Day 572 (Monday)

New Year’s Eve and it was 24 degrees in the sun this morning – pure bliss.

We had an interview this morning with the owners of a three-bedroom villa who may want us to manage it for them. He is American and she is French and they live in Paris when they are not in Villefranche. They have people looking after the villa already but they may want to use us as back up. Last summer I randomly sent emails to property owners in Villefranche offering my service as a property manager and this man got back to me last month. They were very nice people and the villa was gorgeous; very traditional with antique furniture and lovely high ceilings and a small private swimming pool. They told us it was their second home and kept referring to it as a small house, it has three floors, two very big terraces, an orange tree, a lemon tree and a grapefruit tree and this is a small house! They pick grapefruits for breakfast every morning.

  

I’m not sure if anything will come of it but it’s always interesting to see other people’s homes.

On the way home on Kisbee we found a slightly different view of Villefranche

We had a check out from the apartment so we went and stripped the beds and spent the afternoon washing the linen to earn beer money for tonight.

We headed into the old town at around 5pm and the sunset was divine.

We had a few beers in Le Phare with the usual suspects; Andy and Patricia, Sean, Irish Kevin and Basque Alex and Seb closed the car at 8pm because he was going for dinner with his in-laws in the mountains. When we got home we had dinner and a bottle of New Year champagne and we entertained with fireworks over Saint Jean Cap Ferrat.

We watched Notting Hill and managed to stay awake till midnight to see the in the New Year.