Summer fun a-plenty. Click HERE for photos from 2023 (Sicily, Paris), .HERE for photos from 2022 (Amsterdam and Abruzzo), HERE for photos from 2021 (Scotland, Paris, Kent), HERE for photos from summer 2020 (Calabria and National Trusts), HERE for 2019 (London and Abruzzo), HERE for 2018 (Budapest, Le Marche, and Northern Ireland), HERE for 2017 (Paris and London), HERE for 2016 (festival and chaps), HERE for 2015 (reunion and wedding), and HERE for 2014 (meeting the stars).
Our wisteria's annual bloom and a visit to a garden fair.
After visiting New York together in February, my friends from school came over for a cocktail party and barbecue.
The Watercress Festival is always full of treats.
Some of these photos are pretty much identical from last year, but this time Tiny Cow is involved.
I held a bake sale for our neighbourhood's Over the Garden Fence day. The following day was my birthday, for which Nick showered me with gifts.
A round-up of photos thus far and some publicity pictures of my Over the Garden Fence baked goods.
As a birthday treat, we decided to re-visit South Wales. Although we didn't remember when booking, we were in the same area in 2007 and in Cardiff in 2011, when I did my diving course. This time, we visited Newton House, thought to be one of the most haunted houses in Britain. The majestic White Park cattle have been associated with Dinefwr since the 9th century and are probably the most ancient breed of cattle native to the British Isles.
We stayed in a lovely AirBnB, with views over the valley and bay, and trees ful of woodpeckers and nuthatches. We started our first full day at the covered market in Camarthen, where we bought award-winning cheese.
Next stop was Tenby, of which we had no recollection of our previoius trip. We clearly saw new things this time, including the 13th century Five Arches.
There is a photo of the Medieval Merchant's House on our 2007 page. Good thing we keep records.
We visited the small museum, with its collection of bosun's whistles, pottery from Puglia, Punch and Judy, and Manic Street Preacher fashion.
I'm sure that's the cannon I sat on in 2007. After leaving Tenby, we drove to Dylan Thomas's hometown of Laugharne, where his boat house can be found. We listened to Under Milk Wood along the way.
It was my birthday that day (29 May), and we found ourselves on the same walk that inspired Dylan Thomas's Poem on His Birthday., excerpted here.
The Laugharne rugby team wasn't present, but we enjoyed a pint in their local pub after seeing the castle, boat house, and Sea View residence of the local poet.
Pembrey Beach is surely one of the most vast and empty stretches of sand in the country. We had our birthday meal on the deck, including a cheese board and German chocolate cake.
As it was raining the next day, we decided to head to Cardiff to get some culture at their wonderful National Museum. Their Art of the Selfie exhibition featured Van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist (1887), on loan from the Musée D'Orsay, which we visited in 2019.
Some of our favourite works, including Renoir, Sisley's painting of the Gower Peninsula, Van Gogh's Rain, Auvers, Bridget Riley's Kashan, and Monet's impression of Rouen cathedral, which we visited in 2007.
Notable works above include terracotta and gold angels, Thomas Jones's Buildings in Naples (1782), B
We marvelled at the detail of Van Dyke's Portrait of a Man and the beautify of Botticelli's Madonnas, including the 400-year-old Lost Masterpiece that was featured in a 2019 BBC documentary. Other photos are from Julie and Liam's 25th wedding anniversary.
We had fun recreating this iconic photo 25 years later, resulting in bruised knees and aching hips. The private school setting at Henley-on-Thames was impressive. I contributed sausage rolls.
Note the Delft tiles in the school fireplace!
Back to London on a Tuesday off work (good behaviour) for culture and fun! We saw Caravaggio's last painting, The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, on loan from Naples. Also spotted Boris Anrep's Greta Garbo mosaic and some vegan doughnuts.
When planning our trip, I discovered that Invader had just completed his 19th wave of London Invasion. We found all but one, and we got the address of that one from the French couple, shown. We'll find it on our next trip.
King's Road was our first stop, with its Vivienne Westwood mosaic on the side of her Worlds End shop, with its 13-hour clock whose arms move backwards. We also discovered lots of animal art on the art trail and a wonderful Sicilian deli, where we bought lunch.
Invader's works are increasingly clever, with shading and camouflage. I particularly liked the ones on the bridge across from the Newport Street Gallery, which we must visit. Our cassata, enjoyed in Soho Square, was almost as good as the ones we got in Sicily a year ago.
We flashed our 1200th Invader near Covent Garden.
