We've Got the keys!

On Friday 8th April 2011 after 8 months of negotiations and paperwork we finally arrived at the Notaires office to sign for our house!  I think we had both spent the few hours preceeding the signing thinking "What on earth are we doing"!  It was a long drawn out process with 57 pages of contract to work through all read to us in French.... note to ourselves ... we must improve our French!!  After both parties had signed all 57 pages the keys were handed over and I can't tell you what a good feeling that was.  We headed off to the "Cafe Chaud" for a celebratory glass of beer with the vendors and our agent who was a fantastic help with all the translation.  We finally arrived at the house at 8pm along with M.Gruin who kindly showed us where all the electrics and water supplies were operated from.  Feeling exhausted the most we could manage was to unpack the van and to drag the mattresses upstairs to sleep on, the rest could be done in the morning.