August 18th San Isidro - Catral

An English Fool Abroad With His Sketchbook has been out and about a bit again today, although you couldn’t really call it as much of an excursion as the trips to Elche, Murcia and Alicante. We were off early to see John in the hospital this morning. He seems pretty much the same as yesterday, but certainly no worse, and that’s all to the good. While I was there I went two floors down to get John and Jen a coffee each from the cafeteria. Despite distinctly asking for café con leche fria – coffees with cold milk – the cups were so hot that even though the lady behind the counter gave me two extra plastic cups into which I could place the takeaway cups with the coffee in, they were still so boiling hot that I couldn’t hold them for long. In fact, he only way I could do it was putting the two plastic cups together, carrying one cup inside it, and balancing the other on top. Up two floors. You can guess what happened, can’t you? Well. . . you’re wrong. I managed it.

After leaving the hospital we nipped quickly back to the Casa Me Duck to change cars- the Smart car needed filling up, and the trip to Catral provided the best opportunity to do it. On the way Jen took a slight detour behind the station in San Isidro. The reason? To show me the Memorial – which is both behind the station, and also the middle sketch on the page below. I didn’t previously know it, but Alicante was the last city to hold out against Franco in the Civil War. The community of San Isidro wasn’t built until the 1950s, but prior to this part of it had been the site of a concentration camp where Franco put , well, basically anyone he felt like. It’s a very understated memorial – just two huge metal bars, with broken chains connected to them, and a simple stone plaque at the bottom, yet it’s oddly moving.

My ulterior motive in wanting to come to Catral, then, was to take a look at the church, which is the picture on the left hand side of the page below. It’s pretty impressive, but true to form it is in the middle of a square which just doesn’t have enough room for you to make a good sketch of it from the front. I mean, you could do it, but then you wouldn’t get the dome or the tower, which are, to my mind, the church – actually it is a Cathedral, which surprised me – to my mind its best features. We did pop inside. It was very dark, and Jen suggested that we might have entered the Lady Chapel. As our eyes accustomed it became clear that the figures and pictures we had taken to be the Virgin Mary were in fact the Lord Jesus. The unworthy and sacrilegious thought that maybe it was actually the bearded Lady chapel came to mind, and I’m glad that I kept that thought to myself at that time. The sketch below is actually my favourite view of the cathedral, which is approaching it from a side street.

Sooner or later, whenever I stay in San Isidro, I end up in Catral market on a Saturday. I must admit that I’ve never seen it quite as bare and looking quite as sorry for itself as it did this morning. It was gone midday, and some of the traders were clearing up and calling it a day, but it’s also true that a lot of the traders go on their hols in August. So, with little or nothing of interest within it, this left just one more thing. Lunch. Jen suggested Chinese, and who am I to refuse? The fact that I love Chinese food is totally immaterial. Now, you may recall that when I had a Chinese curry in Madrid, I believe it was the medium through which Montezuma extracted his revenge later that night. Well, I have to say that this one, a prawn curry was absolutely delicious. Whether I’ll pay for it later we’ll just have to see.

And that, I dare say, is pretty much it for today. If you’ve been with me this far, you have my thanks and congratulations. We are nearing the end of the marathon – 3 more full days, and then I’m on my way home.

Kaunas Day Two

Thursday, day two, was always going to be a hectic sketching day. During my wanderings the bus station, outside which was a helpful streetmap which I photographed. I found another one on a wall in the town hall square, which showed less of the town, but had landmarks marked on it. Using these I had a rudimentary itinerary sketched out, should you pardon the pun.

Back to the Old Town to begin, where I made this sketch in Vilnius Street, which should hopefully give an example of what I meant about the architecture of the street and the way it is laid out.

Thence to the Vytautas Bridge. I crossed it and took the funicular railway, which I sketched on my required elements post.

Crossing the bridge back to the old town I stopped to make this watercolour sketch of the Vytautas the Great Church. Whoever Vytautas was, they thought a lot of him in Kaunas.

I needed to do some shopping, and so I walked along the riverbank to the Akropolis shopping mall. My map told me that this was close to the Archangel Michael Church, and so this also gave me the chance to do some unfinished business in Laisves Aleja. I made another watercolour sketch of a building I liked.

Along the Laisves Aleja there are several statues of what I presume were prominent former citizens of Kaunas. This chap was a former mayor of Kaunas, ad I believe quite instrumental in Lithuanian moves for independence following world war one.

It was a bit of a step from there to Kaunas Castle, but even thought only about a third of the original 14^th century building remains, it’s still quite impressive, and sitting on top of the dry moat I found it one of the calmest and most peaceful places in Kaunas.

Looking behind me I realised I could see the tower of the town hall, and it didn’t look far away either. In fact I was right by the Old Town, which enabled me to nip back to the town hall square, and make this sketch of the St. Peter and Paul cathedral Basilica.

12) Germany - Berlin - Other sketches - late August 2017

Domkirche - Berlin Cathedral

 This is the Domkirche - the late baroque masterpiece which houses the tombs of the Hohenzollern Kings of Prussia and Kaisers of the German Empire. I sketched it from the side of the Spree.

Marienkirche - St. Mary's Church

The Marienkirche is one of the oldest churches in East Central Berlin, and it's not without its own beauty.  It sits to the side of a square, at the end of which is the Rathus, or town hall, behind a very ornate fountain.

Brandenburg Gate

 An iconic image of Berlin. Its so easy now to cross from East to West Berlin that it's difficult to visualise that this place was the symbol of the Cold War once upon a time.

Mozart - Haydn - Beethoven Memorial - Tiergarten

 If you walk west through the Brandenburg Gate, and keep walking, you'll eventually come to the Siegsaule - pictured below. The thing is, though, that the Siegsaule is so tall, that you think it's a lot closer than it is. I was, after walking from the Brandenburg Gate to the Siegsaule, knackered. Even after resting to make the sketch, I was soon knackered walking back. This time though I walked through the Tiergarten, the park which runs alongside the road. I found this charming memorial to three great composers, and sat down on a bench beside it and made this sketch to give me a bit more recovery time.

Altes Museum - Museum Island

 Back to Museum Island. I was waiting for the airport bus and made this sketch while I did so. A group of passers by liked it, and the little Italian guy who was selling ice creams by the side of the road even asked me if he could take a photo of it. He didn't give me a free ice cream, though.

Berlin Rathaus

 This is the aforementioned Rathaus. It's not a great sketch this, although to be fair the scanner does seem to have exaggerated the slight sland to the tower which my sketch had (the original building is as straight as a dye, I hasten to add) I was intrigued because to me this looks very like a German cousin of the contemporary Cardiff Pierhead building. Did the architect have a bike?

Siegsaule - West Berlin

The Siegsaule. Literally the Victory column, which was built to commemorate the Prussian victories over Denmark, Austria and then France in the second half of the 19th century, which led to the unification of Germany in 1871.

2) Belgium - Ieper, Menin Gate - August 2016

Approaching the Menin Gate

If you are ever in Ieper, and you don't visit the Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate, then you are really missing out, and shame on you. It takes place every evening at 20:00, carried out by members of the Ieper Fire Brigade, and it is intensely moving.

The Menin Gate itself was originally intended to carry inscriptions of the names of every soldier who died defending Ieper during World War 1 with no known grave. However, there is only room for 70,000 odd, while over 90,000 soldiers who died in and around Ieper have no known grave, and so the memorial has inscriptions of the soldiers who died between August 1914, and August 1917.

It's not the greatest sketch I've ever made, but again, enough people came and had a look and made nice comments while I was making it, which I found really encouraging.