Southern Yacht

My little take on plus size fashion, life, travel and smurfs

Wednesday 28 June 2017

Booking a little French cottage - our experience

Hello there,

It's that time of year when the all the adverts are full of sunny holidays and exotic destinations. Beach, activity, cultural, city breaks, you name it, it's on offer. So where to start?

About this time last year, we decided we wanted to stay in a cottage in Normandy, France - easy we thought. Nope, not quite as easy to start with as we thought.

First up, we're awkward. We wanted a Tuesday to Tuesday booking. So many places we looked at only offered a Saturday to Saturday option. Plus we wanted small, really small. There was only 2 of us and we didn't want to rattle around a cottage during a potentially chilly time of year (we wanted to go mid-October). We wanted small, cosy, petite - you get the idea.


Unrealistic? Maybe...

So on a rainy afternoon, I settled down with a cuppa and ploughed through an awful lot of holiday and booking websites (btw - this isn't a sponsored post - I just wanted to share our booking experience). I found the website French Country Cottages which offered small cottages with midweek arrival dates - brilliant! So we chose a cottage, paid a deposit, gave our details and we were booked.


It looked lovely.

And then what? We'd never booked a cottage before in France. Where do we get the keys from? When will we get the address? What do we need to bring?

We needn't have worried, the booking confirmation gave us all the details plus the option of booking a bedding and towel package (definitely a good idea - less to pack!). A week or so before we arrived, we would be given contact details to phone the key holder to arrange an arrival time/key handover.

(That bit was scary. My French is basic at best and the thought of a phone call in French bought me out in a hot sweat! Thank goodness the key holder spoke some English and had a lot of patience!)

So what was it like? I can honestly say - much better than expected. The pictures we saw online were accurate and it was the perfect size for 2 people.







We were in Cerisy-la-Forêt and staying here felt like we were staying in a real French community. It's a beautiful village with a corner shop just a few mins walk away. Locals walked past and peered in through the windows (slightly unnerving, but you got used to it), the neighbours rooster woke me at an ungodly hour each day and the house creaked like something from a Hitchcock movie.

Would we do it again? Well we've just booked again for a repeat visit so the answer is definitely yes!

Thanks for reading

Cathy
xx





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