Artistic stroll

Tuesday
Peter and Judy (my brother and sister-in-law) were supposed to be leaving tomorrow, however, thanks to striking Air France pilots, they discovered this morning their flight tomorrow was cancelled, and after a very frustrating time trying to get through to Air France's London number, discovered there were no remaining seats on alternate flights tomorrow. Judy had to be back in England by Thursday afternoon, so unfortunately their only option was to cut their trip short by the best part of a day and take this evening's flight. By the time they had sorted their flight and done some packing, we didn't have too much time left at our disposal, so we thought a trip out to the village of Barbizon would fill the time nicely. Barbizon is famous for being the centre of the Barbizon School of Painting, a movement of French landscape painting which flourished between 1830 and 1870, and was a reaction against the conventions of classical landscapes, and advocated instead a direct study of nature. We strolled through the village, enjoying the numerous mosaics, based on masterpieces from the movement, then had a lovely lunch outside at one of the cafés. Then it was time to head home, for them to finish their packing, before leaving for the airport. Since it was approaching rush hour, we wanted to leave plenty of time, but in fact we had a pretty decent run, and got them there in plenty of time. You could tell the difference in the drop-off area, which is usually chaotic, but today there were numerous places to pull in and park! During the day I had felt as if I perhaps had a cold coming on, and by the time we got home I was feeling pretty rough, so Roger heated us up some leftovers, and I had an early night.

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