Amsterdam: Part 3 of the Mundie travel log
Current mood: blah
Category: Travel and Places

Jim and I took the train from Paris to Amsterdam early on a Friday morning. We got into Amsterdam around noon after a very picturesque trip through misty Belgian fields and along Dutch canals through flat green farm fields.

From Centraal Station, we took the tram to the de Pijp area of the city, just outside the central ring of canals. We had rented an apartment for the week on the Albert Cuyp market street. I found our apartment on Craig's List; it was a 3^rd floor studio apartment. Our landlord lived on the second floor at met us at the door. He was around our age and helped us carry our bags up the stairs. The stairs were the narrowest and steepest stairs I have ever seen that were not actually a ladder. The riser was of standard height but the treads were only about 4 inches wide. I had to plant my foot sideways and hold the railing each time I went up or down.

Looking down the stairs

Jim wanted to get out right away to the medical museum at the University Medical Center, so he left to do that while I unpacked and then went down to the market to see what there was to see.

The Albert Cuyp market was wonderful. Vendors had street stands and shops in the buildings lining the street for 6 to 8 blocks. They had absolutely anything you could want and all at reasonable prices. There were fabric stores, bakeries, cheese and fish mongers, butchers, florists, boots, shoes, clothes, toys, tools, toiletries, bikes, things for the kitchen, and furniture.  The market served a diverse community, so there were shops that catered to Middle-Eastern, Asian, and African folks as well as your run-of-the-mill Dutch. There was a stand run by a Vietnamese woman that sold spring rolls and frites. The combination of spring rolls and mayonnaise-doused fries was a bit startling. After walking around most of the afternoon, I collected some vegetables for dinner and a few other things and went back to the apartment.

Saturday we had beautiful weather and so we walked over to the Rijks Museum a few block from where we were staying. The guide book said that the renovations at the Rijks Museum would be complete by early 2008, but when we arrived we found they were still underway and would not be completed until 2012 (I would bet it'll be more like 2015). There was a portion of the museum open, with a few highlights of the collection and some rotating exhibitions so we decided to check it out. My big complaint is that even though the majority of the museum was closed we were still charged full admission. The first two very small rooms exhibited works from rotating exhibits: Dutch colonial and military objects and paintings.  Then we moved into highlights from the collection like a few Vermeer's, Jan Steen's and "The Night Watch" by Rembrandt, and then suddenly we were in the gift shop. Six small rooms total: that was it. I paid 10 euros to look at 40 paintings.

After the Rijks Museum we walked around got some lunch at a small pub and ended up stumbling upon the Rembrandt House. I think the Rembrandt House was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The house has been restored and made to look as it did during Rembrandt's tenancy. They used some of his sketches to figure out furniture layout and décor. Rembrandt lived, worked, taught and ran a gallery out of his house – which was a bit more expensive than he could actually afford. There were some of his paintings on display and then lots of his students' work. The museum had docents showing how Rembrandt did his etching and made oil paint. It was wonderful to see the kinds of objects he collected for still life and to see the house that so often became a backdrop in many of his paintings.

Next door to his house, the museum continued with three floors of gallery space to house his etchings. It was wonderful; we got to see some etchings up close we had never seen before. There was another American couple there and the woman was an artist who had taken an etching class at some point and was telling her boyfriend about etchings and the etching process in typical loud American fashion. She was giving him lots of bad information and really knew nothing of the process or else could remember nothing of the process and it was killing Jim and me to hear her describe it. If she had just stopped and watched the demonstration in the house she would have been better informed.

We spent the last light of the afternoon sitting along one of the canals sketching.

Sunday morning we started our day at the Hortus Botanicus- a botanical garden started during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in order to cultivate plants that might offer a cure to the plague. The Hortus has a collection of some of the oldest plants in the world, including the world's oldest potted plant: a large 300-year-old cycad palm in their palm house. They have also cultivated plants from all over the world thanks to the Dutch West and East India Companies' efforts during colonial times. Today they strive to protect plants from extinction and conserve seed species. We had a wonderful time exploring each green house. They had a butterfly house that was fantastic. Iridescent blue butterflies as big as my palm would land on my backpack or little pink and orange butterflies would flitter around our heads. The green house was full of tropical plants and water baths for the butterflies, but there were also hooks hanging from the ceiling with orange and banana slices for the butterflies to feed on.

If you go to Amsterdam, the Rembrandt House and the Hortus are a must see.

 From the Hortus we went to the Hermitage Amsterdam. The Hermitage's collection is so enormous that they have recently opened three satellite museums: one in Amsterdam, another in London and one in Las Vegas of all places.  The Hermitage in Amsterdam had only recently opened and much of it – like every other museum in Holland – was still under construction. We saw a small exhibition on art deco objects that had belonged to the last Romanoff czar. The highlight of the museum was the plaque of Museum Rules as laid down by Catharine the Great

1. All ranks shall be left outside the doors, similarly hats, and particularly swords.

2. Orders of precedence and haughtiness, and anything of such like which might result from them, shall be left at the doors

3. Be Merry but neither spoil not break anything, nor indeed gnaw anything.

4. Be seated, stand or walk as it best pleases you regardless of others.

5. Speak with moderation and not too loudly, so that others present have not an earache or headache.

6. Argue without anger or passion.

7. Do not sigh or yawn, so as not to convey a sense of ennui to other. Neither bore nor fatigue others

8. Agree to partake of any innocent entertainment suggested by others.

9. Eat well of good things, but drink with moderation so that each should be able always to find his legs on leaving these doors.

10. All disputes must stay behind closed doors; and what goes in one ear should go out of the other before departing through these doors.

