Tag Archives: art

Easter in Paris. . .

Posted on by
4

What a treat it was. Easter in Paris. We drove to our nearest station, Bram, and parked the car, without any trouble, in the free parking area next to the station. The train left at 11am sharp and were in Paris by 5pm. Everything went like clockwork.

The trip began on an a regional LIO train taking us to Toulouse. There was plenty of seating, an upstairs and downstairs. In Toulouse we changed to the TGV (train à grande vitesse) a superfast train, only four and a half hours to Paris Montparnasse. We had around half an hour to wait in Toulouse and took the opportunity to buy a coffee and a bun while we waited for the platform to come up. Boarding the TGV took us a little while, it was a very long train and we were in coach 17, but we found our seats on the top deck with little trouble, stored our bags and settled down for the trip. The Man was beside himself with excitement at what there was to offer. Excellent WIFI, spacious seating, a buffet car and . . . it was evident as soon as the train began to move that the train would run quietly and smoothly.

Parking the Car
Little Station at Bram
The platform Bram
Toulouse Station
On the TGV
Don’t know why it says ‘business premiere’ we were normal second class…
Packed Lunch
View from upper deck
Bordeaux – one of the stops

We really couldn’t fault the French railway system. Efficient, fast and clean. The four-and-a-half- hours just whizzed by in comfort.

However . . . (there’s always something) when we arrived at Montparnasse station it was ENORMOUS and we couldn’t find the way out. It honestly took us about 20 minutes and when we eventually emerged onto the Paris streets, Google Maps sadly let us down. I had booked a hotel only five minutes from the station but poor old google took us all over the place. I think it was at least an hour after descending from the train that we actually found the Hotel Waldorf Montparnasse Don’t get excited it wasn’t like any other Waldorf that I know of. But, it was nice little place with a pleasant lounge area and comfortable rooms. The shower in the bathroom was fantastic and the staff very friendly and helpful. We made a cup of tea (we always do) and then ventured out to find a place for dinner.

Restaurant: La Vache Au Comptoir
Hotel Lobby
Hotel Lounge
Lamb shank – beautifully cooked
Pain perdu (The Man’s Favourite)

We found the restaurant La Vache Au Comptoir just around the corner from the hotel and we struck lucky. Not only was the food extremely good the owner was friendly and genuinely interested to speak with us. His English was excellent (he’d lived in America) and he told us all about his new venture, a Créperie in Saint Germain-En-Laye on the outskirts of Paris. He’d had enough of being in the city and since covid it had been increasingly difficult making any profit. We hope to visit him when we’re travelling back to the UK sometime. Pain Perdu by the way is made in many different ways, it’s also known as French Toast. I think using Brioche is the best way of making it, then it’s eggs, sugar and milk mixed together. Dip the brioche (or bread) in the mixture and then fry in butter. Serve with vanilla or salted caramel ice-cream. Well, that’s how I would make it. It has very few calories of course 😋

The next day was Good Friday and we weren’t meeting up with our daughter and granddaughters until lunchtime. We stored the bags at the hotel and took a walk to and around the Montparnasse Cemetery. Many famous people are buried in this enormous place and it seems there is room for every religion, culture and race. It was fascinating to stroll around. I always love reading the inscriptions on the headstones I’m fascinated by names, dates, ages and information that you can discover in these places. We looked first for Samuel Beckett then Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Guy de Maupassant among others

We stopped for a while to watch a couple of stonemasons repairing some inscriptions and adding gold leaf where necessary, which was fascinating. They were happy for me to photograph them.

Montparnasse cemetery is not Pere Lachaise, where Jim Morrison is buried . . . that’s for next time.

We went to the Pompidou Centre (click to see more about it). It’s a fantastic building, the architecture style exo-skeletal. A wonderful exhibition centre which was only marred by the amount of people in the exhibition rooms. It was hot and difficult to move around. We had the grandchildren with us and whilst the ten-year-old enjoyed the fashion side of things, the seven-year-old was bored and hot, which was completely understandable. It’s not much fun if you’re at waist height to everyone else and you can’t see anything at all on the walls.

