Starting out in Soubes

We've decided to try a sampling of "S"'s properties on offer, to live a little here, then live a little there, and thereby experiment with various types of homes and in various settings. After all, we never know what we're going to be considering for purchase; a wider experience might be useful.

And so today she checked us into our first new temporary home. It's a very nice seeming house, right on the fountain square of a charming stone village called Soubes, and facing the church tower.

It's a tall house, but the footprint of the building seems large enough to create some nice spaces despite the overall verticality of the layout. Check out this beautiful, and apparently regionally typical, spiral stairway:

And since it's a corner house, it does get tons of nice light, which is good. The locals, apparently, call this the "big house." Not by my standards, but it is nicely redone, for the most part. It's a relatively new rehab, bought by Australians who are hardly ever here, and since their purchase and departure, "S" was given a budget to kit it all out. New TVs and DVD players. New stove and oven and coffee maker and toaster and microwave. New plates and cups and glasses. Thank god for Ikea, right? It's all new. Seems like we're really breaking the place in.

I have to say that given the layout of the house, it's unlikely we'll ever venture up onto the top floor, which has a couple spare bedrooms and not much else. Also it seems unlikely that we'll have much use for the unfinished atelier on the ground floor, since it's little more than a cement room at this point.

There's no garden with this house, a lack slightly compensated by the proximity of the playground (1 block away through a charming ancient stone passageway), and of the village itself, which seems very childfriendly and which doesn't see much traffic. The kids roam free here.

So this is our village house experience. We'll see how it goes.