Rubystarrs in Paris episode 3

Started late today after a really good nights sleep in a really comfy bed with no alarm or time constraints... so we wake up totally refreshed to a to a gloriously sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. We ate our continental breakfast and then we head off walking back down towards the river, passing through the Place de Edouard VII - a beautiful but little visited square...

across the various squares boulavards..rues... we are well lost by now 🤣 we chance upon a square commemorating Napoleon - thereno lack of monuments, obelisks or squares..

until eventually we finally hit the unmissable Jardin des Tuileries where we sat and ate our 2nd brekie.. pain de raisons and then walked across the river to the Museum D'Orsay.

This is an amazing space.

It was originally built as a train station and has been restored keeping the original art nouveau decor to showcase an amazing collection of Modern Art mainly impressionists... loads.. massive collection...

i.e just when you thought you'd seen all the Monet there was another one, and then another one, and yet more on the ground floor... but not just Monet... and then theres Guaguin, Van Gogh, Sisley, Manet Lautréc... there are so many amazing examples of impressionism, neo impressionism, post impressionism, I was very impressed - I bought a print-

I love this picture. I love the size of it and the squareness of it, and the kind of torn bits on the side making it look like it was just an afterthought, a quick painting. It's so much better in real life than any print I've ever seen. I thought it would look so nice in our house, and be a good momento of our visit Paris.

I am fascinated with the colours that the impressionist style make more than the actual finished painted scene so much so I have made a guess the picture compilation... btw I dont have the answers....

The whole museum is just stunning.. so much variation in art works.. a fantastic collection of Art Noveau, symbolism, grand machism, sculpture...... blah and the rest..

and soooo many just fabulous ornate pictures of every subject possible. But after about three hours we got serious Museum Leg. The building is amazing, it's beautiful, there are some fantastic collections in there and it's well worth the visit. But this was our 3rd galkery in 3 days ... we were flagging🤣

If I was to publish every photograph that I took you wouldn't need to visit because you've seen most of it🤣🤣 or at least the highlights. We had to leave...

After we left the museum we wandered through the streets of Montparnasse which was mostly a residential area with some very up market appartments. We got stung for an incredibly expensive beer but we were desperate so we needed it.. and then we went to a restaurant that some friends had recommended it called Boullion Chartier.

It has the most amazing stunning Art Nouveau space, beautiful tiles, beautiful ceiling some fantastic carved word and mirrors to be honest the food was kind of average, Its a bit cafeterarie culture.. cheap, fast but it was very edible. We'd read reviews where the waiters were very unfriendly and we worn't really bothered about that because, well....that's kind of Paris but actually we had a very friendly waiter... very smiley and very helpful so we had a nice meal and a bottle of wine which we drunk too quick🤣🤣🤣 so then we went home via the Metro

feeling quite tipsy ( defo worse for wear) but then why not? we're on holiday....

Its quite exhausting this holiday lark.... 3 galleries in 3 days, plus the tower and the rest... we've walked about 30 miles.. the traffic and noise is relentless - but its a beautiful city and we are making the most of our time here.

I leave you with this very fabulous painting - but none of the photos do justice to the real exhibits.

Scotland part 2

The second half of the week continued in much the same vein. We had one rainy afternoon which was actually quite nice to be holed up in the house with the rain lashing the windows. It probably wasn't quite so nice for the two visitors that came on their bikes but they're tough cookies - and its only water- but I did feel sorry for them having to cycle six miles back down the track in the wind and rain, but given Scotland, it wasn't as bad as it could be. The big quest for the 2nd half of the week was to find some deer antiers! The chap that owned the house dropped in to visit - he was a very friendly fella and was chatting about how this was the time of year when all the Stags lost their antlers (he collected them and sold them) so after that we were on the serious lookout. It's always been Fred's mission to find some dropped antlers.... The Monro baggers continued with the mission to bag the remaining three Monros... there is discussion as whet...

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town. Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now. The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art.... Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...

verdant lushness

Its a never ending island hop... today we hopped of the boat at Kingstown, on the island St. Vincents and Grenadine. Once through the usual port duty free - cheap booze and diamonds to go milarkey we were straight into the town... crazy noisy smelly chaos... refreshingly no tat shops for tourists, just local markets and street traders all vying for local sales. Music blasting from everywhere, cars (very battered and often very pimped) all over the roads - parked in the middle of the street, loading, unloading, chatting seemingly oblivious to the total traffic jam caused behind them... We walked through this mayhem - the temperatures were rising probably about 30 degrees - tourists evident by trying to walk on the shady side of the street - even when we turned off the main drag and there were less people it was still like carnival time with music blasting everywhere. Its very atmospheric and mostly promotes a good vibe although I have heard '3 little birds' everywhich way a...

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