It was stunning travelling up the external escalator and the higher we went the more spectacular the views. It was well worth the effort. At the very top is a restaurant where you can sit and take in a panoramic view of the city. Sadly fully booked on this visit.

The Building
Fernand Léger
View Sacre Coeur
Charles Reeza
View of Eiffel Tower in the Distance
On the escalator

On our final day in Paris The Man and I went to visit Versailles. It was something I had always wanted to do. But, what a disappointment. We had booked tickets for 1pm and it was decided that we would not take the children with us this time so my daughter stayed back at our apartment and had a chilled day with them. This was absolutely the right decision. We travelled to Versailles on the metro which I have to say was easy and very reasonably priced. When we arrived there was still a very long queue for 12 noon entry which was a little off-putting. However we lined up with others at the 1pm sign and eventually moved in through security at around 1.45. It was extremely busy, like the worst kind of rush hour. I discovered later that Versailles has an average of 27,000 visitors A DAY!! Which is equivalent to more than 3,000 an hour. I mean, it’s unpleasant and frankly not safe at all. The rooms are quite small so you are herded through. There are lots of paintings on the wall, Louis this and Louis that and queens and kings and another Louis…you see where I’m coming from? Not many rooms are furnished so no ‘feeling’ of what it was like to live there back in the day. The Hall of Mirrors, the most famous room in the palace was all right, but not spectacular, I expected to be blown away but I wasn’t. The crystal chandeliers were . . . okay.

queueing to get into the next room
Looking up, the only way to view
model of the palace
The Hall of Mirrors
Hall of Mirrors (check out the chandeliers)
pretty miniature in the gift shop
another pretty miniature in the gift shop.
looking over the garden from the palace…not much colour at this time of year
an impressive door

We fought our way through the rest of the rooms but I couldn’t wait to get out and into the gardens. We eventually found the entrance to them after being taken through the gift shop (naturally) and discovered to our dismay that we would have to pay again to enter the gardens. When I asked the girl about this she told me they had just begun charging last Thursday. . . basically the day before the Easter holiday. Needless to say, The Man and I just made a hasty exit and head back to the centre of Paris.

NOTE: there are two stations for Versailles: Chantiers and Rive Droite. We chose Chantiers which is a longer walk to the palace, but thank goodness we did. On our return we passed the Rive Droite station and it was absolutely packed with people trying to buy tickets and get on the trains. When we got to Chantiers it was clear, except for a small queue at the ticket machine.

We averaged 15,000 steps a day, walking everywhere. My favourite walk was a was along the Seine to the Pont Neuf where we had a wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower. We went into the Samaritaine, visited a delightful tea/florist shop and we stayed on the Place des Vosges, one of the best squares in Paris; beautiful architecture surrounding a typical French cloistered park with trees, seating and grass areas.

Place de Republique
Pont Neuf -Nonna with her girls
walking around the Place des Vosges
Tea Shop
Tea shop
Bastille Monument
Place des Vosges Square
Inside the Samaritaine
Outside the Samaritaine
The Appeal Court
Me and The Man
The Eiffel Tower
The Seine

We will go back to Paris . . . there is such a lot to see in this wonderful (but very busy) city! Have you been to Paris? What are your thoughts on the place, tell me in the comments please.

Travels With The Man, Vienna . . . (well a little part of it anyway)

Posted on by
2

After the busy and research filled visit to Trieste I thought our time in Vienna would be a quieter more relaxing stay, and in a way it is. The historic centre is traffic restricted in many places, and you are more likely to be knocked down by a bicycle than a bus. The roads are extremely wide and the side streets, on the whole, are pleasant and interesting, with few pedestrians. The same can’t be said for each of the many tourist attractions, which are heaving and occasionally pretty claustrophobic.

Every corner that you turn reveals a magnificent structure, be it a palace, a museum, a library, public offices or even an apartment building. On every other corner there is a café, a chocolate shop, or a konditorei (cake shop).

