Wednesday, January 23, 2013

to europe and back

Kind Dog and I have just returned from a wonderful odyssey to the UK and Italy.  We went over to spend Christmas with Kind Dog's lovely mother and to have our third wedding, in the form of a church blessing in an ancient stone church (photos to follow in a separate post)

We spent a week in London absolutely flat out seeing wondrous things from the Tate's Pre-Raphaelite exhibition to Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry in Twelfth Night to renewing last year's acquaintance with the British Museum and the V&A and a boat trip down the Thames to Greenwich.

 We stumbled upon the Wallace Collection which was one splendid room after another filled with precious, beautiful things.

We also went to a candlelit performance of the Messiah at St Martin in the Field's, which was one of the highlights of the trip.  I loved the simplicity of this statue in the porch 

There are some incredible embroideries in the V&A
 I liked these socks very much
 And we found the Tristan quilt - a mediaeval treasure which deserves its own blog post.
 Then a more relaxing week on the Isle of Wight with the Kind Dog clan and our church blessing.


 Then back to London for New Year
 - where we fell foul of a ghastly flu virus that kept us doleful company for the rest of the holiday. While we were very glad it wasn't the dreaded norovirus, being ill meant we didn't enjoy Paris and the train trip to Venice as much as we had hoped.

We did manage a couple of hours in the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa, some wonderful Veroneses and the amazing Nike.

Then it was over the Alps in the Bernina Express,


 coughing and feverish but still relatively cheerful - here we are looking wan in the train to Milan
 And then Venice - a wonderful, disconcerting place: looking as though it's about to pitch into the lagoon, and full of treasures.

 

2 comments:

Kathryn said...

Ah, there you are! I have been wondering where you have been, and hoping it was somewhere special having wonderful adventures - and so indeed you have! Welcome back.

librarygirl said...

Lovely photos F! We are going to Italy in about 8 weeks - loved especially your Venice pics x