If any shall infringe the above, on the evidence of two witnesses, for any crime each guilty party shall drink a glass of cold water, Ladies not excepted, and read a page from the Telemachida out loud. Who infringes three points on one evening shall be sentenced to learn three lines from the Telemachida by heart. If any shall infringe the tenth point, He shall no longer be permitted entry

I like the idea that you would have to memorize lines from a poem and drink water for drunkenly disobeying the rules.

On Monday, Jim went on his own to Groningen, a small university town 2 hours by train to the north of Amsterdam. Jim spent the day in Universiteitsmuseum depot – a large storage facility where museums from all over Holland send their medical and zoological specimens to be stored and or refurbished. They have collections from decommissioned museums and work from famous European collections coming in to be cared for before it goes out for an exhibition. Jim was very lucky to have access to such an amazing collection. The director of collection had pulled 6 very unusual specimens for Jim to work from after looking at Jim's website and getting a feel for what Jim was interested in. He also took Jim on a tour of the facility.

I had decided to stay in Amsterdam instead of making the journey with Jim. Being extremely pregnant, I was starting to feel worn out by our trip. I spent the morning at the laundromat and then shopping in the market. I also walked around trying not to get lost (I seemed to have absolutely no sense of direction in Amsterdam). I spent the afternoon at the apartment resting drawing and painting.

On Tuesday we both went to Utrecht – a 20-minute train ride to the south. We went to the University Museum to meet one of Jim's contacts, Willem Mulder. Willem showed us around the museum and then Willem and Jim left to meet up with another conservator while I spent the day on my own in Utrecht. Utrecht is smaller than Amsterdam and feels older. There is a large church tower called Dom Tower in the center of town that stands over 369 feet tall. You can climb to the top but I did not want to do so. I walked around the city visiting churches, bookshops and coffee shops. I sat along one of the canals for a while and painted a view of the houses and Dom Tower. A very drunk/high couple stopped to ask me about my painting and were very upset to find out that I had not even bothered to climb their tower. A very old man also stopped to see what I was working on and then pulled out his digital camera and showed me some of his landscape sketches stored on the camera.

Jim and I met up in the evening at the train station and went back to Amsterdam. My one regret about Utrecht was that I was rushing to meet Jim at the train station when I passed a hearse bicycle parked on the street and I did not take a photo of it. It was a black bicycle with a large decorative platform area for the coffin to sit on in front of the handlebars. I am assuming they would only carry lighter weight coffins not those steel and cement kinds.

Wednesday was our last full day in Amsterdam. We had had beautiful warm weather all week but woke to fog and freezing drizzle on our last day. We spent the morning at the Van Gogh museum. Jim really enjoyed the drawings and I loved seeing some of his later landscapes. On the way back to the apartment we stopped at a bakery and got ham and cheese croissants and a pesto, sun-dried tomato and goat cheese brioche. Jim spent the afternoon at Museum Vrolik and I packed up our stuff and napped. Jim came home and we decided to go see the infamous red-light district and try to get some dinner near Dam Square. We rode the tram up to Dam Square and found the red-light district nearby. As is so often the case, it was smaller than I thought it would be. Its reputation made one think it would be blocks upon blocks of whores and sex shops. It was about 3 blocks of bored looking whores and four or five sex shops. The whores stood behind glass doors that opened to little bed rooms. When a whore had business she closed a curtain over the door. They were all wearing fluorescent day-glo bikinis and there where black lights around the door so they all looked rather strange: oddly glowing and totally uninterested in anything. There was one doorway that instead of opening onto a bedroom opened onto a bathroom. There was no whore in there when we walked past, but it got us wondering just exactly what would go on in there and who would pay for that kind of service. After walking around, we were hungry but we could not find any place in the area to eat that we could afford or that wasn't an absolute tourist nightmare. So we went back to our neighborhood and ate at a little bar a block from our apartment. We got toasties, soup and frites and Jim had a few Belgian beers.

We really enjoyed our stay in Amsterdam. It felt like a very livable city. We felt at ease and very comfortable. However, there were two things about Amsterdam we (particularly me) found difficult. Normally, I have a good sense of direction. I easily found my way around London and Paris but Amsterdam I found very confusing. I would go in one direction thinking absolutely that it was the right way only to find I was going the complete opposite direction of where I needed to go. I think some of that is because the city is based on canals that are circular. I would think that I had left a canal behind and was looking for a particular street only to find myself back along that canal. The other difficulty was the method of payment for the transportation system. We found on longer train rides that no one ever came to collect our tickets. We could have ridden for free and no one would have known. On public transportation around Amsterdam, they have a ticket system where you buy strippencaarten – basically a string of tickets like you might get from playing skee ball. More than one person can use one strippencaart, so Jim and I could travel on one. However, you are responsible for stamping the appropriate number of stamps on your strip when you get on a bus, tram or metro. However, it is not one stamp per trip, it is a stamp per zone, but we could never figure out how many zones we were going. We had been warned in the guide book that if your strippencaart was stamped incorrectly or not stamped and the transit police stopped you you could face a fine of 30 euros or more. So we did our best to stamp enough spots on the card and luckily were not stopped by the transit police, but then again no one ever seemed to look at the darn things anyway, so why bother paying at all?  This system was completely baffling and only makes sense to Dutch natives. Holland was supposed to have changed over to a transit card system much like London's Oyster Card, but somehow the Dutch have not embraced such simplicity in favor of the arcane ticket strips that only they understand.

