RF Newsletter, #27 May 27 2000

This week

1. How We started on the Web

I live in a small village in the Heart of the South of France 12 miles from the Mediterranean. We have a large medieval house, built over 1000 years ago, with two guest apartments. By advertising these apartments and from friends asking for their homes to be added, we have built a web site which I am working on to make an interesting and helpful site about all aspects of visits to France, it is :

http://GoTo-France.com/

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2. New Rental Properties

This week we have been offered some new properties with availability for rental this year. We have a house with a pool in Provence which has room for 13 people and is available all of August, we also have a family gite in Pezenas with a pool (shared with the owner). I don't have photos yet but let me know quickly if you are interested, I hope to have photos on next week.

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3. Real Estate for Sale

Many visitors come to the South of France to look for property to buy. Some for retirement, some for investment but many people, like we did, want to find a home in the sun and where family values and a calm pace of life is important. I have made a real estate page on the http://GoTo-France.com/ site with a few properties on it from a local realtor. We are now getting a lot of local friends asking me to advertise their old family properties. I find this fascinating as I go and photograph these old farm buildings and village houses, some of them have not been lived in for up to 50 years and they are like time capsules, many have all the furniture and even old cars in the garages, I now have a 1923 Citroen truck in my back garden, everyone thinks I am crazy, but one day I will get it running, if I can ever get the chickens out.

My point is that very soon there won't be any more of these old village houses for sale. The families selling them dream of a new house on the local development, these old village houses are big, few have any garden, they cost more to repair and heat and are just old fashioned. In my opinion, they are also very good value, some big old stone properties sell for as little as $30 000 with four or five bedrooms, a garage you could park two tractors and three cars in, plus 300 years of cobwebs and memories.

This region is one of the few places left in France where property like this can be found, soon this will all change, high speed trains, new airports and a new super highway is being built which terminates just 10 miles away. In a few years all these historic houses will have been "snapped up" and be living a new life.

I have put the photos of two of these houses in Nizas on our site, have a look at http://GoTo-France.com/ look in the index and click on Real estate Sales, then Languedoc, then Nizas. Click on the properties for more pictures and details of these houses.

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Last week I asked if anyone has objections if I included some advertising in this newsletter, no one said no and many said it would be OK so I will be selecting suitable advertising.

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4. Senior-Spirit.com

I have been looking at an interesting site. We had a super lady here in March doing research for a gastronomic trip she is planning in Languedoc this Fall. I wrote briefly about it last week, the details are on http://PoshNosh.com/. Mary Ann Zimmerman's other site is http://Senior-Spirit.com/ This has a lot of information for women who want to discover more about life now that they have more time. Finance, health, Internet, relationships, literature, travel and a lot of other key issues are spoken about wisely and in depth. I found the information relevant for all people of all ages, good stuff.

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5. Brass Tours.com

A site which I will be working on a little is http://BrassTours.com/, Eric Stanton is planning a special guided tour to Paris this Fall, he will create a special trip to match your dreams to the city where your wishes can come true.

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6. Google.com

http://Google.com/

I rate this search engine very highly, fast, relevant and friendly. They now offer a WAP interface to the Web so the whole Internet is now available to your Palm Pilot or mobile with WAP. I am still working on the wireless project with some new partners, there are some new details on http://Ceetel.com/.

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Do write to me and let me know if you have any questions, need help or would like a specific topic in the newsletter. I will try my best to help;

mailto:tony@goto-france.com

Best wishes

Tony