Well we've been here just over a week now and lets just say that things haven't been exactly easy. We have been on the hunt for quite some time for a place in Hossegor, or pretty much anything on the coast or within 20 km of it. The reason for this one might ask? The surf! We did luck out one morning a few days ago and found a great apartment in Capbreton through a rental agency. However, when we went back with all the paperwork that afternoon at 2:00pm, when they were suppose to have re-opened, they were still in fact closed. We waited around until 3:30pm and then decided to head home and try again the next day. We had a surf lesson schedualed at 10:00am the next morning, the agency opened at 9:30am, so we decided to get there right when they opened, however, when we arrived and told them that we had all the paperwork in hand and ready to go they said the apartment had already been rented. We were devastated! Things really didn't get much better from there. The surf conditions for our morning lesson were rather terrible - very windy and lots of choppy waves - which made for lots of paddling around in strong currants and not much riding.
The next day we decided to hit-up just about every rental agency on the coast and everything wihin 20km of it with paperwork already in hand so as not to repeat the previous day's mistake (i.e Dennis's work contract papers which basically say he has a job, who his employer is and how much money he makes). The result was not much better, as all those agencies told us basically the same thing...'We can't rent any properties to you because your revenue does not come from within France'. We couldn't believe it! Basically if you want to rent a house or an apartment from a rental agency in France you better have a job based in France otherwise you're SOL.
And if that wasn't enough.....We stopped at the grocery store to pick up something for dinner on our way home. Note: We have to grocery shop every day because our fridge is the size of a tuna can - it's a beverage fridge. We were in the grocery store for maybe 15 minutes and when we came back we found that our wonderful dog had gone into terminator mode and destroyed everything in the car. He chewed the e-brake handle of our rental car, chewed the cord which powers our gps and shredded all of Dennis's proof of employment papers and work contract (thankgoodness he had an extra copy back at home)! I have tried to calm myself down in the day or so since all this has happened, but writing it all out like this certainly isn't helping so I think I might just end it here. Praying for positive things in the days to come.
