My France Adventure Begins

 On June 6, 2011 I started my month-long trip to France.

on June 6th when I flew from Boston Logan airport to Toulouse, France, arriving the next morning.

It has been a glorious trip!  Many adventures.  Diverse experiences.  Mishaps with shoes & feet, despite my attention to them -- or maybe because of it!  Wonderful food.  Beautiful scenery.  Great art.

I took over 500 photographs.  That stuns me, I don't usually take so many pics.  But  my subjects were Paris Rive Gauche; Marie Antoinette's garden at Versaille; Paris Disney (so familiar and yet so not); Carcassonne.  Collioure.  The small villages of Soreze, Durfort, Mirepoix, Montalieu.  Toulouse.  I was inspired by the beauty and the colors and the doors and iron grilles on the windows!  I even took photos of great haircuts for my stylist, who said she would like to go to Paris to see fabulous hair styles!

I took this blank book and made it into my most trusty guide!  

Here I added tabs for each leg of the trip, a list of art supplies, maps, my itinerary, notes to myself.
As this was an art trip, I treated my book as an art project that informed! I fell in love with washi tape and used it to add velum sheets and scrapbook paper!

I left blank pages to write what I did each day and hold ephemera.

My flight from Boston to Toulouse, France connected through London Heathrow Airport.  I was one of the lucky ones to be given a full body search.  You notice I don't say lucky in quotes?  I actually was lucky.  The woman who searched me was more like a masseuse and after the long overnight flight it felt amazingly good. 

 
The bus from Blagnac Airport to Matabiau Rail Station,
Toulouse

I arrive at the airport in Toulouse, collect my luggage, purchase a bus ticket and walk out to torrential rains!
Really, it was raining chiens et chats!
From here I get to the train station, walk to the bus station, buy a ticket to Revel and am on my way.  Planes & Trains & Automobiles.  Anna & Susan pick me up in Revel, introduce me to the joys of Intermarche, a Target-like store made most fascinating because everything is in French.  I fall in love with yogurt in glass containers, which later hold my colored pens and paintbrushes. Next it's Durfort, where the art workshop will delight me for a week. The other 6 participants arrive over the next hour or so, all as water logged as I, we settle into our rooms, ready for the art to begin, and the rain to stop?