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Paris
Current mood: awake
Category: Travel and Places

Jim and I flew from London to Paris on a Friday evening.  For the Paris portion of our trip we would be staying in a studio apartment with a kitchen and a bonus: a washing machine! The apartment was centrally located in the 2^nd Arrodissement and the Reaumur/Sébastopol Metro stop was right outside the front door. In addition, we found when we arrived that the first floor was a Monoprix grocery store – very convenient. Our studio apartment was on the seventh floor of the building and the directions we received from the landlord explained where the elevators were and the door codes to get into the building. We found the door and got into the front lobby, only to find ourselves in pitch-blackness. We felt around in the dark for the first elevator, which would take us to the second floor where we could get another elevator that would take us to the seventh floor. We found the elevator but it did not seem to be working. Therefore, we hauled our suitcases up to the second floor. The light was on in the second floor and we could see that the place was all ripped up from painters and carpet layers in doing work on the building. The second floor elevator also did not work. Jim sent me ahead to see if I could find the apartment and he would lug up each suitcase one at a time. (The elevators only worked three of the 7 days we were in Paris) I got up to the seventh floor and discovered that the painters had been working up there too, and all the numbers on the doors had been removed. It was a large building and there were about 20 apartments on the seventh floor. I went back and forth up and down the hall trying to figure out which apartment was ours. Jim came up with the last of our bags and we re-read the directions seeing if there were any clues to narrow down the search for our apartment.  Then Jim noticed the tiny apartment number lying on the floor at the base one of the door jams. We got in to the apartment, dropped off our bags and headed back down to the Monoprix to purchase provisions. As we went out we discovered where the light switches were and that they are on timers that turn off after a few minutes. We got some things for dinner and for breakfast for the next day and then climbed back up seven flights of stairs.

 
Pairs Stairs, Oil on panel 2008

 
Our little apartment (I am in the kitchen)

The apartment was very cute and under the eaves of the mansard roof. We had three large skylights with great views of the city. There was an apartment across the street that looked like a wonderful place to live and we spent many evenings as peeping toms watching their dinner parties.  The apartment looked like the movie sets in those musicals from the 50s that take place in Paris - like Gigi or Funny Face. We expected the residents to break out in song and dance at any moment.

Parisian Nocturne No. 2 gouache on paper, 10 x 14 inches, 2008

 On Saturday we decided to explore the city a bit. It was sunny and in the 50s - a beautiful day for February.  We walked a few blocks to Les Halles and then to Notre Dame. At Notre Dame there were pilgrims gathered in the square in front of the church with homemade banners depicting either ailments or prayer needs. They filed, wheeled, limped, or twitched their way into the center of the church while the tourists were allowed in to walk the perimeter of the church, called the ambulatory, or join the queue for the tour.  Jim and I walked in the ambulatory looking at the side chapels, stained glass, and sculptures. There were signs written in various languages reminding visitors to be quiet and respect the space, services, parishioners and pilgrims.

Most tourists were quiet and respectful with the exception of the Chinese tourists who were loud and unable or unwilling to understand the difference between areas for sightseers and pilgrims. I do not know if it is a cultural difference since western church culture is different from Buddhism and Shintoisim. Jim and I reached a point where we could no longer stand the press of people and the click of cameras and went back out into the open. We walked around the church passing an area behind Notre Dame where gargoyles go to die. There is a fenced off area with broken bits of statuary and façade bits that had become moss covered, green and rather slimy. We then sat in the park behind the church in the sun. There was a little bathroom there and I stopped to make use of it. There was a line for the women's toilet and when the bathroom attendant saw my large pregnant belly, she pulled me to the front of the line, cleaned the men's toilet and pushed me into it. I was grateful and parted easily with a few euros for her work.

Jim and I continued our exploring across the river amongst the booksellers. We walked through an open-air market in the Latin Quarter and picked up a few things for dinner, including some chicken thighs that had been cooking on a rotisserie. Then we walked up the hill towards the Pantheon. We tried to go into the Pantheon but we were not interested enough to pay the 8 euro entrance fee. It was getting late and the Pantheon was bathed in a golden light; the city was just beautiful. As we walked back down the hill back towards the river we stopped at a street stand selling sandwiches and crepes. We got something called cassia saucisson (or something like that). It was a 12-inch long baguette opened up, flattened, and filled with two sausages and some kind of creamy cheese, (we later saw the same thing advertised elsewhere in Paris as the "French Hot Dog"). The vendor toasted it so the cheese was all melty and the bread all crunchy. Jim and I tore it in half and walked while we munched on it. It warmed our fingers and our bellies and was the most delicious thing ever. I do not know if it was really great or that it was the perfect snack for that moment as we were two tired, hungry and cold tourists.

On Sunday, Jim and I got up very early and walked back to Notre Dame. We got there just as early mass was starting and we sat in the back of the ambulatory and drew the interior of the church. Jim also walked around and took photos. At that hour, it was quiet and there were not too many tourists.  Jim joked that he had to take me to Paris to get me to church on Sunday. We stayed until 11 when the tourists began to descend en masse and think that we were part of the site-seeing tour.

We walked back to the apartment down a strange little street that was a mix of small bistros, churches, and peepshow dens. We stopped at a street vender making crepes and again had a wonderful street culinary experience with the savory crepe: ham and cheese for Jim and mushroom and cheese for me.

Later we headed to the Louvre, admission to which was free as this was the first Sunday of the month. It was packed with tourists and locals. The Louvre is a big building and it was just teeming with photo-snapping people. One thing we saw at all museums in Europe was that people love taking photos of paintings, or having their photo taken in front of a painting. At the d'Orsay, I saw a guy trying to clear an area in a very crowded gallery so he could clear shot of his slag girlfriend in front of a Van Gogh. I don't understand it because most of the photos people were taking were with their phones and the lighting conditions in the gallery while good for viewing a painting in person are terrible for photographing a painting.

