I like taking phone photos from a bus or train when travelling. I thought I’d share a few here.

Driving into Lisbon on our tour bus we noticed a very large exhibition happening in a park. Turns out that park is five minutes from our hotel and the exhibition is a book fair. There were tents and stalls set up everywhere surrounded by beautiful Jacaranda trees in full bloom. After our morning city tour and a tour through the monastery and eating the best cream tarts in the world three of us headed out to look at what it is all about. I might add it is 36 degrees C outside and feels hotter.

This book fair has been held for 89 consecutive years in Lisbon without fail. Thank goodness that most books are in Portuguese so I was not tempted to buy any. Most stalls featired new books but we did see a couple of places selling antiquarian books. Many educational resources also for school children. We spent close to an hour looking at everything but without much shade and too much cement ground cover the intense mid afternoon heat won out and we headed back to the hotel about 15 to 20 minutes away. It was certainly a fun experience. I enjoyed seeing the different covers on familiar titles. Here are the photos. The fair goes from mid May to mid June. One month of books!

As  expected this trip has been full on and not much time to post anything. Also very tired at end of today. We are at Coimbra, Portugal on the way to Lisbon. You will need to google it if inerested. Today we had free time from 12 :30 through the evening. I actually got to sleep 2 hours this afternoon so feel good enough to pop up a post.

We did a city tour this morning. There is an old (1700s) university here and we got to visitt the library. So fascinating. A couple of floors of very old books but no photos allowed on upper floor but could take some on the lower floor.

They have a first edition Shakespeare copy of Hamlet. The walls are 2 meters thick and to get rid of silverfish eating these old tomes they have a couple of openings in the wall to let in tiny bats that live here. I saw them flying around my hotel window last night. The bats fly into the library and eat the silverfish. All the old wooden tables are covered up nightly and a cleaner comes in each morning to clean up bat droppings. The library is still used by researchers and PhD students.

After that we walked around the touristy area of the city, heading down hill towards the river and back to our hotel. Here are a set of miscellaneous photos.

 

 

 

Sunday 19th May

This morning I met Glynnis, ftom Perth, who was at breakfast and participating in our small tour. Our meeting drinks are tonight when we meet the others and the guide.

I woke at 4:00 am as young people poured out of clubs, drunk,  singing sporting songs as loud as they could, fully lubed. Sporting songs sound the same in any language.

I fell asleep very early last night and felt rested. Once it got light, around 5:45 I walked around the block and took photos. Several people with their well oiled mates stopped and posed for me. It was very funny.

After breakfast my Florida friend and my new friend, Glynnis and I set out to explore Las Ramblas street. A popular tourist destination. We walked a long ways down the street until we hit water. Overall I walked 10 kms today. I will leave you with some of the photos.

 

Those who live in Australia will understand the no man’s land that is “travelling to Europe”. One hour from Hobart to Melbourne, 14 hours to Abu Dhabi, a couple more airport hours then seven hours to Barcelona. It does seem never ending but I did watch three movies, read some of The Joy Luck Club and dozed a bit.

My bags stayed right with me and Penguin jumped out completely unscathed.

I met up with my Florida friend who arrived a couple of hours after I did and waited in my room while the hotel got her room ready.

We were a bit hungry so walked across the street and found a nice bakery with beautiful pastries, sandwiches and pizza. They also had nice coffee. It feels like it should be midnight but is only around noon.

Next door to the bakery is a beautiful book store. We noticed it immediately. No flies onnus. We headed straight into it. Too tired and flaky to notice the name of it but we are in this hotel until Wednesday so might remember to look at it. Our tour group of no more than 20 people begins Sunday night with a welcome drink. I’m having fun teasing my American friend who joined us from Florida who will be amongst all the Australians.

I will put photos at the end of my posts as I’m using my tablet and it doesn’t seem possible to configure images. You might have giant images with little writing. Here are a couple of photos.

Don’t believe all those glossy, glorious photos you see of people travelling on Instagram. The reality is not that fresh. Until later…

I have a friend who I spend time with once a week taking time out to draw.  Neither of us have a great deal of drawing experience and although I feel I draw on the level of a five or six year old I really have fun doing it. So if people think it’s ridiculous, who gives a flying ……fox?

