Leroy's Art Blog

Well here I am, opening my blog again.  I’ve just returned from a great vacation that lasted a little longer than a month - left Philadelphia on July 21 and returned on August 25th, this past Monday.  Have a lot of pictures that I expect to organize and post on Flikkr, and they can show where I/we’ve been.  That way I can use this blog to share the impressions of the trip with less emphasis on details such as “this is a picture of the beach near Kotor, and this is a photo of a wonderful fresco by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua.”

So.  The trip was designed around visiting Matthew and the family while they were in Vicenza, and at a time that would overlap with a visit from Diane and Evy.  Evy had been working - doing portraits - on a cruise ship based in Venice.  As things worked out the three of us spent a good bit of time together, starting most days with a cappuccino and brioche at Pegasus, a delightful little café where the owner gave us a big greeting every morning.  We had time to explore the museums of Vicenza together, and it was great fun to discuss the art and painting techniques with Evy.

This visit was really my first opportunity to see what Paola has created with her store, Art’Asia, featuring antique furniture from China.  She has a huge inventory of beautiful things, and spends a great deal of time on the paperwork and details that such an operation requires.  Matt is at one of life’s crossroads, dealing with a “win-win decision” about whether to focus on starting a financial consulting firm, or devote himself to writing.  Alice and I did a little sketching together, but what really caught her interest was working with Diane to learn how to knit.  Didn’t see all that much of Roy - he was at a summer camp in France most of the time, and had two camp buddies with him when he returned.  He wasn’t much interested in us old folks.

One of the highlights in Venice was an exhibition of American art at the Peggy Guggenheim museum. It was a retrospective on the development of American painting, from 1850 to 1950, starting with the group of Hudson River Painters.  It featured a whole raft of major figures - John Singer Sargent, - Winslow Homer, Whistler, Cassat, etc etc.  Since it was just about my birthday, Patricia bought a copy of the catalog as a gift for me.

While back in Vicenza, we had gone caving with Matt’s friends Tony and Louisa, who I had met a few years ago in China.  It turned out that Tony and Louisa were planning to go camping in Croatia, and they invited us to join them.  Patricia and I eagerly accepted, and planned to join them in Stari Grad, near Zadar.  But while on the ferry, Patricia and I studied the map, and found that Stari Grad wasn’t near Zadar, it was a few hundred km to the south.  So after one night in Zadar we got on a bus to get ourselves to Split where we caught yet another ferry to the island of Hvar and the little resort of Starigrad.  Mistake.  Starigrad is NOT the same as Stari Grad, so now we were stranded with no hope of meeting up with the camping crew.  Fortunately Starigrad was a wonderful place with friendly people, a camp ground right at the edge of town, beautiful beaches, and not too many tourists.  This was only the first of a whole series of in-transit revisions of our itinerary.  Fortunately, Patricia is flexible, and has no trouble dealing with the surprises that occur on a vacation like this.

Later we discovered that Stari Grad means “Old Town,” and every place we went had signs pointing to their local stari grad.  Who knew?

The Dalmatian Coast is beautiful.  The water is warm, transparent, and a vivid blue.  Few sand beaches though, so they sell these little swimming shoes that handle the pebble beaches and slippery rocks along the edge of the water.  We soon learned that the best beaches - with trees right to the edge of the water, a beautiful view, and relatively few tourists (none of those lounge chairs and umbrellas lined up like a parade ground) are simply the farthest away and least accessible from the town center and resort hotels.  We’re speaking relatively, here - these good beaches are rarely more than a 10-15 minute walk farther away.

Patricia was interested in experiencing more than just the coast, so we left Starigrad and headed by bus for Mostar, in Bosnia.  It was the bus ride from hell.  I had to argue with the driver for 15 minutes before he would load our luggage (it required an additional fee, but since he didn’t speak English the source of this unexpected problem wasn’t apparent).  Then, it was a very hot day and the air conditioning on the bus only worked when it was going downhill.  The windows were sealed, of course.  Halfway to Mostar the transmission stopped working, too.  We all got off the bus while the driver did incantations for half an hour or so and got it going again, but now the AC wasn’t working at all.  The rest of the trip we drove with the doors open, and were VERY happy to finally arrive in Mostar.

