how it felt it’s one of the Loose Ends that we just can’t seem to get tied up but we’ll get it eventually actually we have a lot of passing storms that are really fun to watch um it’s best when you don’t get caught out in the rain but we had one dramatic thunderstorm that turned into a hail storm and then the following day the garden looked more amazing than ever so many things blooming and I even discovered another kind of Iris blooming I’d seen the purple and the white but hadn’t seen these gold and burgundy ones come up they’re really pretty almost look like orchids I did do more bike riding but I didn’t get any more video of it the neck holder thing for my camera didn’t work out so great and the last bit of excitement for the week was getting my huge order from Ikea delivered this was um mostly pillows which take up a lot of room that’s why there’s so many boxes um throw pillows for the salons and also um bed pillows and all the other bedding duvet duvet covers um some more towels just all kinds of things like that um to make the place more comfortable we have some friends visiting next month which is super exciting and we want to make things nice for them and I also learned a lot of new vocabulary words while um placing this order so that was fun so in the coming week I’ll be doing um a lot of setting this stuff up running more errands um and just generally trying to make this a home so I’ll see you next time thanks for watching y’all if you enjoyed this video please give it a like and leave us a comment we’d love to hear from you be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss our next video