Visiting Montreal for art, friends & high school reunion

Gosh, hard to get words together to capture my thoughts on visiting Montreal. Although I grew up here, I left at 19 and have lived many other great places so thinking of Montreal as coming home is a bit of a stretch now. Sure, I have my childhood and adolescent memories but really not many of my adults ones and I know London far better than Montreal now, as far as big cities go and of course my own nearby Vancouver.

I grew up out in West Island in the very pleasant leafy suburbs but I’m staying at an Airbnb up by Beaubien Metro. It’s a ground floor flat in typical Montreal style with one long hallway along one side, rooms off of it with no opening windows and then the kitchen at the back and a lovely back courtyard. It’s very quiet and comfortable and Ruth and Guido are very nice young people to stay with. I like the chumminess of Airbnb. It feels like staying with friends of friends. We’re going to be exchanging some tasty recipes and you just don’t get that when you stay in a hotel, do you? Plus, it’s very economic. I booked a private room in a shared flat and it’s $29 a night. A real bargain! Very clean and comfy and heck, I really only sleep here and chill out a bit, the rest of the time I’m out on the hoof.

I have a friend Ann-Marie Brown up near here that I plan to hook up with a few times and do art things with. I carried back two of her lovely small encaustic paintings from our Figurative show at GPAG in February and handed them safely over last night.

I’m planning some artist studio visits with a handful of my Montreal figurative artists and have already had one with Kai McCall. Read more about studio visit here.

After visiting Kai’s studio, I wandered down to take in the gallery at UQAM and then toodle up St. Denis Street, peeking into interesting shops and boutiques along the way. A really cute one was Linda Morisset. Cute funky fashions with a flirty circus feeling. I think I’m going to have to go back there and take another look.

Up around Rachel and Mont-Royal and St. Denis, I put some time into finding a small bag full of second hand french versions of some of my favorite English authors. I’m keeping my french active and reading novels in French these days. I speak the words in my mind as if I were reading for an audio book, giving them lots of realistic verve and attitude and so am sort of percolating my brain in many ways, as if it needs any further percolating! I have a neat little French-English dictionary on my iPhone that I use to look up a word I’m really stuck on but sometimes that’s only one every few pages. Very handy!

Another thing the iPhone is super handy for is Google Maps! Crikey! You key in your destination and then it captures your real current location and gives you a few different ways to reach your destination. Super! As long as you put in the correct destination. Walking back from dinner late with Ann-Marie last night I put the wrong address in and ended up walking an extra 8 blocks or so but made it home eventually. My own silly mistake. You can even see the little ball moving along the line of the bus line so you can tell when to get off. Dandy travel app!

Another great use for mobile phones was told to me by a sweet young woman who had flown to Montreal from Newfoundland instead of hitchhiking as the price was pretty good and the difference wasn’t worth the risk, among other things. She does quite a bit of hitching and she asks the driver if she can text her mom the license plate before she gets in the car!!! What a great idea!! Gee, they sure didn’t have that when we used to hitchhike in the good old/bad old days.

Had a peek into Rossetti where we used to come to buy our dance and gymnastics leotards. I didn’t have the nerve to admit to them that we may have tucked a couple into our bags without paying way back in the dark ages when we were 14. I think I even still have a purple one in my knits stash in the sewing room which is getting smaller as I snip bits out of it and use them in other projects. I didn’t shoplift many times and maybe can remember every item that I did pinch. Yikes, I’m glad that is a very old faint memory and not a current practice. Not a good idea on any count or at any age. I remember and old grade school chum who told me she had pinched a large glass jar of dill pickles under her shirt!! What a kook! She is an old neighbourhood friend I would love to run into at the high school reunion. Lynn M actually phoned me on my Pavelka business line many years ago and left a nice chatty message BUT not her current name, location or phone number!! Darn it!

Wandered around the fabulous outdoors spectacle area by Place des Arts, what a venue for those fabulous hot summer nights here! Wow! We don’t have anything quite like that in Vancouver.

Checked out the Belgo Building which is a big commercial building that has been converted into creative spaces for artists, dance studios and galleries. I got into the elevator with some women who seemed to know where to start so I just rode up and started out with them. Basically you just wander the halls and wander into whichever places are open.

Among things that caught my eye were:

JÉRÔME HAVRE at Galerie Donald Browne. One of his small textile creatures hung there with great character.

VALÉRIE KOLAKIS at Galerie Donald Browne. She has created very beautiful fascinating subtle ephemeral artworks on the large glass windows but stenciling through a pattern with Vaseline as her medium. These lovely things have been up for 2 years! I was informed that some of her works only lasted 2 days on an installation in Ireland before they became smudged beyond recognition and that another in China lasted excellently. It’s all in the cultural differences.