Our initial reason for visiting London was to see Punchdrunk’s new immersive show, Viola’s Room. It is a fairy tale narrated by Helena Bonham-Carter, which takes participants through a mysterious labyrinth, told always 'to follow the light'. We had to take off our shoes and crawl for a bit, and our group got lost once, but it was a wonderful experience, like The Drowned Man.
Our summer holidays were spent driving through Europe, starting in The Netherlands. Our first stop was Rijswijk, where a market was in full swing and the museum had an Animal Farm exhibition on. We bought cheese and other supplies and had a picnic supper at our overnight hotel.
Scenes from the Rijswijk Museum
We stayed at the very European Hoevevoorde Hotel, which kept chickens and served great fries with mayonnaise.
The next morning, we visited these three Dutch windmills, which were very photogenic.
Our main destination was the European Space Agency, where we went on a private tour to see all the space-themed mosaics installed by Invader.
Along with flashing Invaders, we learned a lot about the ESA, its environmentally friendly premises, and the wondrous inventions that are created and controlled here. I liked seeing that paino lessons were available to the scientists, as well as other hobbies.
Our guide worked at the ESA and spent a lot of time with us, explaining things and even taking photos for us.
The control room had retractable tiered seating from which the scientists can watch space launches. There were three Invaders to see here and Tiny Cow got to go into the space capsule.
The final Invader was inside the nearby museum. The kind receptionist led us through the back entrance, straight to the comet Invader shown above, so we didn't even have to pay an entry fee. We did have Dutch apple cake and a sausage roll in the café.
Shown above and below are all the Invaders that we found on our holiday. As always, it was great fun tracking them down and we discovered lots of things along the way that we would otherwise not have seen.
There was a convention of graphic artists outside the Museum of Comic Art in Noordwijk. I don't know the artist above, but he seemed popular. The salad was an inspiratinal poke bown in Den Haag.
The star attraction of Mauritshuis is Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring. Considering that only 36 out of around 60 paintings by Vermeer still exist in the world, it's amazing to have seen this and others on our travels. I saw his wonderful painting of a milkmaid in Amsterdam in 2022.
It was a surprise to see Carel Fabritius's The Goldfinch. Donna Tartt's novel, which I enjoyed, is based on this painting. Fabritius was Rembrandt's most promising pupil and almost all of his works were destroyed in the Delft explosion of 1654, in which the artist himself was killed.
I always marvel at the details of these paintings, from the fabric and lace, to the jewels and musculature.
The candle sconce reminded me of Cocteau and Angels in America. The gift shop was packed with Pearl Earring souvenirs.
After the museum, we had coffee and cake in a nice square, where we admired Wolf Dog, who later got into a basket on the front of a bicycle and was whisked away.
After Den Haag, we arrived in Brussels early evening. Our apartmnet was in the Saint-Gilles area, near the Porte de Hal, shown above.
Brussels is filled with many of our favourite things: Art Nouveau, Invaders, and murals.
Our hunt for Invaders took us all over the city. It was rewarding to find so many still there or re-activated. We had snacks across the street from teh park, shown.
It was in Brussels where Nick first flashed Invaders with Tiny Cow in the shot. The Old England department store, built in 1899 by Paul Saintenoy out of girded steel and glass in Art Nouveau style, is now a musical instruments museum.
The sandwich shop, above, was wildly popular with the locals, and very affordable. Nearby, we flashed more Invaders and bought a box of Beligian chocolates.
When I was a music student, I visited Brussels and the Manneken Pis was dressed as Dracula. Today, it was au naturale. I read that the original statue (which is now in the Brussels City Museum to protect it from further kidnappings) dates back to the mid-15th century. Also shown is a school designed by Horta.
Lots of comic art murals on the walls of Belgium, including Tin Tin, who was on our bingo cards
We sought out Laurent Gerbaud's chocolates, which were awarded Best Chocolates in Brussels in 2021. There's an episode of Travel Man where Richard Ayoade and Lee Mack go there to make chocolates and Lee sneezes into the huge vat of chocolate.
Het Zinneke is the canine response to the Manneken Pis, and is standing right underneath the large Invader, shown.
The next day, we returned to the same location and found an Invader that we didn't know was there, along with lots of fun street art.
The gallery, top left, was closed, but had two Invaders on the exterior to flash. Afterwards, we went to the Comic Art Museum to get a dose of jazz-inspired artwork and Tin Tin.
I especially liked the different artists' representations of the Art Nouveau gallery, top left. Our neighbour showed up to my bake sale wearing a shirt with the Tin Tin characters dressed in the orange space suits.
Despite the rain, we sat outside under the awning and had quiche and salad for lunch.
Hannon House combines Belgian and French Art Nouveau in a dreamlike, symbolist style. Marie and Edouard Hannon commissioned it from their architect friend Jules Brunfaut in 1902.
Next stop: Köln, where I last visited on a school trip in 2007. No climbing the cathedral this time, but lots of Invaders to be found.
My friend, Ginny, told me about The Floating Angel, which hangs serenely in the Gothic Antoniterkirche. Created in 1927 by Ernst Barlach, it unmistakably bears fellow artist Käthe Kollwitz’s facial features. On the stree, Tiny Cow is once again flashed and more Invaders are found.
The shop, top centre, was a wonderland of homewares and special treats. Inside the cathedral, we admired the stained glass and frescoes.
Some Invaders were trickier to find than others, but it was all so much fun.
Expressionist art, labelled 'degenerate' by those once in power, was proudly on display at the Museum Ludwig. I recognised the style of Ernst Barlach, whose Floating Angel is pictured above. This 1930 statue is called The Avenger.
The museum was filled with brilliant artwork by Picasso, Pollock, and the self-portrait of Salvador Dalí, bottom left. Gerhard Richter was on my bingo card. and it became clear on this trip how diverse and skilled his work is. The photo-realistic portraits of famous (white) men are all grey scale paintings. He also did the sideways girl's portrait.
The train station Invader was particularly challenging to find.
We stayed overnight in lovely Mainz, where we bought a Christmas ornament for our collection.
Our Thai sushi lunch with tofu was inspirational to us and to Tiny Cow.
Lots of statues and half-timbered houses to see in Mainz
The Fastnachtsbrunnen is vitally important to all people from Mainz. Every year on 11 November, all the 'fools' gather here when the clock strikes 11:11 p.m, which marks the "fifth season" of Carnival. With over 200 figures from carnival and mythology, including Till Eulenspiegel and the city goddess, Mognontia, it is a symbol of typical Mainz joie de vivre.
We were there on an extremely hot day and cooling our feet in the fountain was one of the highlights of our journey.
Schiller, a Mainz resident, was on Nick's bingo card.
St. Stephen’s is the only German church for which the Jewish artist Marc Chagall created windows. Blue light shines through the stained glass into the interior of St. Stephen’s, and not only angels but other Biblical figures move apparently ethereally in this light. The church is over a thousand years old but was almost completely destroyed in World War II.
After our visit, we went to a small grocery store and bought some seasonal Pfifferlinge mushrooms, which we had with pasta for dinner.
We spotted this statue near our apartment in Mainz. Meanwhile, French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati, was making the news.
Market day in Mainz
After visiting Mainz cathedral, we went to The Gutenberg Museum, one of the oldest museums of printing in the world. It holds the second Gutenberg Bible, which we weren't allowed to photograph or buy, though other illuminated bibles and texts were available.
The Landesmuseum Mainz has a wonderful collection of things, both ancient and modernish. Shown here are some of my favourites.
The ancient Roman mosaic featured much restoration or 'artist's impressions', but much of the original floor was there. We appreciated the Art Nouveau wing.
There was an exhibition of artwork that had been hidden, stolen, or censored during the war. This painting, top left, was deemed degenerate by those in power, so it was hidden on the back of a benign landscape. After leaving Mainz, we stopped at the European Space Station in Darmstadt, where we were able to flash this series of Invader mosaics. Mercury took a lot of perseverance to capture, due to its size, and the fact that the security guards wouldn't let us take a step closer to it. We won, in the end.
We stayed overnight in Heidelberg in student Simeon's apartment, complete with our own private balcony. It was a lovely town with lots to see.
Heidelberg sights including the Old Bridge
We took the old funicular railway to the top of the mountain and stopped at Heidelberg castle, where we heard an excellent men's chorus singing.
A wedding party released balloons from the Old Bridge, and we watched a paddle boarder collect fallen ones from the river. We bought supplies at the friendly market stand before heading off to beloved Freiburg. Click HERE to see our last visit to the Black Forest town at Christmastime, 2017.
It was wonderful being back in Freiburg and we quickly found the antique shop where we bought our Wolf puppet. In the summer, the locals picnicked and socialised while cooling their feet in the town's many Bächle (water runnels). We joined them the next day.
We heard virtuoso accordionist Matthias Matzke play at the Zelt Musik Festival.
Familar sights around Freiburg. It was lovely cooling our feet in the Bächle as we ate our lunch.
Courtesy of our handy Fairtiq travel app, we zipped off to Emmendingen for the day, where we met up with Nicola, my former Italian roommate and one of the nicest people I've ever known. Like his mother did many years ago, on my first visit to Italy, Nicola provided homemade Italian food and hospitality. Click HERE to see our last visit with him in 2002.
We had a go at making pasta with the machine and had a lovely meal together before setting out to explore the town. My students were visiting their exchange friends at the same time.
There was a rock concert going on in the town centre, and the train back to Freiburg was crowded with concert-goers.
We explored Freiburg the following day.
Shown above is the house where friends Mark and Shelley used to live and some of the sights in the Wiehre area of Freiburg.
We went back to the Zelt Musik Festival to see New York artist Suzanne Vega.
The next day, we returned to Emmendingen and bought some vanilla pods and peppercorns at the market before meeting up with Nicola. They took us to the ruins of Emmendingen Castle and the nearby organic fields where people can pick their own flowers and buy milk straight from the barn.
Nicola meets Tiny Cow.
After flirting with the idea that I might make us carbonara, Sara decided to make a Northern Italian (winter) dish of buckwheat noodles with cabbage, butter, and sage. All the meat was sliced by Nicola and either made from meat he hunted or brought back from Italy. There's that organic milk machine, too.
From top left: Sara's cousin provided the wine. Stefan's Cheesecake wasn't a thing when I lived in Freiburg, but it is popular now and we bought a whole one from the vending machine at the train station. Also at the station, we spotted a giant Ritter Sport display, and Richard Osman's book for my bingo card.
We had unfinished business in Basel, Switzerland, and returned to flash several Invaders we didn't find in 2017.
In addition to all the Invaders we hunted, we also heard some bagpipers and saw some wacky statues at the Tinguely Museum. Tingeuly designed the Stravinsky Fountain outside the Pompidou Centre in Paris, as seen HERE in 2019.
The bather was seen from the window of the Tinguely Museum. He and friends were taking a dip in the Rhine. All of the mechanical sculputures moved from time to time, and we could climb on the large one shown.
After all the mechanised fun, we tracked down some elusive Invaders and had a tasty outdoor lunch.
The loved the dragon that snorted steam and the hooded figures that hung just near an Invader mosaic.
As soon as we got back to Freiburg, we headed for Bella Italia, one of my all-time favourite places to eat. I always have pizza gorgonzola and tiramisù. The first time I ever had tiramisù was in Freiburg.
The Naturalia grocery store was an excellent place to shop, last time and this time. We met up in Burkheim with another musician friend, Thierry, whom we last saw in Freiburg in 2017 and in France in 2016. He showed us around his lovely, historic town.
We were impressed by the theatre used by the local drama company. We stopped at house and bought some schnapps from the husband of the woman with all the animals.
Thierry took us to Texaspass, an area of volcanic Kaiserstuhl where bee-eater birds can be found.
Thierry knew we could find better schnapps in the area, so he got on his phone and found a shop that has won numerous awards for Highest Quality spirits in the country. It was run by the parents of one of his students. We had lunch afterwards just up the hill for Thierry's newly renovated house.
Sight's from Thierry's town, including a renowned herb and spices shop.
The next day, we made a nostaligic stop at the Musikhochschule, which was having work done over the summer. We walked back into town along the Dreisam.
Some familiar things, including Ganter brewery and the fabled Mozartkugel which I used to buy from Café Schmidt. It has been selling cakes for over 100 years. We stayed the the wonderful Vauban area of Freiburg. The Solar Settlement is known internationally as a pioneering community for consisting of buildings that all produce a positive energy balance. During our stay, Nick invented a cocktail called Hot Night in the Black Forest - cherry juice, cherry schnapps, lime juice, and habanero chilli. Tiny Cow liked it.
After leaving Freiburg, we headed for Triberg, home of Germany's highest waterfalls and land of cuckoo clocks. We took many fun photos at Triberg-Fantasy.
I've yet to see anyone actually wearing those Black Forest hats with the red pompoms. One day, I will own a cuckoo clock. Bottom centre is my bingo card's 'Forest Art', a picture of our Wolf.
Bottom centre is the Largest Cuckoo Clock in the World, which we heard at 1:30pm. We spent a rainy night in Worms as we headed up north. The town is famous for Martin Luther.
One of the best meals of our trip was at the restaurant in Worms. We had schnitzel with Pfifferlinge mushrooms and a beef stew dish. Bingen was our destination to learn more about Saint Hildegard. The museum didn't have many real artifacts, but it was nice.
Centre left is the cleverly-named Hildegarten. We walked up to Klopp Castle, where Nick was able to mark "climb a tower" off his bingo card.
Siegfried's Mechanical Museum in Rüdesheim was full of player pianos and other musical contraptions.