In Mostar people actually give correct directions!  In Italy and Croatia, directions were inevitably 90 degrees off base.  It was a surprise to do the usual procedure of asking directions from at least two people, and finding that in Mostar the directions were in agreement - and accurate.  How wonderful!

People were very friendly in Mostar, and it is indeed a very interesting place to visit.  But it was very heavily damaged in the war some six years ago, and the money for reconstruction isn’t there.  So there are many streets lined with what clearly used to be very impressive and attractive stone buildings that are now vacant shells without roofs, with their first floors blocked up and signs saying DANGER - KEEP OUT.  The people we met in Mostar inevitably said they don’t want to remember or talk about that period, but then they go on to relate how their family is now scattered to other countries, and how people used to get along with each other and how impossible it is to understand how such anger and bitterness and destruction could occur.

Beautiful Dubrovnik, on the other hand, has recovered and is deservedly the tourist attraction it has become again.  After exploring the historic area (Starigrad), we found that we loved relaxing at the most beautiful beach with its view of the sea and the center of Dubrovnik in the distance.  Take the #6 bus to the final stop at Victoria, then walk down the stairs, turn left, walk for 10 minutes to the steps (220!) that take you down to the beach.  And - the restaurant behind the Rector’s Place has fabulous food!

We rented a car in Dubrovnik, entranced by what we’d heard about the beaches and beauty of the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro.  We hadn’t been misled.  They say that Montenegro is where the Alps meet the sea, and it is true.  The mountains are rugged and grand, and do come right to the beautiful emerald blue Adriatic.  We took a break along the way, and stopped at the local beach at a very small town.  Everyone there was a local, and we stood out like the tourists we were.  They had a little pavilion for drinks and sandwiches that had an open outdoor ambiance like some pleasant places in Africa.

Then back to Dubrovnik, from which we took the overnight ferry back to Italy.  Originally, our itinerary called for us to go on to Florence, but by now we were a bit road-weary and decided that we didn’t really want to face the hassle of Florence when it would be hot and crowded with tourists.  So we headed north to Ravenna, intending to relax on the beaches for a few days.  Interesting beach - although the water was warmer and cloudy, lacking the brilliant blues of the Dalmatian Coast, and the water stayed shallow for a long distance from the shore.  However, when our hotel told us that they had no room for us after we had already been there for two nights, we left for Padua.

Padua was a good place to end up.  It has a very pleasant Historic Center (Starigrad?), and a wonderful grouping of art museums in a compact grouping, with the centerpiece being the Giotto frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel.  And it has direct bus connections to the Venice Airport, so we did not need to traipse back to Venice for the last night of our trip.

Flying home was uneventful, except that Patricia and I were unable to fly on the same plane.  She had a direct flight and I didn’t.  I left an hour before her flight, and got to Philadelphia an hour later.

It feels good to be home again.  And Philadelphia is showing off, with bright cool days and a hint of autumn in the air.  Great walking weather, and the parks and historic areas of the City look pretty good, even though here we talk of history in terms of a few centuries instead of several millennia.

So, after this epistle, let me introduce Patricia.  Patricia and I met on the group trip to work on the Habitat for Humanity project in New Orleans earlier this year.  She has an attractive suburban home in Media, and teaches yoga from a studio in her home in addition to several other sites.  She is active, athletic, and has a full-tilt boogy approach to life.  We felt that if we could survive such a loosely planned vacation together lasting for several weeks, we probably deserve each other.  Seems that we do.

I said I would’t put photos in the blog, deferring to Flikkr, but after all this I do have to show off the beautiful lady who has so quickly and unexpectedly become an important part of my life: