Ah, the joys of travel!

Our road to Nice and Cinque Terre was a little bumpy at first...but the second honeymoon we ended up getting was more than worth it! The morning we were all packed and ready to leave on our trip (first Barcelona, Spain, then onto Nice, France then lastly Cinque Terre, Italy and back home again) my sweet dear husband offered to get us, and our host, some pain de chocolat and get a little cash for the road. My husband returned, white as a ghost and sweating already at six am. It seems that the bank had thought that our spending overseas seemed a bit unusual and the $300 + we had spent online on train tickets put our account and card on hold. So, when Alex went to get cash at the ATM a notice came up saying that they were "capturing" the card and it would soon be destroyed, it's vital to know that it is impossible to get your train tickets without the card you bought them with. Super. Naturally, the Brantome bank and our bank back home were both closed. When the Brantome bank opened we convinced them to take our card out of the ATM and hold it for us, quite literally, the bank manager was holding it in front of us gesturing with it. I can't tell you how strong the urge was to snatch it from his hands and run for the border...logic outweighed that instinct.

After hours on the phone with U.S. after hours help, to no avail, we decided to drive the hour + to Bordeaux and pray that they would let us board the train that we were just in time to catch.

Of course they wouldn't let us. So, we had lunch and a little tour of Bordeaux to make it slightly less depressing and went back to Brantome to re-group. Alex remembered that if we canceled our train tickets ahead of time they will reimburse you, thankfully we were able to do that for a portion of the money. We decided to leave the next morning, bright and early for Nice and just skip the Barcelona part. We left very, very, very early and were off. After a long, long, long, train ride we arrived to our hotel I had booked online at five am just before leaving, and despite the beginning of the adventure the hotel actually ended up being adorable and gorgeous!

Second window design for Les Bohemians

The second window I did for Les Bohemians (Kim's boutique) was inspired by the name of the shop and the image that it envokes. The thought was the window would have a free spirited, worldly, gypsy type feel to it. This window was a lot less time consuming than the tissue birds, but it was very rewarding in the fact that it was done with items that we shopped for and assembled on a budget and using items that had came from many different former uses.

Caves et Musee de Brantome...

Many apologies for not blogging for so long, but Paris, Nice, Italy and my love were all worth a little more focus. I am back in Brantome and Alex is back in Berkeley now, so I will be a better blogger again. I've got lots of catch up to do, but thankfully I had a few drafts so I won't have to start totally from scratch...

Before I left for Paris, Kim and I took a rainy day as an opportunity to explore the caves and abbey of Brantome that are just down the street from her house. The church that is attached to the abbey is one of old stone with stained glass

windows and benches that have been prayed on for hundreds of years. One of

the most interesting facts about the church is that there is a holy relic with a piece of bone said to be from a child slain by Harrod's hand! The abbey is now used mostly for the city offices. There is also a library, and a belltower that we really wanted to see, but of course they are open every day except for Tuesday!

The caves, like all caves in my opinion, were very interesting. What I feel makes them even more so is the fact that they aren't just caves in some remote location used only for tours. These caves can be seen from most anywhere in Brantome and there are shops, restaurants and even homes that have been built into parts of them.

My favorite part of the day however was not the caves, it was in the art gallery where bizarrely enough there is an animatronic replica of a local artist from the late 1800's I believe. When the "attraction" would buzz on the artist's hand would fly rapidly across the page he's drawing on whilst he whispered in French, "Oui"..."Non"...It was the best kind-of tacky there is! The story behind the artist was that later in his career he began to have an interest in the occult and

participated in seances where he met several spirits who would tell him what to draw when he was in one of his trances. I feel like I could believe it too, the before work of the artist were mostly basic landscapes and scenery whereas the "possesed" ones were these beautiful etheral people, women with yellowish glows and flowers in their hair. They didn't have postcards of those paintings, but I did sneak a picture of the animatronic artist himself! (Sorry it's so dark.)