Paryse Martin‘s chunky horse which sort of looked like an old fashioned wooden rocking horse but this one was on hot pink skate guards and made of corrugated cardboard which actually almost looked like chunky milk chocolate. Very nice work along with some intriguing large globes painted like no world we know. I just wanted to stroke their smooth painted surface which looked like it may have had marble powder mixed in with the paint but I kept my hands in my pockets.

Jumped on the Metro and zoomed across town to Atwater then walked in a big wind up to Greene Avenue in Westmount. We don’t have the same architecture out west as they do here in the older east. Nice stone buildings and the young green leaves showing off even though the temperature has dropped and the winds and rains are threatening.

On Green Avenue, Gallerie d’Este was showing some beautiful Angela Grossman works including some daubed life studies in bitumen on paper. Very nice gallery, great space and excellent works by an interesting stable of artists.

Gallerie Bellefeuille is another top shelf gallery with some old faves; David Bierk, Norman Laliberte, Jacques Payette, Joe Fafard and some luscious interior photographs by Polidori. Boy, I’d be dangerous with a BIG house and a BIG credit card!

Bussed back down Sherbrooke Street and stumbled upon a nice little vernissage where I helped them consume a bit of red wine and chatted to some nice guests. That was an unexpected treat. Walked from Guy through Crescent Street and on down Ste. Catherine Street, taking in the ups and downs of the economic times in the faces of some of the shuttered buildings and less fortunate folk on the street. Tough times and no wonder BC gets lots of harsh weather refuges heading out west where at least you most probably will not freeze to death when sleeping rough on the street.

Lots of For rent signs sadly. Lots of Tattoo parlours and for rent signs…

This was Thursday’s Pub, a real hopping place when I worked there in maybe 1979, closed and shuttered now on the formerly glorious Crescent Street.

Here’s the famous girly bar on Ste. Catherine Street, golly still here after all these years. Different windows but still the same place right in the center of the main shopping street. Still advertizing dance contact and now lit erotique (erotic bed), boggles the mind…

Had to stop in at Dunn’s and have possibly my one and only smoked meat sandwich. I didn’t particularly head for Dunn’s, it just appeared when I felt like stopping for dinner. The smoked meat was just right, nice and steamy and juicy and just the right amount. It was a great ending to a busy few days of lots of walking.

Posters for the artist Jason de Caires Taylor and his underwater figurative sculptures adorn the walls of the Metro.

Today I’m off to visit the Musee de Beaux Arts with Ann-Marie and tomorrow I have 3 artist studio visits lined up. See you next time.

Art in Brick Lane, London & snowy dales in Leek, the Peak District

We arrived Friday afternoon in London by Easy Jet from Nice and had severe sticker shock when we discovered that train travel at this time of day was peak time and very expensive. Poop! We were rushing to buy tickets north to Stoke On Trent and the clerk very kindly suggested that Dennis buy a senior’s pass and save about £80. Grabbed our tickets and hopped on the train north for a few hours. We’ll have to put some research into how to avoid this problem again. We could have saved money by hanging around in London for a few hours and arriving up north later in the evening so there are ways to save money but sometimes they’re just not that convenient. As it was, it took twelve hours door to door from Nice to Leek and we really didn’t want to drag that out more this time but we’ll be more informed for next time.

Our friend Jean picked us up in Stoke and hauled us off to stay with the family in Leek for a couple of nights. We stopped in a busy pub on the way home to have a drink with some old friends.

When we got home, lucky us, we got to wrestle over who got to sleep on the top bunk of bunk beds! I got the top bunk and happily, the bunks were much more comfortable than you might imagine. The kids are growing up, 9 and 17 now and family life was more settled down than it sometimes has been when having house guests sometimes get things just too wound up. I had my butt whipped at card game UNO by 9 year old Alistair, way to go buddy!

Leek is in the Peak Park District, a very lovely pastoral region with rolling hills, dry stacked stone walls giving the green fields structure and shape and containing the many sheep.

On Saturday, we rambled over the hills and dales to Wirksworth for the grand opening of a friend’s flower shop. Very picturesque area that we had never been to before. We are planning to spend much more time just noodling around this area on our next trip to Europe rather than spreading ourselves out over several countries and counties. We saw snow in the fields and even drove through some high snow drifts but happily most of their heavy recent snow has melted.

Caught this exquisite working steam engine with a lovely young fireman with nice black coal smut on his nose. What a grand day he was having, a big adventure he will remember!

