First Sketching Workshop

Today,I will attend my first sketching workshop. I signed up for this class over the internet just by finding someone in Paris who gives art classes. People in this group will be using pencil, ink or watercolors to quickly capture a little scene of interest.  I'm not exactly sure what to expect. I'm guessing we will be encouraged to select a subject that is interesting, small and can be done quickly just like I said a couple of sentences ago, Duh. I don't know how many people will be in the group, whether it will be in French or English or where we will go. We are meeting in a cafe near the Gare Austerlitz (train station). I think we will start in the cafe to get oriented and maybe do a few quick sketches then proceed across the street to the Jardins des Plantes. This is a big park nearby but not much is in bloom at the  moment. We were told via email to dress warmly, so I guess we'll be outside for a while. It's pretty cold here still and rain is in the forecast.
My hope is get some quick studies that I can use as references for future paintings and/or incorporate into a kind of Carnet du Voyage, travel journal. We'll see. To be continued.

Judy's Contribution-Updated

Here's the contents of an email from Judy sent out to a few eventual visitors. It pretty much summarizes our place.

Well we have been in our apt for 2 days.  We are on the top floor and there is plenty of light (really important) on cloudy days.  The kitchen is well equipped and we have a freezer as well as a fridge, dishwasher, wash machine (all "euro-style", aka small).  The bathroom is small as are most french bathrooms.  The folding toilet is unusual to say the least.  Check out the photos below.  For those not familiar with french showers it's small and can be a hand held shower.  Our building is from the 1600's and the staircase is very worn so hold on to railings! It can be treacherous. It is 5 flights so pack lightly, if you can. If you have a heavy suitcase, we can offload some of the contents to our carry on bags to help lug it up the stairs.  Our neighborhood is one of the oldest in Paris therefore cobblestones and narrow uneven sidewalks are everywhere. This is not the part of Paris with the Champs Elysees wide boulevard. I have been wearing my low healed boots constantly.

We have no "door bell", just the keyless entry so make sure you call us when you pick up your luggage to let us know you are on your way. Maybe the driver can call us with an eta or when you are in the neighborhood. He won't be able to park for long outside our building as it is a one lane narrow street.

Ok are you ready for an adventure? We look forward to seeing you very much!!!!

An Engineering Marvel

Eh, Voila!

 Thanks to those who are following and making comments. 

Arrival in Paris

We left the hotel  by cab to catch our flight to Paris. At the airport we met an Irish artist named Fiona Graham with whom we hope to get together. The flight was uneventful and we broke through the clouds to see a snow covered landscape on the approach to Charles DeGaulle. After getting our bags, we bided our time until a van arrived to takes us to the long term parking where Jacques had left his car. When we got there it was covered with 3-4 inches of snow. We made our way to the autoroute and saw the northbound lanes, heading out of Paris, totally blocked with trucks. It looked like boxes on a cargo ship, they were so close together. The snow storm was over but they were still having problem.
We made it to Paris and found our apartment. It is in a very old (1600's) building on the 5th and 6th floors with no elevator located in the student section of the 5th Arrondisment. We called the owner who was waiting for us and he gave us the code and we preceeded to schlep all of our luggage  up the 5 flights. We had one huge suitcase that actually exceeded the 50 lb limit at Dublin airport but they didn't charge us. Judy had packed lots of stuff in nylon bags inside the suitcase so we could take those bags out and spread them around for people to carry. Between Jacques, Claire, Judy, the owner and myself, it only took on trip up the stairs.
We got a quick tour of the apartment before we left to have dinner with another mutual friend, Jo Shaffer, and her cousin, Lois, at Jo's place in the Marais. She rents there every year from Jan-Apr. After a great dinner and a fun time welcoming the new Pope and celebrating Jacques' birthday, we returned to the apartment around 11pm to make the bed and get some sleep.

We slept well and got our bearings to see what we had gotten ourselves into. But all seemed well when looked out the kitchen window to this scene.

More to come....

Last Day in Dublin

Judy and I decided to take the "Hop on, Hop off" bus for a tour of the city on our last day. This bus system tours the city and stops at about 25 spots while giving a running commentary. They are double decker buses, but it was too cold to sit outside, plus that made it difficult to hear the commentary. We started the day by walking through the Trinity College campus on our way to "Hop on" a bus. This is a beautiful college courtyard with statues of famous Irish scholars. There is an aura of intellectualism, or is that the smell of a freshly drawn Guinness?