Yesterday my friend chose the venue of the large Hobart cemetery in Cornelian Bay. We arrived with our coloured pencils and pens and went to an old section of the cemetery.  We knew we would perch on the edge of a grave so we chose older ones as we didn’t think anyone would arrive to visit.  There must be several hundred thousand graves in this place.

Nobody was around. We did notice a service going on in the chapel but that was on the other side of this very huge landmass of graves.  There are bushrangers buried in this cemetery from the 1800’s. As we drove around we looked at the various areas and enjoyed the peace and quiet of the place.

We spent quite a bit of time looking at the beautiful pots that were cemented in place on many graves. The ceramics and designs are quite old and beautiful.  I should have photographed those but I wasn’t thinking at the time I would write a post about this.

My friend chose a place to sit down and then I walked a bit away from her and chose my own spot. If we sit too close to each other we talk and don’t get any drawing done.

We never would have made it in the same school classes as young people.

I found a grave marked George xxxxx, (I won’t reveal last names) who died in 1943. He was alone with no other family stones around so I perched on the edge of his grave and told George I was going to spend some time with him.

I recently found this book of drawing faces at Amazon when I was browsing and thought it would be fun to have a go at some of these.  Once it arrived I fell in love with the book. It is full of whimsical and unusual faces, bright colours and heaps of directions for drawing faces.  I haven’t had time to really read it so while sitting there with George, I began to read the first chapter.

I then proceeded to sketch out my first face.  The only sound was the birds and the pencils scratching on paper. I could raise my head and look out over the river and the autumn colours.

Then a small car drove by. It turned around and drove by again. I said to George, “Hey, what do you think they think if they see me sitting here with you drawing.” Of course he didn’t reply but I thought he must enjoy having a bit of company.

The car turned around once more and stopped. Right in the line of sight of a monument my friend was sketching. The car blocked her view. I looked back at her and she had put her pastels down and was waiting.

Was someone going to jump out and tell us to get the hell out of the cemetery or wonder what we were doing?  Two women in their 60’s can’t be that threatening armed only with coloured pencils and chalk.

Then an elderly man got out and walked towards me. Just when I was getting ready to pack up and move away he stopped at the grave next to me.  He started pulling weeds. He straightened the flowers in a jar. He paused to reflect.  I put my head down and kept sketching pretending I didn’t see him.

He looked over and smiled.  I stood up and handed him a silk rose I had picked up that was unattended on a walking path. I was going to leave it for George but instead gave it to him.  He thanked me, put it in the jar and said, “Oh, that looks better.”

He then walked back to the car but said to me before he left, “Bye now, I have others still to visit” and he got in the car and the woman driving put the car in gear and they left.

We didn’t see anyone else for the rest of the afternoon. My friend and I both looked at each other and laughed. All we could think of was, “for heaven’s sakes, there are a million graves and he visits the one next to us. What are the chances?” and burst out laughing.

Next time I’ll get the Penguin off the page and take him along. I think he might like that kind of humour.

 

On the 30th of March two of my friends and I decided to have a ‘local’ adventure and drive down to the small town of Franklin in the Huon Valley to do an afternoon tour on a small ship that goes up and down the river.

We were on the water for about 2.5 hours and enjoyed a brilliant day out of sunshine, mild breezes and the best food. All of the food and wine is produced in the local Huon Valley. We had locally smoked pork (the meat eaters amongst us), salad, pickled onion and radish type treats as well as the best local cheese and home baked bread one could ask for.  The food was served to each of us in, what I can only describe as a small horse trough shaped container.  It was very clever. Everything was packaged up and was a great deal of fun to explore. We found too many goodies to eat to remember. We were busy gnawing our way through it all.

Tasmanian wines were sampled as well but as I was driving so my sampling ability was rather limited.  The guy up front told us a bit about the boat.

I think the photos will speak for themselves as to how much fun we had.  It was a wonderful Saturday Wander.

 

 

Until Next Time…..