We managed to fit in three very typical British dinners in our short visit here; fish ‘n chips from a good local chippie, a tasty Indian take-away and a fabulous roast beef cooked by a friend who invited us for a delicious Sunday lunch in Nantwich. She loves to cook and they needed to christen their brand new three week old kitchen so we were only too happy to oblige! She and Jean had come over to visit us just after the Vancouver Olympics and was very nicely returning the hospitality. Their three bonnie laying hens paraded around as their spaniel dogs looked on. They are busy transforming some rather dilapidated small barns into what I’m sure will be lovely holiday rentals units. With their classy handling, I’m sure they will be wonderful… maybe we’ll get to stay in them on our next trip over… whenever that is.

Nantwich offered a nice canal walk, an 800 year old church and an old fashioned sweetie shop, quite swell.

After three quick nights here, we headed back down to London for two nights in the Brick Lane area of East London at a nice Airbnb place.

This one was a room with an ensuite bathroom in a private home just off Brick Lane, complete with very cute friendly little black dog Hendricks. Of course London is quite expensive and this one cost somewhere around $100 per night(not quite sure) which is still a good rate for London prices.

The neighborhood is very eclectic and is becoming quite the hub for creative types, high tech, Silicon Valley types and advertising agencies, etc. We walked into a couple of large ad agencies just to take a look but were politely told it was not a public place or a gallery as it appeared to be. Loads of great vintage shops and bulging with interesting restaurants at every price point.

Found a gutsy little art collective Cult Mountain just 6 weeks old bulging with unusual finds. I let my Facebook friend Anna Kompaniets know about it as I think her funky wearable art and jewellery would fit right in.

Some of their featured artists were:

Ceramics by Carrie Reichardt, renegade potter

Wonderful head embellishments by Rubbish Fairy (don’t you love these funky names?)

Great metal assemblages by Skullduggery Refuse.

Applique clothing and badges by Ed Chickentits.

Met this wonderful costumed creature on the Tube who says she always dresses like this and sews her fabulous outfits from vintage Vogue sewing patterns. We exchanged addresses and maybe I will go and photograph her in her regalia next time I’m in the UK.

On my one clear day in London, we had a good bang up full English breakfast in a nice local greasy spoon in Bethnal Green then zipped down to Trafalgar Square by Tube. It was a couple of days before Margaret Thatcher’s funeral and I was hoping for no big disruptions as Trafalgar Square plays host to many big showdowns. No, it was all peaceful and I spent as much energy and time as I could muster soaking up about half of the National Gallery. No cameras are allowed and this actually made for much less distraction. The museum was fairly full with many school groups and many other art tourists but it was only the final room with the Van Goghs that was too crowded to get close to art in so I gave that one a miss.

The list of names that bring me to my knees there includes Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, Sargent, Bronzino, Van Dyck, Turner… and the wondrous horse Whistlejacket by Henry Stubbs. What a magnificent beast! Great animal portraiture is really as compelling as human portraiture when it’s approached seriously.

After fortifying myself with a nice little soup and the ubiquitous British tea, I continued on the National Portrait Gallery even though I didn’t think I would have the strength to take that in too. It’s just not possible to pick a favorite here! Starting from the top floor and working the way down chronologically, we are treated to stunning Holbeins which have an unbelievable sparkle and clarity even after nearly 600 years! Down the floors we work up to the present and find current celebrities captured in so many styles and mediums.

It feeds my soul to breath the same air as these great artworks. Many are just behind a small velvet rope but the viewer can really get up close and personal with most pieces and really see the brushstrokes and surface textures. There are guards in every room keeping everyone in line.

At one point I sat down on a big bench and went through my iPhone photo album of my paintings. It’s very daunting but also so over-stimulating for artists to visit art treasures they admire. Even just thinking about them now makes my pulse soar and adrenaline rush. If you feel you must aspire to the level which surrounds you in a major museum, it might be enough to make one almost fold up shop and give up. I looked through my album and thought, no, I’m okay, I’m on a track to something of my own making and it’s worth continuing on this path. It’s a voyage of discovery and self expression and even I have never seen what will next come out of my studio! I can always hardly wait to create my next piece which I hope will always be even better than my last one. Although I do take my artwork seriously, I am very fortunate not to have to make my entire living at it, something that is very difficult to do for many so I can take my time and take some chances and know we won’t be starving.

I dragged my art drenched carcass off and refuelled with a small chocolate bar, I wandered up towards Covent Garden, a place we used to spend lots of time in when we lived in London many years ago. Some of the same restaurants were there including Porters with their original British meat pies and Tuttons who made a fabulous dish of profiteroles. The sun had come out and the street performers were in full swing. Several of the little boutiques in the covered market itself were empty and for lease but in the main, it seemed to be quite bustling.

I finally pulled the plug on my wandering around 7 pm and headed for home, walking from Liverpool Street Station through Spitalfields Market home to Brick Lane. Dennis had explored the area only on foot and we compared notes over a drink in the pub.

