Flower Delivery in France Hipper.com

Raina by Hipper.com

New to France, Hipper.com, are an online flower delivery service, who aim to safely deliver reasonably priced bouquets of flowers direct to your door, with no extra delivery cost. They kindly offered to send me the bouquet of my choice, delivered on the day of my choice, in exchange for this blog post.

Would the delivery driver find our village, on the allotted day? Would the flowers have survived their journey? Would the bouquet look like the website picture I’d chosen? These were all questions I was keen to find out and here are my honest answers:

Hipper.com safe packaging

Deliveries here can be rather hit and miss, due to our slightly remote village location, but I’m pleased to report Hipper.com scored a big hit. Their online tracking service wasn’t very detailed, all I could glean was that my order was being processed and would be delivered between 8h00 and 20h00. I was up early and prepared for a long day of waiting, however, by 10h30 it had arrived. Top marks for you delivery driver Hipper; on more than one occasion I’ve waited in vain for three days for a delivery scheduled ‘today’.

Safely nestled inside

It was quite exciting having a huge box to open and I’m pleased to report the flowers inside were carefully packaged and double wrapped in cellophane, to ensure the water pocket kept the stems moist and flowers fresh in transit. Two flower heads fell off as I lifted it from the wrapping, but once it was in the vase you’d never notice.

My Raina bouquet

I’m no flower arranger, so I was delighted to see that once I’d unwrapped them, snipped off the base of the stem (as my Mum taught me) and put them in the vase, they relaxed into shape perfectly. All I needed to do was to add water and the plant food sachet they arrived with, and enjoy.

Hipper.com website

I think you will agree from my photos that the comparison of the picture I’d selected from the website, with the bouquet I received is almost identical in every way and I certainly wasn’t disappointed with the service.

I chose Raina, for it’s seasonal autumnal colour, and delivered to your door for 24.99€ (or £19.99 from their UK site), I think represents good value for money.

If you ever need/would like to send flowers to France just click here Hipper.com to see their full selection. For future reference you can also find them on the sidebar of the blog by clicking on Flower Delivery in France.

My turn for a bad day

Tap water should not look like this!

Top tip of the day – if the water coming out of your tap looks like the contents of the glass above, do not put on a wash containing all of your husband’s white work shirts. They will reappear looking like you have been tie-dying with rust, trust me! Although in my defence I didn’t know there was a problem with the water until after I’d put the machine on and then noticed the watermen and their little van working outside the house.

This was just one thing that I could have done without yesterday, especially as I’d completely run out of washing tablets, so in order to attempt to re-wash them I had to go begging to the neighbours. I’m really not usually this disorganised, but as I had been housebound for almost two days, waiting in for a seemingly elusive courier delivery, I hadn’t been shopping.

Added to this, Adrian was getting itchy feet, the sun was out, but we were in (desperate not to miss the courier) and his bike was calling. He was also under stress as the work shirts I was trying to wash were for a job in London next week and there was a UK rail strike planned for just when he needed to get from Stansted to London, London to Reading and then Reading to London. Following on from Mini's bad day earlier in the week, yesterday it was our turn.

Thankfully, the second wash of the work shirts resulted in a line full of bright white washing, phew. Just as I finished hanging it out, the courier delivery arrived, yippee and then the news on radio informed us that the rail strike had been called off, hooray! I decided a celebratory meal was in order and loaded up the bread machine with the pizza dough ingredients and spent some time working in the garden while it did the hard work for me. However, all was not well. The paddle had jammed solid, so all that had happened was that the ingredients had been heated gently but not mixed. I rescued the dough and kneaded it by hand while Adrian set about fixing the jammed mechanism. The pizzas were delicious and the bread machine lives to mix another day, but I was glad to get to bed last night and I’m rather glad it isn’t a Friday 13^th today.

Sitting in the middle of nowhere

I love that we live in a rural location. We don’t have traffic issues or crowded supermarkets. We do have space; a large orchard, a potager and the walking and cycling possibilities available from the front door are almost endless. However there are downsides and one of them is ‘next day courier delivery’. This is something to think about if you crave an escape from civilisation.

The middle of nowhere

Ade placed an order at the weekend for a product that was showing an estimated delivery from Leeds, UK to France of Tuesday 18^th June. I assured him I could be at home on Tuesday, no problem. Within a day of placing the order I had a call from a friend (who also happens to be my yoga teacher) who has broken her toe (nothing to do with yoga) asking if I could drive her to class on Tuesday morning, meaning an extra class for me this week. Thankfully the delivery date had moved to Wednesday 19^th June, so I was able to say yes.

Wednesday arrived and via the DHL tracking website we could see that on Monday our package had left Leeds and arrived in Gatwick. Tuesday it made it’s way to Paris and on Wednesday it arrived in Nantes in the wee small hours. By 11.07am it was showing as ‘With delivery courier’ and I was waiting. The sun was shining, but I didn’t want to stray into the potager for fear of missing either the courier or the phone call we often get to say they are close by. I pottered with the pots, doing a bit of deadheading and then tackled the ironing mountain, all the time trying to ignore the dogs who really couldn’t understand why we hadn’t gone out for a walk especially as the weather was perfect. Toffee tried talking to me, Mini tried to get my attention with her ball and they even tried jangling their leads in the hope of getting out. Nothing, all was quiet (except the dogs), which if I’m honest was to be expected as Nantes is a two-hour drive from us and that is direct via the autoroute. By six o’clock yesterday evening the DHL site was updated with the status ‘scheduled for delivery as agreed’, location – Nantes. Not entirely sure what this means as agreed delivery date was Wednesday 19th, but we guessed it meant ‘it went out on the van, but you were too far to get to today, we’ll try again tomorrow’. It was nine o’clock before I got chance to walk the dogs, but it was a lovely evening with the setting sun glinting off the rolls of hay and the increased hare and rabbit activity made for extra excitement and very happy doggies indeed.

This morning I was hopeful that the van would set off bright and early and as we are likely to be the furthest point from depot, a quick blast to get to us as first drop and then make their way back towards Nantes with other deliveries seemed a possibility. I could visualise myself signing for it wearing my yoga leggings and with my yoga mat in my other hand ready to dash off to my 10 o’clock class. However, the class has now started, the phone hasn’t rung, the village is quiet and I’m sitting here waiting, even the dogs are sulking in their beds. To make matters more frustrating the DHL site hasn’t been updated since six o’clock yesterday evening. Quote from DHL site “our online results give you real-time, detailed progress as your shipment speeds through the DHL network.” Hmmm, I may never get to leave the house again!