One of the highlights of the bus tour was the Kilmainham Gaol. This jail has been functioning as a place of incarceration and execution from the 1780s to 1920. You can follow a lot of Irish history from attempts at separation from England, to the potato famine (Great Hunger) and its Vagrancy Laws, to the revolution  1916. One would need more than an hour tour of the Gaol to appreciate all the treaties, pacts, agreements, rebellions and revolutions that have take place between Ireland and England.

Here is our guide, freezing, in the 1916 Corridor where 14 revolutionaries were imprisoned before their execution in the Revolution of 1916.

That night, in a cultural 180, we went to the Arlington Hotel on the Liffey for their Irish Music and Dance show. After reading Tripadvisor reviews that said it was "cheesy, touristy, but fun" I wasn't sure what my expectations were. But, we were really very impressed with the show. The musicians were very talented and very engaging with the audience. The banjo player was the leader of the group and had a great way about him. The lead singer was terrific too as you can see in this video. Warning, there is audio if you are playing this at work.

They played for an hour without a break, then brought out a quartet of dances who did their thing between more songs from the band. Between the players, singers and dances, they put on a great show. We were all glad we went to take in this "cheesy" performance. 

Here's a video of the 4 dancers in one of their numbers. 

Next, off to Paris.

Extreme Ireland Tour

For our first full day in Ireland, Judy booked us on the Extreme Ireland bus tour. This was a long day that left Dublin before 7 am and got back about 7:15 pm. From Dublin, we headed southwest with a stop in Limerick then on to the western coast along the Atlantic, the highlight being the Cliffs of Moher. I have painted this site as a commission several times but had never been there. We left Dublin with a bit of snow but by the time we got to the west coast, the sun was shining.



It was very cold and very, very windy but it was well worth the minor frost bite to take in this scenery. The sun never made it to brighten up the cliffs in the photo above, but looking in the opposite direction had brilliant lights and shadows.

Here are some tourists looking over the edge at the rocks 700 feet below. Reminded me a bit of looking over Horseshoe Bend in Page.

How about this self portrait? I've got Judy's beret pulled down over my head and I couldn't see the image in the camera to tell if we were in the photo. Do we look as cold as we felt?

From there we visited the ancient Corcomrow Abbey, the small fishing villages of Doolin and Kinvara and then made our way around Galway Bay before taking the M7 back to Dublin. A long but very worthwhile day. We got to see a lot of the beautiful countryside and farmland and the spectacular Atlantic coast line. Those of you who have been there can vouch for that.

Top O' the Morning to Ya.

Aside, overheard from a discreet distance in the hotel...

Two drunk Irishmen, after an all nighter celebrating Ireland's tie with France in the 6 Nations Rugby Tournament, were fumbling with their key cards to get into their room . They dropped more "F-bombs" than Colin Farrell in the movie, In Brugge. "Shite, the f#@kin' key won't f#@kin' work." . "You f#@kin' moron. You got the f#@kin' card upside f#@kin' down, you dumb f#@kin' idjit. Jaysus."

Just part of their vocabulary.

Arrival in Dublin

Our flight to Paris had a stopover in Dublin, so we planned on spending a couple of days in Ireland, We had never been there before, and this was a great opportunity that we couldn't pass up.

The flight from Boston to Dublin was 6 hours and the time difference was 5 hours so we arrived at 12:30 our time, 5:30 am their time. Luckily we were able to get an early, very early, checkin at the  Trinity Capital Hotel. This is a very nice  hotel just outside the walls of Trinity College and not far from the action of the Temple Bar area.

Our friends, Jacques and Claire, were arriving from Paris around noon, so we took a quick power nap then went out to find some coffee. After their arrival, we made our way across the Liffey River which separates north and south Dublin. We walked over the O'Connell Bridge which is named after Daniel O'Connell.





He was known as the Liberator for his work to Emancipate the Catholics in the 1700's. It is a bit of an eye-opener to see the names of many of the streets named after significant characters in Irish history that we, (at least I), have no awareness of. We'll try to remedy that a bit for ourselves over the next few days. Here is the statue at the start of O'Connell St. Many of the streets and locations are named after the famous Irish writers and poets too.