As Samuel Johnson said in 1777, “Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”

London is my favorite city in the world, so full of interest and excitement, fashion, style, design, art and craft, architecture and life and the whole new groundswell of food! From being the food embarrassment of Europe and perhaps the world about twenty years ago, it has now rushed to the forefront and become a major player on the world food stage.

After a glorious five weeks of travel and adventure, we headed home over the glistening icy Spring break up of Arctic ice. Thanks to our great friends Doug and Mary who house sat for us! Until the next time the travel bug hits, this is your travel blogger signing out. I hope you enjoyed the armchair travels with words and pictures. Drop me a line if you’re a real human and not a robot. Now I just need to get over the jet lag of an 8 hour time difference, ugh…

xxx Paula

Palm trees & a little palace on la Cote d’Azur

After a week of cycling around Languedoc-Roussillon, it was on to the Cote d’Azur and Nice. We drove to Béziers and had a nice couple of hours to wander around before taking the train. Béziers seemed to have a large Moroccan population as we walked through a very Moroccan neighborhood, lots of interesting food and hookah cafes.

Of course, the day we planned to travel on to the Nice area was a day of train strikes BUT luckily our three connecting trains were not affected and we arrived in time to be picked up in Antibes by our old friend and taken off to La Colle Sur Loup up behind Nice for 3 nights of chatting, catching up and working our way through his very well-stocked wine collection. He even cracked a fine chilled bottle of le vrai champagne as we were celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary the day we arrived! Nice to share it with old friends who had things to celebrate themselves.

After weeks of chilliness in Spain and southwestern France, finally the weather was warmer! Still not at all HOT yet but warmer with some nice sunny spells. We had two days in the area, spent the first checking out Cagnes Sur Mer and then Nice itself. What do visitors who are not interested in architecture see when they travel? Only the restaurants and the stores? I have no idea as my eye is constantly being bombarded with fine things to capture in images. Dark palm trees against interesting backdrops, signs, store windows, the land, the water, the plant life, even the crumbling paint is food for the visual artist’s soul for us in British Columbia where old is 100 years at best.

Our friend works in the world of mega yachts and shared stories and top secret yacht plans with us. He says his equipment is found on 80% of the top yachts in the world. When we first worked on yachts in the 1970’s, they were smaller and much more intimate than the admittedly beautifully designed and appointed floating palaces they have become today with crews of 30 or 40 and garages for the “toys” like 50 foot sailboats and a few helicopters! I guess if you are wealthy enough to own these, you long to have your own floating sanctuary away from prying eyes but I think most owners never actually experience the journey between ports. What a shame.

On our second and final free day, we turned on the Tomtom gps (a sanity saver!)  and navigated our way past Nice to St. Jean Cap Ferrat to visit the elderly family of my old yacht skipper Alain. I had visited this old family home a small handful of times many many years ago and I always wondered if it could really be as wonderful as I remembered it to be or was my eye just less mature? No, it really was the little jewel box, la boite des merveilles of my memory. We visited with an elderly uncle and Alain’s parents in their 90s who were so touched that we had set time aside to visit with them again after so many years of keeping in touch with their son, now living on the other side of the world. My French is quite good despite the fact that I almost only speak it when I in am France every 3 or 4 years! Having had this refresher visit, I am vowing to keep up my novel reading in French and watch more French movies as it would be too sad to just let it fade away.

The family home is a three story small villa with a small tower like a tiny old Italian palace, filled with treasures of antiques, small lovely paintings and carvings and textiles with rich if worn trims. It is near the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild. The view is right over the wide open bay which was hosting an anchored cruise ship, sometimes one of three or four at a time! It’s is a multi-generational commitment, maintaining such a family home. Created in 1933 by the grandfather, it passes through the hands of successive generations as time unfolds, more difficult these days when families are spread far across the globe, let alone in these changing economic times when most For Sale signs in France are written in French and Russian.

The old uncle told us how things have changed in this area. In the old days, the stars who kept homes here, like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton would walk out to the harbor, eat in the local restaurants, say hello on the street in a friendly way as they went along on their business. David Niven, out rowing each morning would call out a greeting as he rowed past. Now, he says, the (Russian) oligarchs come and move into mega mansions and basically hide behind their armored walls and Kalashnikov-bearing bodyguards. Changing times in a changing world.

Again, it’s just too bad that Alain’s upcoming unexpected visit from afar will just miss mine by a very few weeks. Maybe next time we come to Europe we may possibly stand a chance of meeting up with other folks also making the European trek back to visit family, that would be grand!

Okay, time to leave France, there’s no water in the damned swimming pool! So nice to visit and keep up the long distance connections of old friends as time moves on. It was fascinating to hear Alain’s 90-odd year old parents recounting the wonder and joy of using Skype to keep in touch with far flung family! They have embraced the technology! We must use it more too to keep up our own connections. (Cheaper than taking the actual trip and you don’t lose your bags at the airport!) Time to head on to London for our final few days before heading home.

Wandering France’s wine country of Languedoc-Roussillon

After a week of biking around Toulouse, we rented a small car and set out for the small town of Olonzac in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. Between the medieval walled hilltop city of Carcassone and Narbonne, a nice small city with a very rich history as a trading port in earlier times, Olonzac was very quaint and charming.  Neighborhood friends had come here to spend 3 months a few years ago having a cultural French immersion experience and heartily recommended the town to us as home base for Southwestern France.

We stayed Chez Lulu in a holiday rental “gite” which was very comfortable and cost around $54 a night. If we ever got a bit lost on the way home through the small meandering streets, we could always ask directions for la Mairie, the Town Hall, as we were right beside it on a small square. Chez Lulu is below on the right.

It seems there has been an exodus of people moving out from the old center of small towns. The young people move off for education or opportunities and many others apparently are happy to move out to newer homes built on the outskirts. The center was very quiet with many homes completely shuttered up but it’s still big enough to have 2 boulangeries and a butcher in spite of the larger supermarket nearby.

There is a big contingent of English people living in this area but from what we heard and observed, for the most part they are keen to assimilate, learn French and share in the village life and not keep themselves to themselves. Well done, les anglais! Bravo, les ros bifs!

Tuesday in Olonzac is a big market day and the market winds through the streets. People flood in from all the small surrounding villages to do their shopping. After a busy marketing morning, they all gather at the Café de La Poste, a big brasserie. As they do not serve any food, we were quite welcome to buy our own croissants or baguettes from across the street at the boulangerie and then come to la Poste for coffee which we made a point to do at least once every day. A very nice spot to call our local spot for coffee or a sip of something stronger later in the day. When the sun shone, the outdoor seating was busting at the seams and when it was snotty, we all huddled inside taking in rugby on a big screen.

Some local characters seemed to live in the brasserie all day long, sipping back their coffees, and/or small carafe of red or local rose wines, treating La Poste like their own from sitting room really. Very sociable.

The week we were here, the weather was very chilly so we let it direct our exploring. On nicer days, we rented bikes and pedaled off to nearby Homps which has a pretty canal bridge, very busy with canal boats. A large wine factory on the route with its tall smoke stack was a good landmark and quite photogenic.

Another day we set off for Azille which was not too far but with a heavy wind against us and a steady uphill climb, our trip there took about an hour as we stopped to look about, catch our breath or slog through very squishy slippery mud on the footpath beside the canal. Luckily neither of us slipped into the soft chocolaty mud… which would have been quite a mess!! We came across a large team actually removing these majestic old tress along the canal, as they are all to be destroyed because of a blight. Very sad and it will be many years until whatever they are replaced with provide much shade along the canal.

Reaching Azille, we found that there was really nowhere we could stop for a littler snack for lunch at all. Man, when small towns shut their shutters, they are really shut. Yet again, we were thankful that I always pack along a small bag of peanuts “just in case” and we shared them for lunch as we fortified ourselves with nice small French coffees before heading home.

Once we turned towards home, honestly we barely pedaled at all! With the wind on our backs and the hill slope in our favour, we just coasted gently almost all the way home. Smashing!

On our final morning we biked over to Homps again but the weather was turning stinky so we cancelled plans to continue further. We took a detour to return home across the vineyards as we could see Olonzac’s sharp pointed church steeple across the fields. We kept carefully to the little tractor track of red dirt road and made our way windingly across the vineyards hoping we would not reach an utter dead end and have to turn back. With luck and some perseverance, we had a lovely ramble across these fields. Happily no farmer sent out barking dogs to drive us off his fields and this cross-country ramble was one of the highlights of our trip. We even stopped and pulled out our small sketching kits and made a stab at capturing the scenery. With warmer weather and less wind we would have enjoyed more exploring by bike, but it was record-breakingly cold. Nearby Carcassone in fact had several inches of snow and sleet which stayed on the ground for a few days! Luckily we missed that but merchants complained that the chill did put a damper on holiday visitors to the town.

The picturesque hill top town of Minerve was another nice day trip. It is a tiny place surrounded by a natural gorge. The Cathars thought it was a good strategic place to build a fortified town… until some attackers cut off their water supply and eventually overtook the town and put them all to death. This area was the center of the Cathar religion, a humble order which the Pope decided was heretical and eventually was completely exterminated in the 13th century.