Jim and I stuck to the second floor of the Louvre and looked at northern Renaissance paintings. We returned later in the week and did the first floor, looking at Italian and Spanish paintings and Italian and Greek sculpture. Again, it was the greatest hits of art: the famous nipple tweak painting (Gabrielle d'Estrées and one of her sisters) and Venus de Milo for example.

We walked through one gallery that housed a 24 painting cycle of the reign of Catherine de Medici by Rubens. I can take or leave Rubens, but walking into this gallery where each painting was at least 10 by 12 feet (some even 10 by 20 feet) I suddenly understood why people hold him in such high esteem. Most paintings in the gallery took 4 or 5 years to complete. He used myth and allegory to tell an extremely flattering  story of Catherine's tenure as regent. It was very impressive. Sometimes you have to see the art in person to truly understand what the artist was trying to achieve.

During the rest of the week, Jim and I split up so he could go to his medical museums and I could  see sites or go to art museums. Jim spent much of his time at the Musée Dupuytren where he had received permission to study, draw and photograph the collection. Much of the collection was in terrible shape as many of the pieces had not been properly stored or cared for during several decades of neglectful storage. At one point, he found a dimly lit room with specimen jars stacked and piled willy-nilly amongst bones and bits of museum debris.  The preserving fluid in many of the jars had be come murky or had evaporated leaving strangely pickled or dried out medical specimens.

One morning Jim and I went together intending to see to see the Catacombs, but when we arrived we found the office shut with a sign reading that the Catacombs were under renovation and would be closed until March. Sorely disappointed, we were about to turn back but Jim found that we were near the Jardin des Plantes, which he had visited earlier in the week. He said I had to see it, and it turned out to be quite the consolation prize. It is a large park, with a zoo, museums and beautifully manicured botanical gardens.

We walked in the gardens and I got to use my first public self-washing toilet (which Jim took much delight in watching me trying to figure out how it worked). Then, we went to the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paléontologie et Anatomie Comparée in a large art nouveau building that felt like a massive train station full of bones. The collection of specimens arranged by genus and species was impressive; the atmosphere of the museum felt like you had stepped into a storybook. There were skeletons and fossils of extinct animals as well as animals that had lived at Versailles during the reign of the Sun King.

The so-called "giant Irish elk" of the Late Pleistocene which was really a species of deer and not confined to Ireland. Regardless, it was massive.  

Forget about the Eiffel Tower or the Mona Lisa - if you are in Paris go to the Jardin des Plantes.

During the week, I went to the Musée D'Orsay and submerged myself in the Impressionists. One thing about the Musée D'Orsay, they have one of the worst map guides of any museum I have ever seen. They publish guides in multiple languages (good) and I got the English one, but it seemed that entire pages were missing. I went back to the information desk and was told that no, that was the whole guide. The museum is five floors but the guide only mapped floors zero, two, and three. What about one, four and five?

Jim and I had purchased the Rick Steves' guide to Paris on the recommendation of my mother. Now, Jim and I make endless fun of Rick Steves' PBS show and he seems soooo lame (and we cannot be persuaded that he is actually straight, no matter how many trips he brings his wife on). However, his guidebook to Paris is fabulous. He maps out the whole D'Orsay, tells you which artists are in which rooms, has ALL the floors in his guide and tells you where the real gems and dogs of the collection are. The book is worth every penny.

Jim came with me one night when I returned to the D'Orsay for their discount ticket night. It was nice to see some of the things I missed and return with the Rick Steves guide and get a better feel for the collection; also, to see the collection without as many tourists and school groups. We got to the museum and slip upstairs to look at the work. Jim is not a big fan of that period of art and so I directed him to galleries that would interest him more, like the Manet and Degas galleries. Once he got to those galleries he was frustrated by the tour groups that would not let anyone that was not a part of the tour get close to the work.  After leaving, the D'Orsay Jim declared that, he really hates most of the Impressionist period's work.  Loathes it, in fact. We both were wondering why Monet became so famous when Alfred Sisley and Gustave Caillebotte are so much better.

While in Paris, I also met up with a MySpace friend, Stephane. He is a landscape painter I had met on MySpace and was helpful when planning our trip with giving me a Parisian's point of view on some of our arrangements. One afternoon while Jim was off looking at things in jars I met up with Stephane on the Ile-de-Saint-Louis, the small island in the Seine.  He lives a few doors down from where the sculptor Camille Claudel lived and worked.  Stephane showed me around some of his favorite parts of Paris. We went to the Left Bank to the church of Saint Gervais Communion de Jérusalem. It is one of his favorite places because it is so luminous within. Most of the churches are dark, but St. Gervais is made of a white stone, so the interior is light and bright. I later tried to take Jim there but we came in right as a 3-hour mass was starting and we did not want to be intrusive tourists snapping photos during mass. It was lovely to meet Stephane and see his paintings in person and see a little of Paris through his eyes. He was very generous host and I was so nice to take me around and show me some of his favorite places.

One of the ways I justified my accompanying Jim on his travel grant was to take care of the things like cooking, shopping, and laundry so all Jim had to do was work on his research and art work. One day, Jim said if I went to the Monoprix to see if I could find some beer. The Monoprix has a large and comprehensive liquor section right up front by the cashiers. There were many varieties of wine, even half bottles so you can sample very expensive kinds of wine (which we did). However, I could not find any beer. I eventually found a small beer section in the very back of the store in between the cleaning supplies and dog food. I wondered if this was some sort of commentary on how the French feel about beer.

