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Spring fasting 2018, day 1
We survived the first day of our spring fasting 2018 with relative ease. We’ve been alternating cups of warm water, warm water with ginger and rice water throughout the day. Haven’t taken the magnesium sulphate yet, we’ll do that tomorrow. Daily routine It is a bit strange though. Because we don’t eat, we don’t have…
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Preparing for spring: fasting and decluttering
We had decided some time ago that this spring, we want to do a thorough cleaning of our intestines. Ayurveda recommends to clean your intestines on a regular basis, and spring seems like the optimum moment for it. Apparently, we accumulate undigested food in our intestines. I try not to think of that too much,…
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We’re going to France this summer!
Yesterday evening, we used FaceTime for the first time in our lives. It worked well, but it only projects on half the screen, which is a bit narrow. Skype is better, in that respect. Still, we are happy with FaceTime, because it helped us score our third house sit 🙂 Our first pet- and house…
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Visiting Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris
It’s been 19 years since Christophe’s Dad Michel died. He was cremated and his remains rest at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Today, we took advantage of the beautiful weather to visit the cemetery and pay our respects to Michel. Père Lachaise Cemetery, at 44 ha, is a huge cemetery. And it’s old too. It…
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Traveling 8 hours from London to Paris
After our normal routine of yoga, meditation, breakfast and walking Bella, we started the preparations for our departure later on. We had, over the last week, accumulated some extra baggage in the form of presents for friends and family. That made it quite a challenge to fit everything into the suitcases and bags. Eventually, Christophe…
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Site seeing London
We are so fortunate with this house sit. The apartment is in a beautiful part of London and surprisingly quiet, given that it is a stone’s throw away from Finchley Road. The Underground takes you into the heart of the city in very little time. We did so a couple of times this week, and…
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London architecture
Walking Bella in the direct surroundings of the apartment is a real pleasure. We really don’t know where to look, as most of the buildings are beautiful, at least to us. Used as we are to Dutch and German architecture, we feast our eyes on the houses we are now surrounded by. There are hardly…
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Celebrating Bella’s 11th birthday
Today is Valentine’s Day, and it coincides with Bella’s 11th birthday, which would make her 81 if she were human! That calls for a celebration, doesn’t it? We went to a butcher yesterday (can you imagine two vegetarians/vegans going to a butcher?) and asked him for a bone for Bella. The guy was very nice…
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Banking blues -3-
After having been introduced to Bella and the apartment we are now taking care of, we went out and looked for a place were we could work. That is, someplace with a free WiFi connection. We ended up at Swiss Cottage Sprinkles Gelato on Finchley Road. We ordered hot chocolate and cake with warm custard…
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Meeting our accountant and exploring London
When we incorporated our business Just Go Pink! LLP through 1st Choice Formations, we were given the choice to be introduced to a London accountant. Since we know nothing much here in London, and a 1-hour free consultation was included in the offer, we said yes to it. Shortly after the incorporation of our business,…
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Pet sitting Bella in London
This is our first pet and house sit and we are very grateful to Bella’s owners to have chosen us. Bella is a very sweet tempered, lovely dog. She’s not young anymore (almost 11 years old) and quite overweight, which makes mounting the 2 stairs to the apartment a challenge. During our walks, she will…
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Our first pet and house sit
The journey to England went quite well. Getting to Charles de Gaulle airport and into the airplane took much more time than we would have thought. We spent a lot of time queuing up and waiting. So much so that we didn’t even have time to visit the bathroom before boarding the plane. Fortunately, even…
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Martinican hospitality in Paris
Yesterday we drove from Bavaria to Paris with Monique, Christophe’s aunt. She’s 86 years old, lives in Paris, and had taken the train to Bavaria last Monday so she too could spend some time with Noah and Malea. It had started to snow yesterday and it hadn’t stopped all night, so in the morning, there…
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Banking blues part 2: TransferWise incompatible with PayPal and Stripe
“If it were easy, everybody would be doing it”. This is something we say to each other very often. Currently almost on a daily basis. So we thought we had found an affordable and easy solution for our banking challenge in the form of TransferWise. It worked with PayPal, right? And we only had to…
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We are not on holiday!
We arrived in Bavaria at Christophe’s family home last Saturday evening. It is so nice to see everybody again, especially the grand children! I never expected to have any, but since Christoohe has two grandchildren (and a third on the way) who are going to grow up with me as their grandfathers partner, I have…