More pictures from Rome

I did get a page of pictures put together for our one-week trip to Rome. This is the trip I described in the previous post.

 

Looking back at the pictures I feel I'd like to go back, but then I remember when we were there we felt we didn't need to return to Rome. I would not go again in the summer. It was just too hot and crowded. I would guess Rome is usually crowded, but in winter might be less so. The other thing I didn't like was the traffic. There were vehicles everywhere!!  They need to institute a city driving tax to try to reduce the number of vehicles. There isn't enough room for them to park, so they park in the pedestrian crosswalks and intersections. Crossing the streets was difficult. The motor cycles are more annoying than the cars--noisier and in the way of pedestrians more. Unfortunately their subway/underground system isn't that great either. We did ride the two lines that go under the city and that worked out for us some of the time. One line stopped about 6 blocks from our apartment. Walking in the smaller streets was fun, though.

 

We also enjoyed the museums and piazzas and food.  We are on a hunt for paintings by Caravaggio. Rome was a good place to start. We saw 24 there, I think in 6 museums and 3 churches.

 

And we loved the apartment we rented for the week. The page of pictures includes some photos of the apartment and some description.

Here's a link to the page of pictures of Rome.

 

I'm off this afternoon to a family reunion, visit with my mother, High School Class reunion and then a visit with Jim's family. I won't be home again till the 19th. Jim left this morning. He has meetings in St. Paul. I'm driving down to meet him and we'll continue from there.

Spring 2009 Travel-Gnomes, Caravaggio, Roman ruins etc.

I have been traveling again and have lots of photos, but have not had the time to sort them and put them together in any coherent way, so I thought I'd just do a quick update and hope to get to the photos still before another trip.

 

In May we flew to Frankfurt, Germany, spent a night then flew to Wrocław, Poland, where we spent 2 1/2 days, then back to Frankfurt and from there to Rome, for a week. It was our first trip to Rome and we tried to do it all. But our real mission there was to see as many paintings by Caravaggio as we could. We were pretty successful there. We did see 24, which is almost all that are on view to the public.  One or two were on tour, so we missed those and there is a ceiling he painted, which is in a house that is only open one day a month. I couldn't find out this information before we left home. It turns out the house was open on the day we arrived, but we didn't know it then. When we got there the next day we found out we had missed it. We will try again some day. It is the only ceiling Caravaggio painted.

 

In Wrocław, I walked around the botanical garden one day, which was full of blooming flowers. It's a gorgeous garden.  And then I picked up a brochure telling me approximately where some of the little bronze gnomes can be found and I walked around looking for those. Here's a picture of one of them.  I photographed 20-some, but those photos aren't on-line yet.

I took lots of pictures in Rome. Rome was hot (upper 80's) and crowded with way too many vehicles for comfort or safety, but we had a great time walking around, occasionally riding the subway, eating Italian food, visiting churches, museums and trying to find parks. Rome has a dearth of parks, but we did find two to walk around in.  (I got spoiled in Paris with all the gorgeous parks there.)

This page on my website has links to some of the walks we took and some of my pictures. I'll add more when I get a chance.

 

Here's a photo of Rome as a teaser.

I really need to find some time to organize these.

Venice

We visited Venice in October 2008. It's now January 2009, but I didn't get around to posting about our trip here until now.

 

We got to see Venice while it was still dry, at least part of the time. When we arrived in the afternoon we took a vaporetto to get to St. Mark's Square (San Marco) which was close to our hotel. We had a very nice evening, but wondered what the funny-looking platforms we saw in the square were used for. The next morning we found out. The square was flooded that morning, but was dry again in the afternoon. So we got to see both aspects of the city.

This is the square with St. Mark's and the campanile tower.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately the bridge of Sighs was undergoing renovation and was mostly boarded up. This is all we could see of it. In case it's not clear, the bridge is right in the middle of this photo with everything around it boarded up.

For more of my pictures and the rest of the story visit this web page.

Jim and Ceci's visit to Venice

Four days in South Korea

Would you like to spend 55 sleepless hours traveling, most of them cramped in a crowded airplane and the rest in airports in order to spend 4 days in South Korea?

Why not?

Actually if that's how he had asked me I might have said "no thanks." But he didn't mention that we would only be there for 4 days.

 

 

I'm awfully glad I went though. It was a great trip. It was a little different from most of the traveling we've done in that we had a local guide most of the time. A south Korean (who has lived in Minneapolis for 25 years) arranged the trip and traveled with us for most of it. He arranged for his nephew to drive us around Seoul and also hired a guide to show us the sights of Seoul on the weekend.

The first thing we saw was the changing of the guard ceremony at the Royal Palace. It's a museum now, so this is a show just for tourists.

 

 

 

 

Near the palace we also visited the National Folk Museum of Korea, where we learned a lot about Korean traditional culture. There were displays showing how they make Kimchee, the fermented and seasoned cabbage dish that is uniquely Korean.

And we saw several temples. In front of all of them we saw these colorful paper lanterns hanging in honor of the Buddha's upcoming birthday. There were services going on in some of the temples we visited.

 

The rest of my pictures are on this site.  South Korea Pictures. There are 3 pages--one of the weekend in Seoul, then one of the day we spent in Chuncheon and then one more with a few more pictures from our last afternoon in Seoul.

Rosemaling

I have just finished an 8-week rosemaling course. It met on Thursdays for 8 weeks. I missed two weeks because I was traveling, but I did do some painting.

Here are the things I painted in this class. Rosemaling is Norwegian folk painting, that is normally done on wood. It can be done on other surfaces, but wood is the most common one. I, however don't feel I'm good enough to paint on a lot of wooden objects. I am still practicing and learning, so I do a lot of painting on paper. sometimes if the design turns out well I scan it and make cards from it. So during this class I painted many designs on paper and 3 wooden plates.

  I paint free-hand and my designs are my own. Many rosemalers, especially at the level I paint trace designs or sketch out designs before they start, but I'm just too lazy to do it that way. This is a6-inch plate.

 

 

 

This is one I did on paper, scanned and added the outer color on my computer, to use as a card. This is the extent of my photo-enhancing skills.

 

 

 

 

This is a 7-inch wooden plate.

 

 

 

 

I did these three yesterday. The teacher had left a sketch on the board from the previous day's class and I used that as inspiration for this design, which I did three times with the same colors, but slight variations in the design. I cannot do 2 identical designs.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, this is inspired by a painted sketch done by Norwegian rosemaler Nils Elingsgard. 

Now for something completely different

I'm not one for taking more artistic photos, or looking for unusual angles. I just try to get the best shot I can to show the sight I'm looking at. But sometimes I can't get far enough away from a tall building to get the whole thing in the shot, so I started taking some shots looking up at the building or monument from right up close to it. I've collected some of these and put them on a new page. Below is a house in Paris on, I think the Rue François Miron, in the 4th arrondissement.

And these two old half-timbered houses are on the same street. They may be the oldest houses in Paris.

So here is the link to more of these photos. Looking up.

Le parc de Belleville

Slipping back to Paris for this post. Not me physically--just in the photos. I took so many photos while I was there that I didn't have time to get them all posted. Some I thought were worth posting later. These pictures of the park in the north east of Paris (20th arrondissement) were some I wanted to share with you.

The park is on a hillside. I entered at the bottom and climbed up a lot of steps before I started taking pictures. At the top I realized people were watching something happeneing below us, so I looked over the edge of the wall and saw that I was standing above a film crew getting ready for a shoot. I don't know who it was or what they were filming, but I stayed to watch for a while. It was some kind of children's program or film.

You can see the rest of my pictures of this park and the shoot on this page. Parc de Belleville.