After lunch at the Kylemore, a buffet style restaurant, we walked down Henry St and crossed back over the Liffey by way of The Ha'Penny Bridge into the Temple Bar area. We heard some Irish music coming from The Dubliner pub. We went in but it was too crowded so we settled for a pint of Guinness at Oliver St. John Gogarty's Pub. Good beer and good Irish music. I'm sure many of the readers have been there. It is a pretty well known pub in the touristy Temple Bar area, but we are tourists, aren't we. It has live music all the time and multiple floors to spread out in.

For dinner we went to O'Neils pub near Suffolk St opposite the entrance to Trinity College. It is recommended as one of the few "carveries" left. You stand in a buffet line to order your cut of meat, then pile on the spuds, veggies, gravy, etc. We weren't sure how it all worked and neither did the young girls in front of us. But we soldiered on. You could also get fish and chips and beef stew which we opted for.

We fought the wind and the cold to make it back to the hotel. It even snowed a bit while we were out during the afternoon. We may get blown off the Cliffs of Moher tomorrow.

Packing

Packing for a trip like this has been a problem. We couldn't pack too far in advance as we would need much of the stuff we would be packing. That didn't stop Judy, tho. She has been packed for weeks. But has slowly but surely dug into the suitcase to take things out to wear. Plus, I had to decide what and how to pack painting supplies.

We will probably be encountering rain, cold and warmth so we need all sorts of clothes to cover those conditions. At least that is what Judy tells me.  We (?) also need multiple outfits along with the appropriate accessories. If it was up to me, I'd bring a couple pairs of jeans, a sweater and some tee shirts. But this is Paris, after all, and we can't go around looking like a couple of tourists, can we?

We borrowed a large bag from the Brundretts but thought it was too gangly to lug very far, especially up the 4-5 flights of stairs. We scrapped plan A.  So, we went to plan B. We dug up  my old ski bag, cleaned out the mouse poop and stuffed that to the gills along with an extra carry on bag that would be checked. We ended up with 2 bags to check, 2 to carry on and one each for stuff to put under the seat. Judy went on line to check limits and we both got a little scared by their strict limits on sizes of bags. So, this morning, the morning of the flight, we scrapped plan B and went to plan C.

We unpacked mostly everything and jammed the large suitcase with the contents of one carry on plus all the odds and ends we will need in Paris. The bag weighed 53 pounds. We had to shift stuff around to get it under the limit. A lot of the stuff in the big bag is in little bags so we'll be able to lug them up the stairs a few a time if we have to. Shouldn't take too many trips to get everything into the apartment. I hope there is a 6 pack waiting at the top of the stairs.

It's about time...

Well, it is about time. It seems like it has been a year since we've been planning this trip. In fact, it has been a year. We have been thinking and talking about Paris for so long that people have gotten tired of asking us, "When do you leave?", or "Are you back already?" Well, we are leaving tomorrow, March 9th. Halleluia.

We (Judy) started the search for an apartment in Paris last spring while we were in Sedona. Judy just googled "apartments for rent in Paris" and got tons of  hits. There are many individuals using things like VRBO or agencies who rent apartments for short and long term stays.

She probably sent off a couple dozen emails to individuals and agencies asking for more info. Most places had photos but it was not always easy to get a good idea of the size of the apartment. Things we were looking for were real stoves as opposed to hot plates, separate sleeping areas, near good markets, large screen tv, near a convenient metro, lots of activities nearby, etc. We made a spreadsheet with columns for these types of things and compared and contrasted a dozen or so that were in our price range. We finally Skype'd with the owner of one of candidates and got a good appreciation for what it would like to spend a lot of time there. This apartment had everything we were looking for except the one thing I wanted, a large screen tv. I wanted the large screen to be able to watch my Slingbox setup in Walpole over the internet. Oh well, I guess I can survive watching Sox games on my laptop for a couple of months.

The only drawback was that it is on the 4th and 5th floor with NO elevator. We will either get into some sort of shape from climbing the stairs or never venture out once we are there. We'll see.

First post of the new blog....

This is the first post for this blog. We will be gone for almost two months in total and I'll try to blog about most of the trip. The real purpose is to have a permanent record of this adventure. Using blogspot.com for the blog itself and software like blurb.com, I will be able to create my own book that will allow us to enjoy this trip over and over.

Feel free to "Follow" the blog and throw in your comments. We'll all have some fun with it.