Sachertorte
Empty Plate… it was delish …
These carriages are everywhere in Vienna. The horses seem very happy and clean. The ground is wet not from the rain but from the horses’ legs being hosed down.

On the street where we are staying, the façades are classic early 20th century, flat front but embellished, architecture. It is exactly how I would have imagined it. I love it. But, for some reason it doesn’t inspire me to write, at least it doesn’t fire my imagination to create any fiction. I’ve tried to work out why this is and I think it might be because everywhere is opulent. We’re staying close to the historic centre and one would think I would be bursting with ideas for some romantic, fiction about the young Hapsburg children running about in the palace grounds or a fictional depiction of the much discussed and possibly reinvented wife of Franz Joseph of Austria, Elizabeth (known as Sisi). Their whole lifestyle, the grandness and sheer ‘overthetopness’ of it all leaves me a little cold. Sisi had long hair down to her ankles which took three hours everyday to groom and style. It took a whole day for her to have a bath and wash it. I mean honestly! There is no doubt that Sisi is an interesting character and you can read more about her here.

Vienna was, or should I say, ‘is’ The Hapsburgs’. The family ruled the Austro Hungarian Empire from 1867 until 1918 and before that the Austrian Empire from 1804. The House of Hapsburg was founded in the 11th Century so they have been around for a very long time. However, when visiting the palaces and museums here, the emphasis is most definitely on Franz Joseph (ruled 1848 – 1916) and Maria Theresa who ruled from 1740 – 1780 with her husband Francis 1st. Her father, Charles IV, paved the way for her succession with the Pragmatic Sanction in 1713 which would allow a women to take the crown when there were no male heirs. A forward thinking man maybe, but in reality, he just wanted to make sure the Hapsburg line continued to rule.

These two monarchs, Franz Joseph and Maria Theresa, feature heavily in all the attractions of the city, even though there were others obviously – in 600 years there had to be. I didn’t know very much about either of them before I came here, at least I knew of them but that was about it. For me, it was interesting to see the connections between Trieste and Vienna and the Hapsburgs. In Trieste we visited the Miramare Castle built by Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria who was the brother of Franz Joseph. He was the Emperor of Mexico but was deposed and subsequently shot in 1867. In fact Franz Joseph was an unlucky man, first his brother is killed, then his son commits suicide (see below), then his wife was murdered (also see below), and to cap it all, his nephew and heir, Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914 leading to the beginning of WWI and the collapse of the Hapsburg Empire. Franz Joseph died in the Shönbrunn Palace on 21st November, 1916 at the age of 86. He ruled for 68 years.

Below are some of the facts that have grabbed my interest whilst in Vienna:

Trieste was the sea port for the Austro Hungarian Empire for many years.
Marie Antoinette was one of the daughters of Maria Theresa.
Sisi was assassinated by an Italian anarchist who went specifically to kill somebody else in Geneva but the guy he had planned to stab had left the building earlier that day. He went on to stab Sisi, he didn’t care who he assassinated:

‘ I am an anarchist by conviction… I came to Geneva to kill a sovereign, with object of giving an example to those who suffer and those who do nothing to improve their social position; it did not matter to me who the sovereign was whom I should kill… It was not a woman I struck, but an Empress; it was a crown that I had in view.

The son of Sisi and Franz Joseph died in 1889 at their country hunting lodge known as Mayerling. It was all a bit of an intrigue as he was there with his young mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera, and they both died in what was suspected to be a murder-suicide pact. This incident is of particular interest to me because of course there is a ballet of the same name choreographed by Kenneth Macmillan to the music of Franz Liszt. based on the story. Read more here

It’s all history innit?

PALACES IN VIENNA

There are a number of palaces in Vienna, we managed to visit three, The Schönbrunn Palace, The Hofburg, and The Belvedere,

The Belvedere
The Hofburg
The Hofburg
The Belvedere
The Schönbrunn

Yes, it was a bit seen one you’ve seen ’em all but…The Belvedere housed a wonderful exhibition of sculpture and art and we browsed the various rooms with pre and post WW2. Very interesting. The Schöbrunn was all all about Queen Elizabeth wife of Franz Joseph I, known as Sisi, (see above).

