They’d always loved being close to the mountains, but Jennie Vercouteren and her husband, Ward, never imagined that they’d end up living in the French Pyrenees.

The couple, who met while they were both working in Colorado, however, longed for a “quieter life” in Europe.

“We started coming to the south of France on vacation after we met,” Jennie tells us, explaining that she and Ward, who is from Belgium, both had a lot of affection for the European country.

Jennie, who ran a co-working space for ecological entrepreneurs, found that being in France offered “such a contrast to the stress of city life,” and that she “preferred the culture in Europe.”

“I was stressed out 24 hours a day with business,” says Jennie, who is originally from Minnesota. “So I was just looking around, thinking, ‘This is like a dream. These people are just relaxed.’ It was so beautiful and calm.”

The prospect of actually relocating to the European country felt like an unreachable dream then.

But the couple, who’ve been married since 2014, began rethinking things when looking at real estate in Denver and realizing that they could only afford to buy a property that was located at least 40 minutes from the city.

“We’d be so far from anything, and it would take us 20 years to pay off,” says Jennie.

“So it really started to weigh on us — if we should really buy a house in the United States, when our longterm goal was to move to Europe, or actually just look at making the transition and buy a house in Europe at that point.”

Two things were holding them back: they wanted to bring their two dogs, Hobbes and Athena, with them, and they wanted to travel by boat.

Only one major cruise ship — The Queen Mary 2 — allows dogs and cats to travel with their owners on transatlantic crossings from the US to Europe.

“We’d been looking at that online, and it was a two-year wait list (for two dogs),” explains Jennie. “And they suddenly had an availability for two dogs.”

They decided to take a leap of faith and purchase the tickets, despite not really having a firm plan at that stage.

The couple went on to sell their holiday home in Colorado mountain resort Crested Butte, where they had been working remotely, shortly before setting off for France.

On December 8, 2016, they boarded the Queen Mary 2 in New York with their dogs in tow.

They arrived in the UK seven days later, before making their way to France.

As the wife of a European citizen, Jennie was able to enter on a Carte de Sejour, a French residence permit allowing foreign nationals to remain in the country.

The couple then began searching for their own home in the Aubeterre area of southwestern France.

“There we could afford to buy a house in cash,” adds Jennie, explaining that they planned to use the money from the sale of their business and holiday home to help establish themselves.

“And it’s a really beautiful area.”

But it was far from smooth sailing initially for the pair, and Jennie says she quickly realized that the life she’d envisioned was very different from the reality that they were experiencing.

“I had the dream of France … But the dream was not as easy as I thought at all,” she says.

“I didn’t really understand the country at all,” she says. “I didn’t really understand the customs. It’s a really different culture than the United States.”

Since Ward spoke French, Jennie relied on him to communicate for both of them.

“I had him translate everything,” she admits, “because I really like to know what’s going on.”

She adds, “So I think that was also hard for him. Because everything anyone said, I was like, ‘What did they say?’”

Ward echoes this sentiment, admitting that he struggled with being “the only point of reference” and didn’t necessarily find the process any easier than Jennie did.

“Obviously I did speak French and I could connect with people …” he notes. “It was a different experience, that’s for sure.”

Jennie also found it hard to get used to the schedule in France, especially the fact that most businesses were closed on Sundays.

“Now I love that,” she says. “But in the beginning it was just very jarring. It’s like, ‘Wait, nothing’s open on Sunday?’

“There’s a lot of boundaries that were hard for me to adjust to, that made life feel more lonely and a little bit harder at first.”

The couple eventually bought a three-bedroom house in the village of Saint Séverin for 120,000 euros (around $136,000) and embarked on their life in southern France.

However, while they’d felt as though they knew the area relatively well before, they’d only really visited in summer or spring, and life was very different during the colder months.