During the week, I found a large open-air market a few blocks from our apartment and began doing most of our shopping there. There was a patisserie which made about 10 verities of quiche as well as sweets that provided us with some wonderful lunches and dinners.  I could also buy a small roasted chicken for 3 euros. We still went to the Monoprix to get yogurt. In France there are so many varieties of yogurt and many of the same brands as in the US but they have less sugar and chemical additives. We found this almond dessert yogurt from a company called Mamie Nova. If we could find a way to import it to the US, we would.

On one of our last days in Paris, Jim and I went to the Sennelier shop. It is an art supply store on the Right Bank nextdoor to the residence of Jacques Chirac. The shop takes up three floors in a narrow building.  Each floor is packed floor to ceiling in drawers and shelves bursting with some of the world's highest quality art supplies. Jim and I made a few small purchases to bring back with us.

We had a wonderful time in Paris. There is so much we did not get to see that we will have to save for another trip.

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London Trip, January 2008
Current mood: hungry
Category: Travel and Places

Jim received for a grant to do research for his artwork utilizing collections of medical, pathological and anatomical preparations at museums in London, Paris and the Netherlands – and I got to tag along on his trip.

The London leg of our trip was the shortest as Jim had just one museum at which to do research.  He had contacted the curator of the Hunterian Museum associated with the Royal College of Surgeons of England and was given permission to draw from the collection but not to take photographs (bummer).

We found very affordable accommodations at the Tavistock Hotel on Tavistock Square in the Bloomsbury/Covent Garden area of London, and only two blocks  from the British Museum. The hotel is about 130 years old and was remodeled in the art deco style at some point. It was a bit small and shabby but comfortable and clean enough.  The entire hotel staff seemed to be eastern European and created some lovely typos in the packet of hotel information, such as "Please enjoy our seduced garden..." and "... be security couscous."   Each morning we enjoyed the complimentary "full English breakfast" in the dinning room. It was served buffet style with 3 styles of eggs, tomatoes (whole, stewed or fried), bacon, sausages, kippers, porridge, fruit and juices, teas and coffee; as well as buns, toast and muesli. The food was all right and copious, and breakfast was a great time for people watching. Most days there were Italian high school students on a class trip, very elderly couple traveling with their less elderly daughter, a couple of very fat Americans (not us), an even fatter table full of football enthusiats (also to be found in the bar each evening), two punk rock girls from the north, and a few business people.

Sketch of Russell Square near our hotel.

On our first day in London we were able to check in early to our tiny hotel room, had showers and a rest and then walked the two blocks to the British Museum. We saw a very interesting exhibit on death, illness and funeral rituals from around the world. We also went to the prints and drawings collection and saw a wide range of works showing the influence of Asian printmaking in European art. Then we explored the rest of the museum looking at ancient Iranian pottery, Viking, Celtic and Egyptian artifacts.

A sheet of temporary tattoos from Japan as part of the printmaking exhibit.

Then we went back to the hotel to rest a bit more, look at our guidebooks, and plan our itinerary for the rest of the week. Later that evening we returned to the British museum with sketchbooks and did some drawings from the artifacts. You could spend an entire week there and not see all of the collection. Then it was back to the hotel for a dinner in the faux-French hotel wine bar.  

Wednesday morning dawned lovely and sunny. Jim and I walked to the Hunterian Museum, which houses the public collection of the Royal College of Surgeons.  The college also has the ironically named Wellcome Museum, which houses a private collection that can only be viewed by medical professionals, so not at all welcoming, really. Lousy British class system. We suspect that is where they keep the really good stuff like the Elephant Man's bones.

The Hunterian Museum is located on the second floor of the college building on Lincoln's Inn Fields in a beautifully remodeled and award-winning bi-level space. The museum has a large area to house the main part of the collection, then smaller side rooms for themed exhibits and a classroom space that was housing an exhibit on dentistry.  I looked at exhibit on early plastic surgery practices developed during WWI – there were some truly gruesome before, healing and after photos.  Jim spent the morning familiarizing himself with the layout of the collection and trying to figure out what to focus on. He was not allowed to take photos so any work had to be drawn on the spot. I stayed for about an hour and then went on to the National Portrait Gallery with plans that Jim would meet me later for lunch.

The National Portrait Gallery is a smaller museum behind the National Gallery. I think you could do the whole museum in about four hours if you wanted to look closely at each work. I did it in about an hour and a half because I did not want to crowd my brain with mediocre paintings. I focused on WWII-era and Tudor period portraits. I skipped portraits from the "Boring Era" (1790-1850*) and anything with a big wig and a tiny dog (rooms upon rooms of big wigs and tiny dogs can become quite tedious).

*the exception to the Boring Era being Ingres and Goya

Later, Jim and I met up to visit the National Gallery. Once in the museum we split up and I looked at 19th century works while Jim went for the Renaissance. I saw a beautiful Hammershoi and some large Vuillard's that I liked very much and lots of nice Van Gogh's.

I went looking for Jim in the Renaissance area and was floored when I walked   into the first room and was confronted with Holbein's The Ambassadors. I struggled through the mass of French schoolchildren (which all British museums seemed to be filled with) so I could get a closer look. I had forgotten what a fabulous collection the National Gallery had: Holbiens, Vermeers, and The Arnolfini Wedding, just to name a few. Jim and I met up in front of some Botticellis and then Jim went back to the Hunterian before his brain exploded, while I went back to the hotel. I was nearly 8 months pregnant at the time and needed to rest.

Over dinner in our little room we discussed what we had seen and the paintings or monstrous deformities we liked best. I asked Jim what it was like to see the Arnolfini Wedding in person and he said, "What Arnolfini Wedding?!" He had completely missed the room with the Arnolfinis and all the other Van Eycks - one of his favorite painters. The Van Eyck room had been full of French schoolchildren and Jim seeing the hordes of anklebiters skipped that room, not realizing what he was missing. I am not easily daunted by small foreigners and will climb over them to see a good painting. 