Rüdesheim was lovely, but very much a tourist trap, interestingly twinned with the UK's Swanage. On the way to Osterspai, there was a fiery accendent on the motorway, which sent us on a diversion up through the moutains.
On the opposite side of the Rhine from all the tour boat destinations, Osterspai was a sleepy medieval haven, with quiet streets and picturesque houses. There was a little shop, something like a camping store, that sold basics, but they often sold out of bread by 10.00am. We really enjoyed shopping at the large REWE store about 10 minutes' drive down river. Although it was very hot, we enjoyed drinks in the garden behind the house.
In the morning, we took a small car ferry across to Bacharach, which, apart from Freiburg and Osterspai, was my favourite town on this trip.
As often on our trips, arriving early meant we had the whole town to ourselves. We had cake at a bakery and walked around taking photos of some of the oldest houses in the area.
A composer lived behind the stripy door, top centre. .
Tiny Cow made has way behind the Peep Show door. Many towns along the Rhine displayed the record-breaking water levels, as shown on the right.
Oberwesel was an unplanned stop, but a nice town with two towers and a church with impressive medieval frescoes.
It was really hot outside and very cool inside the church.
We drove a long way to Eltz Castle, which was disappointingly full of tourists. We didn't even pay to go in. The best bit, not pictured, was walking down to the river and sitting with our feet in the cold water. I had been looking forward to Boppard, which was home to Engelbert Humperdinck, whose Hänsel und Gretel we saw in Vienna in 2022. LIke the other cruise ship destinations, Boppard was disappointing, compared to Osterspai.
Boppard's Church of Saint Severus was originally built over 1000 years ago. There are figures on the outside that were sculpted from the descriptions of returnees from the Crusades. Since the sculptor never actually saw the animals, they look a little strange.
Moving on, we stayed overnight near Düsseldorf and went into town to see great art in the Kunstsammlung. Clustered above are some of my favourite paintings, many uncharacteristic of the style usually associated with each artist. Most striking was the one by by George Grosz, who was regarded as an enfant terrible by Berlin society. He liked to shock onlookers with his attire and powdered face like a death mask. In the painting above, the last guest sitting in the Café des Westens in Berlin is the artist himself, surrounded by utensils of his addiction. The ostentatious decadence of the morbid dandy must surely have offended the conservative forces in power at the time.
Pictured above are works by Chagall, a golden painting - not blue - by Yves Klein, a 1960 painting by Kenneth Noland, from Asheville, North Carolina, and a video installation involving Wonder Woman and baroque music. We dressed up in stretchy fabric for some reason.
Back in Holland, we stopped for lunch at a beautiful waterside restaurant.
The manor house is now an art gallery that takes pride in its valuable Chinese wallpaper. Identical designs can be seen at Brighton Pavillion, as seen in 2017 (mind the naked men).
I went to Edam with my school group in 2022and was excited to show the town to Nick.
Our final destination was Alkmaar, known as "Little Amsterdam" by someone, somewhere.
Alkmaar's Beatles Museum is the largest in the world, comprising of two warehouses full of Fab Four memorabilia, including the hand-written original lyrics to I Want to Hold Your Hand.
We discovered the Bergen School of painting at the Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar. My favourite painting was by Gerrit van Blaaderen, shown above with the dark men standing by the pier. The Bergen School was a movement in Dutch painting (not Bergen in Norway) between 1915 and 1925. It is characterised by an expressionist style, influenced by cubism and showing a preference for darker colours. The participating artists lived and worked in or near the artist's village Bergen in the province of North Holland.
We learned about renowned Dutch artist Lucebert. He was greatly influenced by the European avant-garde movement COBRA, and his art in general reflects a rather pessimistic outlook on life. The scissors plaque dates from 1520, and is the oldest object in the museum's collection. They hung in a chapel specifically designed for the town's tailors and symbolised their profession. We had fun creating mythical beasts as shown, using interactive computer software that sent the creatures onto the gallery wall when finished.
All the waiters at one canal-side restaurant looked like the one in the white shirt.
The pavement plates show the town's history. The fried "soufflé" with sriracha dip was amazing.
Included above is the Kissing Cheese Girl, a house with a cannonball from 1573 lodged in its wall, and some lovely streets and houses.
Our final meal of the trip was an exciting one at Bistro Heerlijk Nel. It included all sorts of interesting tastes and textures.
On our last night, we sat beside the canal at sunset with schnapps and watched the lights turn on. A very memorable trip!
Back in the UK, I got busy baking for the final Over the Garden Fence of the summer and we met up with friends in Windsor.
