Day 66, Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Here are the last of my Munich metro drawings. 
I liked this one of the young man with the bandaged nose.
Our drive to Vienna was long and uneventful. We stayed on the freeway and it still took us about 5 1/2 hours. We had to wait about an hour for our Airbnb host to meet us, but we found a parking space just outside the apartment and our car was warm, so it wasn’t too bad. It took forever to figure out how to pay for street parking but we finally sorted it out. We take our rental car back tomorrow so we just need parking for one night.
Our Airbnb apartment looks OK and it is really close to the Underground metro so that is going to be handy.
This central four-storey building was the beginning of the palace and was built in 1644. Over the years numerous additions were built until it reached its present configuration in 1776.
The Nymphenburg Palace was originally a summer residence for the Bavarian rulers. This is the Great Hall. Musicians would entertain guests from the gallery.
One of the many rooms with original furnishings.
Many of the rooms are not that big and seem to serve as connecting passages to other larger rooms.
The south apartment bedroom of the Electress, who was the consort of the king.
Our reflection in the bedroom mirror.
Every palace has to have a Chinese inspired room.
The audience room of Queen Caroline…
and her bedroom have their original furnishings. This room is where King Ludwig II was born in 1845. The bed is hidden by a cover on a high frame which was spread over the bed during the daytime.
The official Hall of Beauties is under restoration but the paintings are on display in a corridor. From 1826 to 1850 King Ludwig I had a series of 36 portraits painted of what he considered to be the most beautiful women. Beauty was considered to be an outward sign of moral perfection!
We finish our tour of the palace rooms, and go explore the grounds. Unfortunately we realize that the park pavilions closed for the season a week ago. I do manage a peek inside the Magdalene Hermitage, which was a pavilion used for contemplation.
Much of the grounds are in the style of an English park, with paths…
and little bridges over water features.
This creek was so covered with fallen leaves that the water was barely visible.
This shows just how long the canal water feature is…looking towards and away from the palace on a bridge that crosses the canal. At one time gondolas sailedd these waters. Neat reflections too.
Walking back towards the palace along a tree lined path.
I liked the reflection of the palace in the water.
Looking out towards the garden from the Palace steps.
It is almost closing time, but we manage a quick peek inside the Carriage museum, which is one of the most important museums of court carriages, travel and equestrian culture in the world. The Coronation coach of Emperor Karl VII is here…
We can only begin to imagine how much these coaches cost!
Besides dozens of coaches there are numerous sleighs on display.
Parades and competitive games with these carousel sleighs were a popular winter amusement at court. Women would sit in front of a male driver and try to hit rings or paper maché figures with a lance or sword. Notice the rear view of the sleigh in the mirror.
Just a few of the many coaches on display in one of the halls.
One last selfie before we leave.
and one last look back towards the front of the Palace…
with a photo stop at the swans.
I have life drawing tonight, so we head toward the metro and after checking out my route, Bob heads for home and I head towards my drawing session. I have a bit of time so I sit at the Sheraton Hotel having a cup of tea and doing a bit of sketching.
These were a bit better.
Sketches from the Sheraton Hotel.
My first drawing at the Meetup session. Still having some issues with proportions and the head placement in relation to the body.
I started again after our break and did this portrait which was better. Bettina, our model, really liked it and said that it looked like her. 
No idea what kind of tree has these huge seed pods. Maybe someone can tell me?
We go past a street of shops with rather expensive merchandise, but I really wonder about these colour combinations!
The Alte Museum admission is only 1euro on Sundays! What a bargain. This is one half of the double staircase that leads to the exhibition rooms. 
We walk through the first door and I see these beautiful pastel paintings by Maurice Quentin La Tour, Jean-Étienne, Joseph Vivien and Rosalba Carriera! I need to find some books about these artists and study their paintings. Unfortunately there were lots of reflections in the glass covering these works. You can even see me in two of them!
One of the 46 rooms we visited today had lots of paintings of Venice, completed in the early 1700’s. I marvelled that Venice looked just the same then as it did when we visited a couple years ago. The only difference was the number of small boats in the canals and the clothing of the people in the paintings! There were another 13 rooms that were closed due to the installation of new exhibits.
This room was full of paintings by Rembrandt and Franz Hals…
I lost count of the number of rooms filled with work by Peter Paul Rubens… 
which Included a room with the huge painting of The Great Last Judgement.
and another with The Fall of the Damned, which is also very large. Rubens was a very productive artist!
Here is a close up of some of the damned souls.
Looking through the doorway, you can see the many more rooms we have yet to explore. There are ten large galleries in a row along the length of the museum, with many smaller galleries off of these. 
I liked how I could stand in front of the study for this Rubens painting and then look into the adjoining gallery and see the finished painting. There was a gallery full of studies, which I particularly liked. It is possible to see the way Rubens thought about and worked out his compositions.
This is a painting done by Leonardo da Vinci when he was only 23. I don’t remember seeing it before (in books).
And then there is Hieronymus Bosch with his very strange creatures, in this fragment of the Last Judgement. His works always has lots of details to examine closely.
We saw paintings by so many other artists I am familiar with: Holbein, Raffael, Botticelli, Titian, Van Dyk, and Velázquez, as well as many new artists that I liked as well.
and works by Cézanne, Gauguin, and several more Van Gogh’s.
A large painting by Ferdinand Hodler, TheTired of Life, really drew my attention. I will have to research this artist.
There was a Klimt. I am looking forward to visiting the Klimt Museum when we return to Vienna.
Here are my metro drawing from today…
and yesterdays drawings in the gardens we visited, which I forgot to post.
I like to use a Bic Fine Ballpoint pen for these subway drawings. A pen forces me to commit to what I put down, no erasing makes it challenging.
We saw these Trabants on the way to the DDR museum. While there Bob discovered that the cars’ bodies were made from a material called Duroplast. This was a composite material made from cotton fleece and granulated phenol, which was heated under pressure and formed into a rigid component for use on the exteriors of the cars.
While walking to a nearby park to draw I passed this store dedicated to the Ampelmann, the little character that lets pedestrians know when it is safe to walk.
While I sat drawing the church I watched these young ladies walk out onto the nearby fountain for some photos. I quickly got my camera out because I knew what was going to happen next.
Surprise!! I laughed so hard, as did all their friends!
We had a picnic lunch and then headed to the Stasi Museum. This museum is located on the former grounds of the headquarters of the GDR State Security. We had a two hour tour that talked about how the lives of the East Germans were controlled, manipulated and repressed by the political police system of the former East Germany. Seems like everyone was spying and informing on everyone else, and almost every aspect of people’s lives was controlled by the state. It must have been impossible to trust anyone. Most of the exhibits were like this office room below, not very interesting I thought, but our guide’s talk was very interesting. He told us anecdotes about his life as well as his parents and grandparents lives during this time.
I hung out at the back of our tour group and did some sketching of people in the tour while I listened.
By now it is raining quite heavily so we make our way back to the car, passing this interesting looking candy shop with huge candies. The banana candies are life size!
trudymason.com 