Nearby Narbonne was a lovely small city with an extremely lovely small museum of arts. Every single piece was a stunner, remarkably well displayed and lit. A real gem of a museum from the tiniest sugar dish to the largest ornate carved, painted and gilded alterpieces. They had an exceptional collection of Orientalism. Breathtaking! I had no idea it was there and was thrilled to have been able to visit with these lovely pieces. It was nice to see some old friends and make new ones with this group of artists.

Roger Bezombes was a new one to me, wonderful!!! I will definitely look some of these up and read more about this period.

We set our one Sunday lunch as a goal to enjoy a unique French cuisine experience and rambled off by car to find a nice restaurant. We settled on Restaurant Auberge De St Martin in Beaufort and gave them our reservation and continued around the pretty little town until the lunch hour arrived.

We should have read the menu more carefully! The food was very good, well cooked and beautifully presented, and really did satisfy our desire to have a unique French experience as we can both say we will NEVER EAT that dish again!! The starter was a very nice slice or rabbit terrine. I’m not a big pate fan but this was very nice, not fatty. The choice was this or a salad of tete du veau, a veal’s head salad. Yikes. No thanks, I prefer my food not to be looking at me, thanks.

The main dish arrived. The choices were something that sounded vaguely like a haggis which we have enjoyed before, and a tiny bird of some type, maybe guinea fowl. We went with the haggis thingme.

I’m sure it was excellently prepared but it was NOT to our liking. I will refrain from sharing the fairly revolting details (some kind of boiled pigs feet wrapped in a membrane…) but I left half of mine and gobbled the vegetable surroundings and Dennis valiantly made his way through his in the name of adventure. If you image being served the great local delicacy of sheep’s eyeballs in some sheik’s tent in the desert, you get the picture. We WOULD go back to eat at this very nice restaurant BUT would read the daily offerings more carefully next time. This reminds me of my adventurous grandmother who went around the world with some college girl friends way back when. Being adventurous, they would often order the first thing on the menu that they couldn’t understand! It’s a gamble but, really if you want to only eat things you already know, maybe you should just stay home.

Enjoying mussels steamed with local white wine…

With the weather keeping us closer to home, we got though a bit of everything in our week there. We pulled out our little sketching kits and did a little sketching in the Café de la Poste and on our ramble across the vineyards, we read our books, played cards, snuggled(etc) to keep warm, road our bikes, studied Dennis’s new camera and discovered some fun new types of settings… and enjoyed cooking for ourselves at home. Dennis tried unsuccessfully to light the small wood stove in the kitchen but after filling the room with stinky smoke, we just had to give up.

Olonzac makes a great base for certainly a week or more of exploring. With many interesting cities and villages to visit in the area, it’s a good base camp and Lucy from Chez Lulu was a great host with several gites to pick from. Don’t miss a visit to Carcassonne itself. We stayed there on our last trip through a few years ago when we wandered through the Dordogne up to Brittany and Normandy. The Dordogne is one of my favorite areas but this Languedoc-Roussillon area was very nice too and great for visiting the wineries and tasting the local wines. A hard job but some one has to do it.

Voluptuous nudes & biking around Toulouse, France

Arrived in Toulouse by train from Barcelona and spent about a week toodling around the city by rented bikes Velo Toulouse, a great deal for only 5 euros! What a bargain!!! Another great flattish city to cycle around quite comfortably. You must understand that we are not accomplished riders, just your basic garden variety returning cyclists finding our way. There were a few moments of marginal terror but seriously almost none although it is HARD to cycle around, pay attention to the road and not be goggle-eyed with the architecture, the store windows and the people, so gee, we sure needed to sure keep our wits about us.

Hopping on and off was super. Our 5 euro tickets covered 7 consecutive days of bike usage and we just either locked them up outside some museum when we went in OR locked them back into their own station when we didn’t need them anymore. Smashing!

Our Airbnb studio apartment was very central, just one block back from la Capitole but wonderfully quiet. Astonishing really. It’s wonderful to be able to cook when traveling for a longer time. Eating out is fine and fun for a few days but really not super for the long haul, on your guts or your wallet. We cooked most evenings after having cycled around the entire day, exploring and soaking up the local art, architecture and gastronomic sights. Having good wifi in the flat, we tended to just chill out with our connections and photo management in the evening, never even turned on the TV. It was very comfortably set up and I would recommend it as a very good place to stay in Toulouse. Amanda was a very helpful and well-informed hostess.

We toured down the by the Canal du Midi and saw our friend’s boat from the shore. They live in cape Town and spend some of the French summer/South African winter toodling along in their comfortable but not grand 35 foot-ish canal boat. Unfortunately, our timing is wrong and we will miss them. We are too early and weather is actually quite nippy, definitely wearing our hats and scarves, especially when zooming around on the bikes.

We were here over the Easter weekend and enjoyed visiting the many fascinating churches, from small and simple to enormous and impressive. Catholic churches and cathedrals offer visitors much more than just a religious vision. Many were architectural achievements of their time and offer so much to the visitor and we certainly saw people from many cultural backgrounds taking in their wonderful visual delights, not just Christians.

For art history students, artists and photographers, visiting places of worship is a treat.

La Capitole is a huge main square with a beautiful building decorated by artist Henri Martin(I think). Quite a confection and free to visit – perfect! Don’t you just love the way the Europeans of old got to present lovely tits and ass all dolled up and made respectable?? Now we seem to have to cover everything up and voluptuous nakedness in public and civic monuments is a thing of the past, for better and for worse.

And then for a completely different stark look….

One blustery day, we cycled out to Les Abatoires, a contemporary art centre. there was an installation of Anthony McCall’s impressive light works. In a completely inky black room, very strong lights were mounted either in the ceiling and coming down vertically for 3 stories in height or coming out horizontally from the side wall. It sounds very simple to describe it but it was quite other-worldly to walk among these light sculptures which changed and morphed only subtly. Visually, they created strong solid looking walls and cones and sharp edges as you moved through them. So simple but so moving and well worth the long walk down into the underbelly of les Abatoires, a converted old abatoir.

One the way there we came across several large yarn bombing creations, must have been some kind of an organized thing as some needed scaffolding to create! Very fun and colorful and will last quite a long time as they evolve and degrade with the elements.

Scenes from the market… I’ve got to say we just don’t see this kind of thing back home, lambs brains and massive slabs of bacaloa, salt cod. Now, I’ve eaten one of those two things but it sure wasn’t the squishy one!

We came across a very interesting art gallery idea, Carré d’artistes, where all artwork is presented in a square format. Maybe you’re ahead of me and this is old news but we found it quite novel.

Once we noticed this formula, we did see it a under a few other names. All the art is original art, no reproductions. There are 4 specific sizes of art at 4 specific prices and a nice range of styles. Someone looking for original art for themselves or as a gift is sure to find something and at prices from just under $100 to less than $400, it’s a very good find. The art is stacked nicely on shelves like music albums rather than all out on the wall making it a great way to have lots of art available in a very small space. As they have several locations, they can boast to represent 450 artists and they move one artist along to the next location each two weeks so there is always someone new to come in and discover. What a great concept!

Toulouse is France’s 4th largest city but is very level and was easy to get around with many things to offer tourists. We passed on visiting AirBus and the big Space Center but jumped on the tram anyway and just road out to the end of the line and back, just to see what it looked like on the outskirts. Nothing amazing, the winding old center is much more our style with wonderful classy old doors, impressive museums and little shops of delightful things even though the only thing we actually bought was a few packages of interesting used stamps to add to my box of philatelic treasures and two 10 euro t-shirts at the market.

We even came across a Tintin shop where I would have bought everybody nice decks of cards BUT they were all sold out! Poop! Lots and lots of shops, from the very inexpensive Monoprix up to Jean Paul Gaultier, great window shopping for all. Just keep your credit card firmly in your pocket…

One thing I made a little study of was beautiful lingerie, something that they excel at here but the prices! Ouch! Plus why can’t we have something in the knickers department that combines comfort and sexy styling at prices that don’t need a bank loan? I put some effort in online and plan to explore something in that knickers line… but that’s a whole other blog post. Hey, if I can sew Goretex raincoats and bathing suits, I’m sure I can manage coming up with some nice knickers designs. Of course finding the nice fabrics and trims and stretch lace will be another adventure…

Biking around Barcelona, Spring 2013

Barcelona
Dennis had a very difficult time booking us an Airbnb in Barcelona but after 2 days (when he booked out whole trip from home last month) of struggling, he found us a tiny studio apartment that took us back to student days, simple, small but adequate. Cozy, quiet and simple. Pretty much like staying at your daughter’s college flat when she stays overnight with friends. The very narrow steep stairs up though would not please everybody.

In fact, Airbnb is perhaps not for everybody. Some places are just a spare room in someone’s house with access to the kitchen, etc but some are whole houses or apartment suites and the prices spread across a huge range. It certainly has taken a LOT of money out of the hotel economy in just 4 years since it began in San Francisco with a couple of guys, an idea and an air mattress! We’ll probably offer it ourselves in Gibsons as we have a nice setup for it downstairs and it seems like a good way to meet some interesting people and make new connections.

Airbnb prices/night so far have been:
London, pull-out sofa in living room $78 Can/night
Valencia, old town, small 2 bedroom apartment $70 Can/night
Valencia, suburb, larger 1 bedroom apartment $60 Can/night
Barcelona, tiny studio flat $78 Can /night
Toulouse, studio apartment $60 Can/night
Olonzac, small terrace house gite $50 Can/night

Airbnb is all booked and managed online and via mobile phone and text message. As we are not using our phone$$ while we travel (on airplane mode and through secure wifi only), it makes it a little trickier but manageable.

Within minutes of our stepping out of a cab in the tiny twisting street of the Born district in old town Barcelona, Dennis was targeted by a young guy who grabbed his jacket from behind, saying “There’s shit on your jacket, look, look”. I could see he was up to no good and shouted to Den to not let the guy touch him. He let go and wandered off. Sure enough there was some brownish goop down his back but luckily it washed off very easily. Obviously, the guy had somehow squirted it on and then tried to appear to he helping him tackle the problem but we were not buying his program. I guess pickpockets have figured out that most people do not actually carry much of value in their shoulder bags, leaving them for handy maps, water bottles and mints while keeping money and travel docs secretly zipped into inside pockets on coats. A nearby store offered us their washroom to wash up in. That is a big advantage of traveling with a pal, you get 2 pairs of eyes on the look out.

In Valencia Dennis was also targeted by pickpockets on a crowded subway train home one evening. A brutish fellow had pushed onto the train in front of others and then, when underway, somehow slid Den’s wallet out from his front jeans pocket. Dennis sensed this though and wheeled around and confronted the guy and putting his hands into the thief’s own pockets. Suddenly his (obvious) accomplice found the wallet on the floor several people away and handed it back to him. Jerks.

We’ve now looked up the word for thief and will be ready to shout it out and point if we do become successful targets of them. It pays to have these words on the tip of the tongue and just have run through the scenario beforehand and be prepared to put up a noisy embarrassing scene if it seems safe to do so. Otherwise, of course, just hand over the cashola and get on with other things. Pickpockets are not looking for violence or attention but for easy targets who don’t notice and don’t take action against them. We happened to get off the subway at the same station as these guys and they suddenly acted nervous that we were following them now. They kept looking back at us and then split up as if they were not actually connected. Bastardos. Still, there is very high unemployment, even among the well educated so one really has to keep the radar up, especially is busy touristy cities.

Disegual, a FAB Spanish design outfit and happily, loads of people wear it, making even dark winter coats more lively!

Treats for the eyes!!! Not the hips… Resist, resist….

Having visited Barcelona’s major Gaudi sites on our last visit in 2009, we spent this short 3 day visit just noodling around with no major objectives except to visit the MEAM, museum of contemporary figurative art which was well worth the trip! Housed in a lovely smallish palace, there are about 270 pieces from 200 artists, most of which feature the human form and condition in styles from chunky sculpture to ultra smooth almost airbrushed highly photographic work which actually leaves me hungry for more traces of the hand of the maker. I respect them but would not wish to live with such highly finished work as it seems to leave nothing left to the viewer but to admire its perfection.

Market scenes…

Spices…

Shellfish…

Peppers…

Tripe…

Wonderful funghi…

Plump fruit…

Charcuterie, something for everyone but vegetarians…

The next day, we hopped on and off city buses and walked around Gaudi’s masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia cathedral, well into its more than hundredth year of construction. We did not join the very long line up but the inside is much more finished than our 2009 visit. Still if we really wanted to go in, we would have arrived first thing in the morning and not in the afternoon with piles of others from every nation.

Barcelona is an architectural delight, no matter where you wander. Just look up…

We biked past the mosaic columns of La Palua du Musica and got our picture taken in the same spot as we had a few years earlier.

We hopped into quite a few art galleries on a good gallery street whose names escapes me and found them a very mixed bag as usual. Some galleries display very little in their spaces and the places are very spare, very cerebral and makes me feel hungry for more visuals. The one we enjoyed the most was the tiniest gallery I have ever seem called the Art Window, showing lovely works by Anna Tamayo, works in oils paints with some encaustic and decoupage.

Anna Tamayo

Barcelona, city of art, architecture and good tastes…

Processional carriage….

Fresh palm fronds for Palm Sunday…

No matter where we look here, we see the super selling (but very poorly written ) novels, the Shades of Gray series. I wish better writers would get such great exposure. Such twaddle…

Tasty treats with aubergines and anchovies, two tasty things that start with A. Off on the train to Toulouse next…
Bye for now – Paula

Valencia, sumptuous Palace museum of ceramics

One of the prettiest museums, the ceramics museum was is located in the Palace of the Marquis of Dos Aguas. OMG! So beautiful and so lavishly and lovingly renovated and refurbished. I took lots of pictures and may try to work some of these backgrounds into to some of my paintings behind my models. the building is a marvel and the ceramics and wooden carriages were fabulous.

What visit to Spain wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the shop where Catholic churches buy their religious objects and garments?

And of course, wonderful paella!!!