Arrived safely in France

On the road again…..

A nice lady from New York City took this photo as we waited at the gate in the Madrid airport for our flight to Toulouse, France.  Students please take note, it is possible to fly to Europe with all your watercolor painting supplies, clothes, everything in a 22” roller carry-on bag and small backpack as you see here.  

And yes, the experiment worked.  I cleared security in San Francisco, Miami and Madrid with a regular watercolor palette filled with watercolor paints in each well of the palette, lid on it and  packed in a plastic bag between my clothes IN MY CARRY-ON BAG!  They either recognized it in the x-ray machine as a paint palette and did not care, or they did not consider the paint (which I had allowed to harden) to be a liquid or gel.  To make sure I did not have to throw away the palette and expensive paint I arrived very early at each security, so if it was disallowed I had time to go back to the baggage check in area and check the bag.

The shuttle bus from the airport in Toulouse to the train station was easy to find and the Tourist Information was extremely efficient at determining which local train would get me closet to this tiny village of Soreze.  The man advised me to look helpless and asked the ticket seller lady at that station to call a taxi for me rather than try to figure out the French pay phone.  The train was coming too soon for me to stand in line to buy a ticket and I did not have correct change to use the machine.  No problem, the man in the tourist office wrote a note in French to the ticket agent on the train, stating the reason I did not have a ticket and assuring him that I would buy one from him with my paper money Euros.  The ticket agent never came on my car in the train so my trip was free!

I arrived by taxi and was greeted by Sherry leaning out the third story window and waving at me.  I was unpacking when we heard some strange music and dashed out in the street to investigate.  Here is what we found in the town square in front of the local bar.

A Renaissance play, and in the end the villagers joined in a kind of a Congo line singing at the top of their lungs to the tune played by the lady on the pipes.  Only in France!

 

Sherry and Chris our great and the house is to die for artsy French.  Cold, windy, drizzled rain today so had a quite day painting in the studio.  Miss you Burke and Mark and all my friends back home but France is great as always.