Au Jardin des Arts

http://www.aujardindesarts.com/html_engl/garden.html

Go on, have a quick look! Because that's where we live in Barbizon : a 200 year old art sudio, still being actively used by our landlady. On Barbizon's Grande Rue, there's a big green wooden gate. Once you open it, you enter this fairy-tale garden, filled with flowers - and you probably will be greeted by Mirabel the Cat. On your left is Erika's art galery. In front of you is her "atelier" where you can see her painting from time to time, and on your left side, once you have climbed the stone stairs, is our apartment.

We ended up here after deciding that we would definitely take an apartment in the center of Fonty :-) . But than we saw this little heaven on earth, and it was love at first sight! Suddenly all arguments were twisted and turned :
- we would "always" need a car, even if we would be living in Fonty
- a Fonty-style apartment was the same as a Brussels-style apartment, so why not try something else for a change
- when would we ever again have the opportunity to live in an apartment overlooking a french art studio, in a little village, in the middle of the forest?

That same Saturday, after having visited the apartment for the first time, we did a quick tour of all the other villages surrounding Fonty. P and I came to the same conclusion : compared to Barbizon, they all seemed a bit ...lifeless. Barbizon was tiny, but very much alive! It was like the Disney version of a little french town : more flowers, more colours, more smiling people, more shops, more art galeries, more restaurants, more hotels, more everything !
Before making any final decisions, P's analytical mind kicked in : there we went for a 2-hour search on the net, comparing all possible information about living in and around Fonty, about rental prices per m² , about trafic to and from Fonty, etc etc.....Luckily he found this very positive feed back about the Barbizon-apartment from another Mexican, and that was enough evidence for P! The "GO" mail was sent to CityJunction, and I was a very very happy person :-)