Klimt “The Kiss”
One of the famous Messerschmitt heads
Egon Schiele “The Family”

Photographs from the Belvedere Exhibition

The Hofburg Palace was also home to the Spanish riding school. I was unable to get a ticket to see a performance but I did do a tour of the stables. Photos were limited, we weren’t allowed to take any actually inside the stables where all the mature stallions were kept. So I just got a couple of shots of the younger ones. I didn’t take very good ones but…

I’ve never liked the idea of the stallions performing all those high dressage steps and dancing but visiting the stables and listening to the tour guide I became convinced that the horses lead a very happy life with plenty of holiday time during their working life. The mares are kept at the Lipica Stud Farm in Slovenia. It was pointed out to me that they only use the mares for breeding and in any case the mares are not interested in ‘showing off’ like the stallions are. They don’t need to bother with all that sort of malarky. The stallions on the other hand love to flaunt themselves and be the centre of attention. There is a fascinating history to the breed and to the Spanish Riding School. You can take a look at some videos on Youtube if you want to see performances and more about them.

The School
The very untidy tack room
The even untidier and filthy yard. . .😂
One of the lovely stallions
Tack room cat
Another gorgeous boy

The Man and I also took a tour of the Opera House. Tickets weren’t available for a performance, which was just as well because they were a tad pricey! €250 for one. An expensive night out which we couldn’t really run to. But, we could visit the opera house for the small price of €9 each as were are over a certain age. The English speaking tour was fully booked so we had to choose between Japanese or Italian. Yes, of course we chose Italian. I was surprised at how much I understood although he did rather rattle through things.

The auditorium
The central staircase (from the side)
Can’t remember who this was?
The ceiling…(obvs)
The empty stage, preparing for the evening performance
Ticket ITALIAN 😊

We did a huge amount of walking around Vienna and everywhere there are beautiful buildings to see. The Man and I feel we barely scratched the surface of this wonderful city and it’s definitely worth a second and even third visit. Have you been? Let me know in the comments what you think.

Note Number 54. . .A Month to Catch Up

Posted on by
1

I knew it had been a while since I posted but could not believe it was the beginning of March, when we had all that ice and snow, that I last updated my blog. Well, it would be thoroughly boring to take you through the four weeks with a day blow by blow account so I’ll precis the 2nd March to the 30th and we’ll go into detail for the last couple of days.

Most of March was spent avoiding the rain, snow and ice, walking the dog in a sodden field or delivering The Man to outlying places in Dorset so that he could cycle back. Sunday 25th he fought his way from Wareham to Axminster via Poole and Weymouth and back to Wareham, 206 kilometres to be exact. Why? I have no idea but I was proud of him even though he was completely wrecked when I collected him at 8.45pm after 13 hours on the road, (including a couple of breaks.)

I have been writing plenty. My fingers are worn down as are the computer keys but it may be to no avail. I’ve performed my poem Waiting at Apothecary Words in Bridport and I entered the Flash Fiction Slam at Bridport Arts Centre — I wasn’t placed but it’s the taking part that counts. A friend of mine won the people’s vote, so that was enough for me.

Now for the Easter Weekend: We drove up from Dorset on Friday — the traffic going our way was not too bad but the poor holiday punters travelling west, were in slow, sometimes stationary traffic. The rain, however still poured on we poor travellers, whichever direction we were taking.

longdays

Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville 

Friday evening I had booked tickets for A Long Days Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill. I knew that it would be a long production and I should have paid more for the seats. The leg room in the Wyndham’s Theatre Grand Circle was akin to a Ryanair aeroplane. But, the play was excellent and the three-and-a-half hours fairly flew by. Lesley Manville as the morphine-adicted Mary was superb and Jeremy Irons played her actor husband whose penny pinching ways contribute to the angst and emotional turmoil of the family. You can read a review of the prodution here  . I was in awe of the sheer volume of diaglogue and on the one hand I was inspired to rush home and write a play, but, on the other hand I acknowledged the certain fact that I would never be able to produce such an eloquent piece of work.

