girly girl art: I'm Baaaack!

Well, I'm FINALLY able to sit down for a bit and get a blog entry done. We got back from our epic adventure on Tuesday, and I've been playing catch-up ever since. The France trip was incredible! I'm going to break it up over a few days of entries, since I have tons of pics and art.

I'll start with our flight, arrival and the wonderful place we stayed. Our flight was uneventful, left on time around 8pm from Logan Airport in Boston. Air France is impeccable. The inflight food was excellent, the flight attendants courteous and attentive, and movies and games kept us amused. None of us slept on the flight, and France is six hours ahead of East Coast time, so our clocks were a bit messed up when we arrived. We landed in Charles De Gaulle airport (which is QUITE large) and hustled to get our next flight to Marseilles, which would take us to Provence. We caught our flight with a few moments to spare and headed to Marseille. The view from the plane was beautiful...farm land, mountains, and water.

We met Brigitte, whose house we stayed in,
at the airport, got our rental car
(the incomparable Leon..we LOVED that car.
We shed a few tears when we had to leave him!)
and drove the hour and a half to Goult.

We arrived at the house, drove through the automated gate of bamboo, and feasted our eyes on a beautiful villa and swimming pool filled with sparkling turquoise water.

We walked up the stairs leading up to the upstairs apartment, and were greeted with an engaging space (this is our living room, with one of Brigitte's paintings; her work exudes life and color; spectacular!). None of us had seen the house before, so it was a wonderful surprise to see the beauty we'd be living in for the next 10 days.

We were all shown to comfortable, bright bedrooms filled with Brigitte's vibrant paintings. We settled in a bit, unpacked, then put on our bathing suits and went for a swim. The temperatures while we were there stayed in the upper 90's most days, with very little humidity. The climate is desert-like. We had a light supper of salad, cheese, bread and fruit, then tried valiently to stay up till 9pm their time. The World Cup (soccer) was on, and my Dad and my honey tried to stay awake. I think they lasted about 15 minutes! Anyway, following are more pics of the house and surroundings; more about the trip itself tomorrow: