Day 54, Saturday, October 21, 2023
We catch the train to Nice this morning. We are both happy to be sitting on a train instead of driving and navigating. It is a nice change and Bob can watch the scenery go by instead of concentrating on driving.
I draw on the train. I feel out of practice but it is still nice to be drawing…I haven’t done nearly as much of it as I had hoped to this trip.
The Nice train station is really big, clean and airy.
It is a short walk from the train station to the main tourist area by the beach. We stop at a park for our lunch, and I wonder if the water is from yesterday’s big rain…or if it is a fountain?
A couple minutes later I have my answer. These two young boys had the best time playing in the water jets.
We laughed at this big dog who jumped and tried to bite every jet of water he passed. He was having such fun. There were such neat reflections too.
This very large sea gull was eyeing our lunch, just hoping a few crumbs would fall his way…I’m afraid a few did…who could resist that gaze?
After lunch we visit the Cathedral of Saint Reparata., which is a National Monument. It is very ornate and in great shape…no peeling paint here. 
The flower market is beautiful and the prices are very reasonable.
We try some socca. It is a thin chickpea bread that is sprinkled with pepper. We have to wait a few minutes for a fresh pan to arrive (it is brought hot from the ovens in a wheeled cart) and it is delicious! It is also a bargain at just 3€ for a huge slice. I am going to have to try making this at home.
Even though we have just had lunch, and socca, I am craving a cassis (black current) sorbet from Fenocchio’s, a world famous ice cream shop. They have 94 flavors of ice creams and 35 of sorbet, but I stick with my favourite. 
After my sorbet we walk towards the beach. 
Nice has a pebble beach, and lots of sun worshippers. I stay at the beach to draw some of them and Bob goes for a walk and climbs to two viewpoint. There is one on top of the cream round structure in the distance and another higher up on top of the hill.
I take a photo of someone who I think is Bob…
and he takes a photo trying to find me on the beach. Do we think alike?
This is definitely me, I am sitting right beside the two rinse towers…and I get a light spray every time someone rinses off! I was settled in by the time this happens the first time so I decide to stay put, in spite of the occasional mist of water that floats my way.
I am happier with my beach drawings.
This fellow was sitting beside me and he was very brown. He was also wearing black underpants, which appears to be a common thing here. People are not shy about changing on the beach, women pull off their tops and bras to change into their bathing suits and I saw lots of men just wearing underpants as their bathing suit. There were a few topless women as well…it is the French Riviera after all.
We do a bit of window shopping, or as they say here, leche-vitrine, which translates to lick the windows! I have had a couple treats here, but gluten really doesn’t agree with me so I have to content myself with a bit of window licking! Oh and did you notice the prices? 
We stroll along the boardwalk, people watching and enjoying the sunshine…
but the sun is getting glow in the sky and we head back to catch our train.
Bob notices something strange about this building…
Here is a clue.
Yes, the whole side of the building is a giant mural! We pass this interesting fountain…
and there are seven of these statues high on poles above the street. Google tells me that they were created by Jaume Plensa, a Spanish artist who specializes in monumental art.
They represent the seven continents and the communication between the different communities of today’s society. They are titled “Conversation à Nice”and they are illuminated every night, with slowly changing colours. Too bad we won’t see that but it is a long ride home.
We were in Nice over 40 years ago and visited the Matisse Museum. I was hoping to visit it again today, but it closes during the noon hour, and then we just ran out of time. I am OK with not visiting so many museums this trip, there are so many other things to do and only so much time.
There is the prettiest green seaweed and I see fish, Lots of fish, little ones and then some really big fish with whiskers…catfish?
They particularly like hiding in the seaweed. I keep showing them to Bob but he doesn’t see them. I think he thought I was making up all these fish I was seeing until he took off his polarized sunglasses and then he can see the fish too. He even gets to see one of the really big ones. 
But first we pass two of these strange half built bridges. It doesn’t look like they plan on completing either of them although the bridge with a road bed is on both sides of the river and just has one section missing. We wonder why.
Another view from the streets on Bob’s walk, and of the ‘pirate’ tourist ships.
We bought some refreshing sorbet and just enjoyed the view before heading home to Sarlat to pack. Tomorrow we are on our way to Carcassonne.
I loved this carved lizard, which is the symbol of Montrésor.
I notice that the leaves are staring to turn colour…winter is coming!
“The Rouen Natural History Museum is the 2nd most important natural history museum of France after the museum of Paris thanks to its collections richness and diversity (ornithology, ethnography, botany).” ~from Rouen Tourist Information
The strange line on the back view is part of a tattoo. I usually don’t draw tattoos, but this one followed the contours of the back so I included it.
Then just two blocks later we see three of its siblings! These are the perfect cars for parking in France’s cities.
There is so much to see in Rouen. I thought this was the Notre Dame cathedral but it is the much smaller 
Rouen’s Notre Dame Cathedral was the tallest building in the world (151 m) in 1876, and still keeps the record of being the tallest cathedral of France. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.
This is just one small section of Rouen’s Notre Dame cathedral. It is enormous!
As is their pipe organ, but there was no organ music today.
The Gros Horloge (the Great clock) is one of the oldest clocks in France, the movement was made in 1389. 
It has a different face on either side and it rings on the hour, the half hour and the quarter hour.
This fellow spends his time on the street busking for money…only he plays the same song over and over and over. No variety at all to his performance.
Here is a little video that gives a better of idea of what we saw. 
My drawing goes better today and we share our work upstairs in the bar afterwards. I met some lovely people from Australia, Korea, Montreal, England and Italy. The times for each pose are written on the pages.
The organ is right above our heads. I think I am sitting 
Where is Waldo? No…where is Bob? Here he is in the first photo.
Can you find him in the photo below? There are always so many tourists sitting on the steps to enjoy the view.
There are still hordes of tourists in Paris. Us included!
We met this young lady on the flight. Alexa Kubicki is a 16 year old boxer who was returning home from a three month competition tour. She won 4 international Tournaments and received 4 Best Female Fighter Awards over the last 4 months. Next year she will compete in the World Boxing Championship and she is aiming to compete in the 2024 Olympics. I told her I would look for her in 2024.
I tried drawing but was so tired that I had problems with proportion. Not the best likenesses. I did manage to get another couple hours sleep on this flight so that helped.
It was a very long day, more than 24 hours since we left our apartment in Vienna until we walked through the door at home. First thing we notice is how big our house seemed after all the little apartments we stayed in! It was a really good holiday but it is good to be home. This blog is my travel journal of our trip, and I know sometimes the posts were long…so thanks for following along and a special thank you to those who wrote comments or liked a post.
Many of the buildings in this neighbourhood are old and in need of repair but the murals do brighten up the neighbourhood.
Bob tells me to look inside this little blue van…
It is set up as a little dining room! It is kind of cute, except I look in the front seat and it is dirty and cluttered with junk. Not very appetizing, 
There are many shops and workshops tucked into the buildings on narrow streets, sometimes even in the basements, like this bike shop. I think my bike riding daughter will appreciate the sentiment of the sign above this door.
This is probably one of the most colourful doors I have ever seen.
The buildings here have very interesting architectural details.
Seems every city we have ever been in has an Astoria Hotel!
Loved the room at the top of this white building. Imagine living there.
The Holocaust Tree of Life Memorial was funded by the late American actor Tony Curtis in memory of his Hungarian-born father. The names of 30,000 Holocaust victims are engraved on the leaves of the metal tree. The tree resembles an upside down menorah and is located on top of the mass graves of thousands of murdered Jews.
The tree is located behind The Dohány Street Synagogue which is also known as the Great Synagogue. It seats 3,000 people and is the largest synagogue in Europe and the third largest in the world. We didn’t have time to go inside because we want to go to a thermal bath today.
One more interesting building on our way back to our apartment. The top doesn’t seem to belong to the bottom.
The Széchenyi Spa Bath in Budapest
This pools for lane swimming, not for us today.
We like this pool as it is warmer than the first one. 
Inside there are fifteen more pools. This is one of the warmer ones and the only one that has comfy lounge chairs, so we stay here for a while. I sit beside Bob, in the corner and do some drawings of the bathers. Budapest didn’t have any life drawing classes, or at least none that I could find, so this will do instead. 
The building is magnificent but it is starting to show its age here and there. I think it might need a renovation before too long. This is a great place for people watching, and we do come in all shapes and sizes!
By the time we go back outside it is dark, and the steam is rising from the pools. We were thinking of taking a boat ride on the Danube tonight but we decide to stay and enjoy more time here.
There are more people now than when we first arrived, and most of them are much younger than us. We see a few other grey-haired ‘oldies’ but we are few and far between. We spent more than five hours enjoying the baths, and we both feel nice and relaxed.
including very long barges…
river cruise ships, and whatever this ship is.
Our taxi is quite nice, with tables and chairs on the top deck and a dining room on the main deck with white table cloths. Not what we expected for a river taxi. The ride is only four stops in the winter months so we also ride it back to where we started, just to spend a little more time on the river sight-seeing.
There is a great view of the Buda Castle… 
and an interesting row of houses on the Buda side of the river.
We pass right under the Chain Bridge heading back towards the Parliament Building.
The workers washing the sides of this river cruise ship waved to me when they saw I was taking pictures.
The river was very calm and the sun was still low in the morning sky. We could just make out the Liberty Statue we visited yesterday on top of the hill in the distance.
We return to our stop near the Parliament Buildings and I get a great shot of this enormous building. The Budapest Parliament building is the third largest Parliament building in the world. It has 691 rooms, 20 kilometres of stairs and at 96 meters. It is the same height as the St. Stephen’s Basilica. We decided against visiting the interior in favour of spending our time outside. 
This is our water taxi. We saw several others but none of them looked as nice as this one. I think we were just lucky and happened to catch the best one!
The guards in front of the Parliament stand on opposite sides of this big flag pole and then every once in a while they march together round and round the flag pole. We both think it must be quite tedious.
We catch a bus back towards the Indoor Market. I forgot to get a photo yesterday.
We were looking for the ‘For Sale’ Pub, but when we walked in the waitress told us they weren’t open and refused to let me take a photo. So here is one off of Trip Advisor. If you have something for sale you write it on a piece of paper and stick it wherever you can. This started before there was internet and now people pin whatever they want to the walls. There is straw and peanut shells all over the floor and candles on the tables. Seems like an accident waiting to happen to me!
We walk from the market area back towards our apartment passing a variety of interesting buildings. Some of them were in need of restoration…
and others were well cared for.
We stopped to see the University Library. It is in an old palace, and we wandered about checking out the rooms. This was the most interesting one, with its balcony, but I didn’t climb up to it. The stairs were behind the librarian’s desk and I didn’t want to disturb all the people studying.
Take a look at this corner…there are big bean bags for reading, or napping!
We see flower boxes still in bloom in the middle of November, lots of these grey and black birds (they are Hooded Crows), interesting art work in shop windows, and this sign which translates to One Psalm. No idea what that means.
There are so many gorgeous buildings in this city…
it is easy to take too many building photos!
After lunch and a rest we are back on the streets, looking for a puppet theatre. We pass several buildings with wooden scaffolding, made with big timbers. There are a lot of buildings that need work, and we see quite a few that are boarded up along one of Budapest’s main streets.
The puppet show is in Hungarian but we know the story and thought it would be a fun things to see. The theatre was full of school kids who really enjoyed the show. We did too. Here are some fo the cast taking a bow at the end of the play…
and some of the displays in the lobby.
I did some drawing during the play. These drawings were done in the dark so I couldn’t see what I had drawn until the lights came on. Can you figure out what the play was? There is a pretty big clue in my drawings.
These photographs were on the wall outside the House of Terror Museum. According ot Wikipedia “It contains exhibits related to the fascist and communist regimes in 20th-century Hungary and is also a memorial to the victims of these regimes, including those detained, interrogated, tortured or killed in the building.” 
We pass this rather odd couple on our walk home, not far from the House of Terror.
‘Mother and Child’ is a well known painting. I do love how expressive Schiele’s hands are.
Schiele’s 1912 ‘Self Portrait with Chinese Lanterns’ was painted as a companion piece for the ‘Portrait of Wally Neuzil’ who was his muse and partner from 1911 to 1915. Both these paintings have a gentleness and sensitivity not found in all his work. I like these very much.
Quite different from this self portrait completed the same year. Schiele was born in 1890 and died in 1918. He was only 28 years old when he died, yet he created over 3,000 works on paper and around 300 paintings! I wonder what he would have accomplished if he had lived longer. He died during the Spanish Flu Epidemic, just three days after his six month pregnant wife Edith.
‘Reclining Woman’ was bigger than I expected. Originally the woman’s genitals were exposed but Schiele added the white cloth covering in order to be able to show the work at an exhibition in Vienna in 1918.
There are several landscapes, and most of them are quite large.
‘The Small Town IV’…
and ‘House With Shingled Roof’ were two that I particularly liked. Although Schiele only painted for such a short time, his work laid the foundations for the Viennese Expressionist movement as well as inspiring other future movements, such as Abstract Impressionism.
‘The Blind Man’ was first exhibited in 1898.
‘Death and Life’ won the Gold Medal at the 1911 International Art Exhibition in Rome. This painting and ‘The Kiss’, that I saw at the Belvedere, are two of Klimt’s most well known paintings. I feel very fortunate to have seen both of them in person, as well as all the other amazing works of art I have seen on this trip.
As we are leaving the Leopold I notice this painting, which makes both of us laugh! It is by Albert Birkle and is titled ‘Man with Fur Cap’, or ‘My Brother the Animal’!
Near the metro station Bob notices this crane which has just been erected. Neither of us have seen one with so many arms before.
When I saw this building our first day in Vienna I thought it was the Hundertwasser House but it wasn’t. Turns out that it was designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser! It is the Spittelau Incinerator which is used to handle Vienna’s garbage. The environmentally friendly plant produces enough energy to heat more than 60,000 households in Vienna in a year.
I have one more life drawing session tonight at Kaffeebar Quentin. I have attended many life drawing sessions in bars or pubs and the model is always at least partially clothed, so I was quite surprised when our model is completely nude. We are in the back of the bar, but the model is still in full view of all the other patrons as well as anyone who happens to look in the windows. Wish I had a scanner, as it would improve the quality of these photos, but I don’t think I can haul one around on holidays! These are all 5 minute poses.
Two ten minute and one twenty minute drawing…
and we finished the evening with a twenty-five minute pose. The people at this session were very friendly and I had met some of them at the other two sessions this week. I will miss Vienna, they have so many life drawing opportunities. There is a session almost every day of the week, and lots of them have interesting themes. 
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