After dinner, we went to the London Eye, "the world's tallest observation wheel." It was nice going at night because there were no lines. We thought we would have had an observation pod to ourselves when a gaggle of Japanese girls armed with cameras, camera phones, and big Union Jack floppy souvenir hats came running up and got in with us. The pods are completely closed in glass – well, pods – and can hold about 15 people. The ride, which they insist on calling a "flight", lasts about half an hour. I have a hard time with heights but felt game enough to give it a try. The view was wonderful.  The Houses of Parliament were lit up and so was Big Ben; we could see the dome of St. Paul's, the Battery Bridge, and London Bridge. It was just lovely and worth every penny (which is saying something, because with with the lousy exchange rate it cost us $60 to go up – ouch).

After the Eye we walked across to the Houses of Parliament where Big Ben was ringing 8 o'clock as we walked past. We continued walking to St. James Park. We decided to cut through the park and go see Buckingham Palace. The park was pitch black. The only lights in the park were to illuminate some of the trees, and while the trees were beautiful it did make one a bit nervous as you could barely see the path, let alone the joggers and dog walkers. At home all the parks are well lit so it did not occur to us that St. James would be so dark. We walked over a footbridge over the pond in the middle of the park. From the footbridge, you could see the Eye in ablaze of white light over the buildings and reflected in the pond. We continued on, emerging from the dark onto the well lit circle in front of Buckingham Palace. We walked around to the Canada Gate and past the bobbies carrying automatic rifles (it was too late for the Palace Guard) and up to the Queen Victoria Monument. I think Jim put it best in his travel journal, "We walked to up to the Queen Victoria Monument and had a brief sit upon the icy marble. Having rested and remembered good Queen Vic (whom judging by the statues, employed stout men to subdue lions with sledgehammers) we walked back the Canada Gate and across Green Park to hop on its eponymous tube stop".

 

Thursday, our last full day in London: It was warm but rainy, and Jim and I got out early after breakfast. I wanted Jim to see some of the Tudor portraits at the Portrait Gallery and then we went back to the National Gallery so he could see the paintings he missed the day before. We got to the museum before it opened and while we were waiting for the gates to be unlocked school groups began to queue up behind us. Jim got to see the art and then he went back to the Hunterian. I stayed at the museum for a while and then walked over to St. Martin -in-the-Fields and poked around in there for a bit.  Later I got caught in a
downpour as I went to the Hunterian to see if Jim wanted to get some lunch. He wanted to keep working, so I went across the park to the Sir John Soane house. It is a free museum in the residence of John Soane, an artist, architect and collector of antiquities who lived during the aforementioned Boring Era. The house was an overwhelming maze of his collections – most of which were pilfered from Egyptian tombs, Greek monuments and temples, Spanish monasteries and places in the Orient. All of this stuff was collected back when you could just pick of bits of the Parthenon off the ground and take home with you because you were English, by God. Soane also had a collection of paintings but they were mostly crap. I only went in because it was free and it was raining, but the house was wonderful and such an unexpected treat. It would have been wonderful if Jim could have visited it, too, but he could have spent hours in there and he really needed to focus on the Hunterian. We will have to save the Soane House for another trip.

That evening, Jim and I went back one last time to the British Museum to spend time with the Greek sculpture and Parthenon pieces. Jim took a lot of photos while I did sketches of the Parthenon pieces.

Currently listening : The Buddy Holly Story By Buddy Holly Release date: 2001-10-22

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Painting Americas crumbling infrastructure.
Category: Art and Photography

Over the last two weekends I have been painting at sundown on 25^th, Washington and Graysferry Avenue in the Graysferry neighborhood in Philadelphia. Graysferry is a residential and industrial area along the Schuylkill River and is a bit run down. While I painted Jim walked around and took photos of decrepit warehouses, power substations, and Americas crumbling infrastructure.

I chose my subject, the CSX elevated freight line structure that covers about 15 blocks of 25^th Street and then crosses Grayferry Ave. I was attracted to the late afternoon light pouring under the structure and weaving between the pillars.

I was working in oil on a gray toned luan panel, 12x16 inches.

 Finished result: CP Gray (CSX Line over 25^th Street)

An employee of CSX came by to see what I was doing. He said that there is a switch up there was called a CP switch and it is CP Gray because the bridge crosses Graysferry Avenue and I thought- great title. 

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Landscape Painting Part II
Current mood: pleased
Category: Art and Photography

The first three paintings are not summer paintings. I did them last January on site in Philadelphia.

I returned to the paint the South Street Bridge on an unseasonably warm January day. It was as bright and sunny as it had been when I had painted there in the summer but the colors were so different.
Instead of rich warm and vibrant colors I had to mix nearly every shade of gray possible.

South Street Bridge (Winter), oil on paper, 11 x 15 inches

These two, I painted along West River Drive along a frozen Schuylkill River. It was one of those very cold winter days where a crust of ice forms on top of the snow.
I took frequent breaks to warm up my fingers and sip tea from my thermos.

Winter on the Schuylkill River, oil on museum board, 8 x 7 inches

Schuylkill River (Winter), oil on Paper,16 x 18 inches

This summer I took a class with Laura Borneman at
Bartram's Garden.

Bartram's Garden: meadow, oil on museum board, 11 x 8.5 inches

These are a little hard to read because the paint was really thick and shinny.

