Booking our accommodation was one of the earliest steps in our preparations. In fact the availability of suitable accommodation was one of the reasons we committed to Quillan rather than another of the towns on our shortlist.

The apartment is on the first floor of an old building on the main square. All the buildings are old here, and some appear to have not been maintained well, though our one is generally fine. The apartment has three bedrooms, a kitchen, dining room,  and lounge room. The ceilings are high and the rooms are fairly large, so it feels bigger than we expected or need. The floors are old red tiles, so it is quite echoic. There is a TV but we have not often used it. There is no system for playing music, and we didn’t bring portable speakers, so it is generally very quiet. I like that. It makes me realise how much noise we make at home in Wellington.

All of us tend to spend time looking out the windows onto the square, the Place de la Republique. There’s always something or someone to look at. People come and go. It feels like a very old-fashioned way of passing time; like what people did in towns like this for the thousand years before TV was invented.