By hand
Today we needed to go into Troyes to try and sort out our position with CPAM. This relates to the issuance of our Carte Vitales, which will enable us to have any of our medical costs automatically reimbursed. Currently we have temporary social security numbers (SSN). This means you can still be reimbursed for your medical, dental and optician costs but you need to do this by submitting a paper form with the receipts.
We had previously posted, by recorded delivery, copies of our passports etc, and had confirmation of their receipt. Unfortunately though, they wrote to us to tell us these were not suitable. So we thought the best thing was to deliver them ourselves.
The CPAM office in Troyes is a large modern building just on the outskirts of the city, so easy to park. We arrived around 9.30. We joined the queue of four people, and I was soon suitably impressed, as people were promptly invited in by the administration staff to address each individuals needs. It so happened that this was going to be a scorcher of a day, and I was a bit worried about waiting outside in the sun, but surprisingly after about ten minutes we were welcomed in by a young chap who kindly listened to our bad french and read our letter. We presented him with all the necessary documentation which he copied, and he stamped our file complete. Could that be it? Unfortunately not, we now need to wait for the next stage, which should take about 15 days. It is actually submitted to another government body, then our actual SSN will be issued, and we can then go online via the Ameli.fr website to request the production of our Carte Vitales. It still feels like we are a long way off getting them, but we have done all we can for now.
If we were to start at the beginning again I would go straight to the CPAM office and deliver our documents in person.
As we were in Troyes we decided to nip to the outlet shopping centre at MacArthur Glen.
I wanted to buy a couple of non-stick pans to complement the stainless steel ones I had previously bought from Samuel Groves, which I love. However, some things are just better with a non-stick pan, such as white sauces, scrambled eggs, frying fish. I hadn’t really considered Le creuset for non-stick, as I’d always thought of them as the brightly coloured heavy cast iron pans. Which work well on some cookers, and great for slow cooking, but not for induction. Looking in the shop though, we found they do some beautiful, tough, non-stick ranges as well, and being a factory shop offer sensible sized discounts. I came away very pleased with my saucepan and 30cm sauté pan.
It was certainly time for coffee, which we enjoyed in the shade of the umbrellas outside Starbucks. It wasn’t busy so it was nice to take our time. You don’t need to wear a mask whilst seated at your table in a restaurant or café, but you do if you get up to pay. However, we have just heard that from today masks are no longer required in outside spaces except crowded areas such as events or markets. And as from Sunday the curfew has been removed, this is ten days early as the numbers in France are looking good, and the vaccination programme is going well. 30 million people have now had their first vaccination. And the target is to achieve 35 million people to be fully vaccinated by the end of August.