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Bartram's Garden: Bald Cyprus,Oil on museum board, 8.5 x 11 inches

Bartram'sGarden: River Path, oil on canvas, 12 x 14 inches

Bartram's Garden Path, oil on museum board, 30 x20 inches

There are several old buildings made of a gray blue stone that John Bartram quarried from the Schuylkill river around where the Grays Ferry bridge is now. In front of the main house there is his garden full of heirloom plants that he collected from his travels from the Carolinas to the Mississippi river.

John Bartram's Garden, oil on museum board, 30 x20 inches

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Landscape painting: Summer 2007
Current mood: refreshed
Category: Art and Photography

I have been doing quite a bit of landscape painting in this summer as well as a couple of visits to Eastern State Penitentiary.

It is always my goal to grow as an artist and this summer my painting seems to be changing in how I choose my compositions and how I apply the paint. I am happy with the way my painting process seems to be evolving and curious to see how it will develop.

This was initially a demonstration painting for a class I was teaching at Eastern State Penitentiary in June. I went in later and reworked the painting and played up some of the more  abstract forms.

10 x 8 inches oil on museum board

20 x 18 inches, charcoal and conté on paper (done in cellblock 2 at Eastern State Penitentiary)

One morning in June, I set up and painted from the median on Broad Street looking north at  Philadelphia's City Hall.

10 x 8 inches, oil on museum board

On another morning, I went out painting at dawn and was drawn to the A and A Food warehouse. This  rundown building at one time was part of a series of beautiful warehouses in south Philadelphia most likely designed by Frank Furness and serviced by freight lines and passenger lines at the time of the civil war. There are still some tracks leading up to the warehouse and it has a very Victorian train depot quality about it.

12 x 16 inches oil on panel

A weekend in July, Jim and I went to Washington DC for the first anniversary party of Palace of Wonders. While we were in DC, Jim went to the National Museum of Health and Medicine to do some photography and I went landscape painting along the Potomac River near the FDR Memorial.

14 x 12 inches, oil on museum board

Every day on my bike ride home from work I pass the Mother Bethel AME Church, a historic Philadelphia landmark. It is currently being renovated and restored and I was intrigued by the draping over the scaffolding.

11 x 8 inches, oil on museum board

I also have been going up to Laurel Hill Cemetery to paint. The cemetery sits on a bluff over looking the Schuylkill River and there are beautiful views of the river and city.

11 x 14 inches, oil on museum board

16 x 20 inches, oil on museum board

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Reading not Painting
Current mood: wishing I had more time to make art AND read
Category: wishing I had more time to make art AND read Art and Photography

I have been reading lately instead of making art. I make art in my free time, I read in my free time, and all I have been doing is reading a lot of good books and some not so good books.

I just read, Sound Bites: Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand by Alex Kapranos, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne, Ronin by Frank Miller

I am currently reading World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks,  Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
by Christopher Moore, and Fairfield Porter: A Life in Art  by Justin Spring.

World War Z is not a great book but it is fun read. However, within fiction there is always some truth and I thought this quote from the book was a good one:

"In totalitarian regimes – communism, fascism, religious fundamentalism – popular support is a given. You can start wars, you can prolong them, you can put anyone in uniform for any length of time without ever having to worry about the slightest political backlash. In a democracy the polar opposite is true. Public support must be husbanded as a finite national resource. It must be spent wisely, sparingly, and with greatest return on your investment"

Currently listening : Ruth Brown - Miss Rhythm (Greatest Hits and More) By Ruth Brown Release date: 01 January, 1989

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A tourist in my own city (part 2)
Current mood: good
Category: Travel and Places

We spent much of Saturday preparing for Matt's show, setting up the sound system and lights, and unpacking boxes of broken glass for his glass walk. As Jim and I were arranging chairs and such Matt practiced his sword swallow. He started with a collapsed wire coat hanger. As he was wearing the mic and the Sanctuary was nearly silent, we could hear the clicking sounds of the three sphincters in his esophagus as he stretched them out in preparation for the night's performance. Matt had been nursing a sore throat for the last several days, so when he followed up the hanger with his sword, it didn't go down as easily.

Once we were set up we went over to Nam Phuong for an early dinner. Eating at 4:30 in the afternoon makes me feel old but we wanted to get some food before the performance and go back over to Fleisher and finish getting set up.

There are rumors that sword swallowers cannot eat before a swallowing a sword – anywhere from a week to 8 hours before a performance. If that were the case, some sword swallowers would have died of starvation.

We all ate our fill at Nam Phuong and introduced Matt to their shredded pork rolls. I am not sure what is in them or which part of the pig is used (and no, I don't want to know) but they are mighty tasty. The last time I had ordered the shredded pork rolls the waiter had told me that I would not like them because I was American and he started to tell me what was in them that I would not like. I had had them before and thought they were delicious, so I did not want the waiter to ruin it for me be telling me what they were made of. I persisted and got my rolls, and ever after Nam Phuong tends to put extra bits of exotic gristly meat my orders.

After dinner we headed back to Fleisher in the bitter January cold. Matt made up his set list, while Jim and I set out the table of Matt The Knife swag. We opened the doors for the crowd at 7:30. The performance space was in the Sanctuary at Fleisher, which is – as its name implies – an old church. People began filing in and choosing their seats, but they were being so quiet. I think Matt is used to a noisier crowd and solemnity of a church space was subduing the crowd.



Matt moved around the room meeting people and asking some people if they would participate in the mentalism portion of the show. He asked them to concentrate on a book or a place to which they wanted to travel and then write it down on a slip of paper which they were to hold onto and not let him see it. The reason for this would become apparent later in the show.