title

Saturday we visited The Foundling Museum, I had wanted to go there since I saw in mentioned on the BBC programme Stitch in Time  when they had talked about mothers leaving a swatch of material with their baby when left at the Foundling Hospital. This little token would enable the mother to be reunited with their child in the future should they be in a position to do so.  The museum gives an insight to the lives of babies and children from 1739 – 1936 who were either abandoned in the streets or handed in to the hospital to be cared for. Now the hospital is now run in the form of the children’s charity Corum. Captain Thomas Corum was the founder of the hospital back in 1739. As is usual with these museums it has stirred in me a need to find out more about the stories of the children who were left here. It is heart wrenching to read the book of billets, (of which there are many) each billet is the admission slip for a foundling and they make sorry reading, just a number, date, age (if known), a few bare facts, a token, if there is one, attached to the page. I need to read more about it and will be searching for books to give me more information.

 

The association has a strong connection to The Arts, music, art, literature etc., with many well-known artists, writers and musicians donating their work to the foundling hospital to be used as a means of generating money and interest. Handel was a particularly ardent fan of the hospital and not only did he leave them a substantial sum of money on his death he also left the manuscript of the Messiah and all rights to it.

There are several displays in the museums and I was particularly drawn to Labelled,  A display exploring young people’s experiences of being labelled as a ‘child in care’. These were portrayed by means of a name tape in a child’s shirt with derogatory and hurtful comments made by bullies, teachers and others in charge.  Clever idea.  I was also intrigues by, Mead’s Mysterious Medicines created by some children from Great Ormond Street Hospital. You can read a little about these and the other installations here.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

In the basement of the museum was an exhibition of the poetry book The Lost Words I was particularly interested in this because I bought the book at Christmas, but I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t read it through properly yet, I will now though. What inspirational poems and illustrations. If you can get to the exhibition then you won’t be disappointed. If you can’t, then just buy the book. It’s beautiful.

the lost words

Last night we ate Vietnamese food at the Cây-Tre in Soho. Buzzing atmosphere and fab food. Loved it! We finished our evening back at our London base with a game of Cribbage…The Man won. How very annoying. I’ll get him this evening though!

Vietnamese

One of many dishes of Vietnamese food savoured on Saturday night. 

Note Number 49. . .Why go to London when you can have art like this on your doorstep. . .

Posted on by
4

IMG_6643

Batten Down (one of my favourites)

Well, Bridport is on my doorstep anyway!

Before Christmas The Man and I went to the Dalí/Deauchamp exhibition at the Royal Academy. It was okay, interesting. Last night I went to the Bridport Art Centre for Dialogues concerning the land an exhibition by  artist Beverley Rouwen, and ceramicist, Douglas Reeve. I loved it. I’m no artist and I’ve not studied art appreciation but there is no doubt in my mind that my excitement towards the creations I saw in Bridport far outweighed any feelings I had for the works I saw in London. Okay, these people are acquaintances, but I have not know them long and I wouldn’t bother to write anything about it, if I hadn’t been bowled over by what I saw.

img_6644.jpg

Powersky 1

The collection is divided into three sections, Trees, Skynets and Landscapes and each part included something that I enjoyed. The harmony of the porcelain and paintings reached out to me. I’m not even a fan of ‘contemporary’ or ‘modern’ art, whatever you wish to call it, but these were nothing less than fabulous. Pity our little house and tiny walls are not really up to housing any of the installations I saw. But I can dream. . .

The exhibition is on until the 27th January, open 10am  until 4pm  Tuesday to Saturday. If you would like to know more about these two and their work then check out  Beverley’s website here and Doug’s website here.

IMG_6645

Powersky 2 (probably not the best angle for a photograph, but I may have been intimidated by the presence of Brendan Buesnel – the official photographer )

img_6651.jpg

A small section of ‘Were you invited?’  It’s actually 65x180cm. Love it.

IMG_6652

Were you invited…ceramics