This was the idea:

We would try to live three months in each of four Mediterranean-oriented European countries, places where they enjoy at least 300 days of sunshine per year, and when we were done we would choose, presumably from those four stops, a place we would want to live for at least a year.

A month after leaving Abu Dhabi, we took the first step on what was the original plan when we left a friend’s place in Les Issambres, on the tony Cote d’Azur, and drove 205 miles west to the little town of Nizas, in the far-less glamorous Languedoc, where we plan to stay for 75 days.

After that?

The original scheme had Spain up next, followed by Italy and then Cyprus or perhaps Istanbul.

The idea was to visit four temperate places, with a cost of living substantially below that of California, and wherever we felt like we fit best …

We likely will move ahead to Spain, in April-May, as originally conceived, but after that, it’s unclear.

What we have found, and these sorts of details often are the bane of harebrained schemes, is that …

–Most renters are not interested in two- or three-month rentals. They would prefer one- or two-week stays at a higher rate than we are willing to pay, or they want a one-year lease.

You would think agreeing to rent to us for a couple of months during the slow season, in winter and into at least April and maybe May, would be an easy call for renters.

Not really so.

–After Spain, where we think we can get two months done, we are not sure about anything. Turns out that someone’s house on Italy’s Adriatic Coast, where we might have been able to stay for much of the summer, is not available.

Plus we realized we know next to nothing about the Italian bureaucracies, which do not have very good reputations for being able to get power turned on, or wi-fi hooked up.

Cyprus remains a possibility, at least in theory, but Istanbul is having a bit of a rough time, so that likely will not happen.

–We anticipated the “you’re going to have to pay a lot during high season, in July, August and September” … but the question now is whether we can find anything during that period that is not ruinous to our budget.

So, for the moment, we have moved into a house in the new-build “suburbs” of Nizas, year-round population, 567.

Nizas actually is a suburb of Pezenas, a rising little city, which in turn is a suburb of Beziers (which is struggling), and we have some familiarity with all three, from various trips to the area, two of them for a week.

So we know the area, which is all about small towns and grape vines — and a short drive from the sea. At issue here is whether we can stand a (south) European winter and whether we can amuse ourselves (sorta) off the grid.

Day 1, we dealt with cold wind in the drive over, and the move in, but we were happy to unpack for the first time since December 12, when we moved out of the Abu Dhabi apartment.

Seventy-five days is not quite 11 weeks, and that probably doesn’t seem like a long time to commit to a place to live, but for us at this moment of the harebrained scheme … it seems almost forever.