Even though a Matt The Knife show is not a kiddie magic show there were several kids in the audience ranging in age from 7 to 13 years old. They plunked themselves right down in front. There is a lot of humor in Matt's show that would be totally lost on kids. But as Matt says, "If your kids get the jokes you have a bigger problem than the jokes."

The show started with his sword swallowing act. He then moved on to a blockhead routine in which he hammered a carpenter's awl into his sinus cavity with the microphone and had a member of the audience pull it back out. He did an animal trap routine with help from a teen-age boy from the audience. The two of them had a great interaction on stage and the kid was very funny. Matt demonstrated the spring-loaded sharpness of the animal trap by severing a hapless carrot. The three young kids sitting in front of me gleefully fought over a piece of the carrot that flew into the audience while Matt munched on the other half that had survived the trap. He offered the carrot to his assistant who also took a bite. Then Matt shoved his own hand into the trap and survived the fate that the carrot had not.

Then began the mentalism portion of the show. Matt called on audience members who had been focusing on a book, band, movie, or travel destination. The audience member would stand up and mentally focus on the thing they had written down while Matt would begin describing what they were thinking about. The audience member who had been thinking of a favorite band stood up and Matt named Gwar right off. The audience member was visibly shocked. Another of the participants, who happens to be a friend of mine, was concentrating on a travel destination. I was sure she was thinking of Mexico, but when Matt guessed or read her mind correctly, I was surprised to find out that she wanted to go to Brittany. I had no idea and she is my friend. He closed the mentalism portion with an audience member who had drawn a picture. Matt stood up on stage and drew the same picture - an apple tree. I have seen him do the mentalism show before and I am always impressed. I do not know how he does it and I do not really want to know how he does it. I just enjoy the 'magic' of it.

Matt then used his mental powers to bend steel spikes. The three kids in front of me just ooo-ed and aww-ed. Matt had a member of the audience help him into a straightjacket and then he wriggled his way out of that. At one point, Jim and I got a little tense as Matt in his struggle to get out of the jacket thrust his shoulder heavily against a marble pillar that was a bit wobbly. Luckily, it did not fall over. Finding a more secure battering ram he achieved the desired result, and whooped a big roar he jumped out of the last ties of the straightjacket.

For his next feat, Matt invited a very pretty young lady up from the audience and invited her to hop up onto his back while he walked barefoot across broken glass. The added weight made the glass walk truly dangerous, and one could clearly hear the sound of pieces of glass breaking under his feet.

For his final act, Matt ate a lightbulb. The audience was completely silent as Matt walked among them munching the glass into a fine powder. When the seven year old kid in the front row wanted to know why he didn't eat some of the glass he had just walked on, Matt replied that that would be disgusting. The kid had to agree.

After the show, the seven-year-old heckler came up to Matt in the lobby, and with arms crossed across his chest all serious-like asked whether he might ask Matt a couple of questions. Question #1: "Is your middle name really 'The'. ("No, it's Joseph."). Question #2: is your last name really "Knife"? ("No…")

A tween girl and her mom came up and asked Matt to read her mind. Matt had her write down the name of someone she knew on one of his business cards. Then without looking at the card he ripped it up into tiny pieces and put it back in her hand. He said that it was her best friend and then told the kid her friend's name and nickname. The girl and her mother were totally astounded. It was fun to watch Matt up close and try to figure out what he was doing.

On Sunday, Matt wanted to see some historical sites and visit the shrine of America's first official saint, John Neumann. We went to St. Peter's on 5th and Girard and looked at the glass casket in which St. John Neumann is interred. He has a wax mask over is face and is dressed in his vestments. He was a tiny man only 4 and half feet tall (or long, I guess I should say because he is lying down in the casket). We also visited the adjacent museum where we saw the original wood casket in which he was buried and artifacts from his life. The best part of the museum was a soap sculpture portrait bust carved by a second grader from the adjoining school with the label at read "the most original soap sculpture". After that rousing display, we went into the gift shop (what church has a gift shop?). Matt wanted to get a relic of St. John Neumann, because Jim had told him they were available there, having once purchased one for a friend - but unfortunately they were out of first class relics (I guess they had run out of the leg bone they had been chipping the relics from). However, we were informed that for a donation of $15 we could get a second-class relic of a splinter from the saint's coffin encased in Lucite and with a certificate of authenticity from the Vatican. When the woman helping us saw the look of disappointment on Matt's face when he found out there were no more first class relics to be had she tried to comfort him reminding him by reminding him that he has his faith and that is really enough. Okay, fair enough – but Jim, Matt and I are not religious and we were there because the idea of owning a relic is nifty. In a pinch, second class will have to do.


We drove back into Old City and did a tour of Independence Hall, saw the Liberty Bell (Matt did not lick it) and then we threw pennies on Ben Franklin's grave, which is some sort of wacky tradition.

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A tourist in my own city (part 1)
Category: Travel and Places

This past weekend Matt The Knife, an entertainer of the highest order: magician, sideshow performer, escape artist, lecturer, consultant, and a holder of eleven Guinness World Records™ came for a visit and to perform at The Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial.

"Matt The Knife is a magician — but he's so much more than that. His intense variety performance is a true blend of sideshow skills, escapes, magic, and mentalism. Matt's shows include edge-of-your-seat sword swallowing, spine-tingling mind reading, death-defying escapes, intense strong man feats, and many other amazing things that one would have thought were totally impossible! Matt The Knife's performances are funny, awe-inspiring, unique and completely wild!"

(I took this from the press release and every word of it is true.)

Currently listening : Streetcore By Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros Release date: 21 October, 2003

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Gallery Update
Current mood: giddy

In the past week both galleries mentioned in the previous blog have contacted me to let me know that work has sold.  It feels great.

They also want more work.

I better go paint.

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