Stockholm Tuesday 26th February

Good evening, and welcome to the second episode of An English Fool Abroad With His Sketchbook, Stockholm Edition.

If you’ve been with me for a while you may recall some of the comments I made about the breakfast in my hotel in Amsterdam in November. That was an extra that I paid for. Breakfast is all part of the deal in my hotel here, and I was quite looking forward to seeing what I could get away, sorry, I'll read that again, seeing what was on offer this morning. Pretty much what you would expect, although the bread rolls were at least fresh. I did consider trying to walk out with some bits and pieces for a packed lunch, but the moment I stood up to go back to the goodies after finishing my second helping of everything, I felt as if all eyes in the room were upon me. I looked around, and indeed they were. So, as the saying goes, I made my excuses and left.

Traditionally I usually try to cross off the number one thing on my list on the first full day I spend in a city, and absolute number 1 on this trip was a visit to the Vasa Museum. I’ve known about the Vasa for quite a long time, but only because I once read the blurb all about it in an Airfix model catalogue. If you weren’t lucky enough to have done the same yourself, well, basically, the Vasa was a warship constructed in Stockholm between 1626 and 1628 at the orders of King Gustvus Adolphus of Sweden, who was at war with Poland-Lithuania at the time. On the day of it’s maiden voyage it got almost a mile before it started listing to one side, and then sank. Basically, although it looked fantastic, it was too narrow in the beam, and too tall, and didn’t have enough ballast. All of which might make you think that the ship’s architect might not have exactly been looking forward to the inquiry following the sinking. Actually, according to the film in the museum, nobody was blamed for the sinking at all. We can’t be certain how many people died, although the thinking is that it would have been about 30, of whom remains of 15 have been found. I found it rather gruesome that some of the bones are on display next to the ship – the words ‘insult’ and ‘injury’ come irresistibly to mind. Still, none of them have complained about it yet, so there you are.

Not going to lie – it took AGES to make the sketch you can hopefully see with this post. This is partly because it is so intricate, and also partly because the ship is bathed in what I like to think of as museum twilight. Which is fine, if it helps us preserve the ship for as long as possible, although I can’t help feeling the amount of flash photography going on all around it can’t be helping.

The Vasa was actually found in the late 50s, and finally raised in 1961. It’s a remarkable achievement, especially considering that I would imagine that the team were probably having to invent techniques as they went along. The ship itself is in a really remarkable state of preservation – although parts have been replaced, the fact is that the ship I saw today in the museum is actually 90% original.

I was at the Museum this morning slightly before opening time at 10 am, and when you’ve paid your money, and if you are ever lucky enough to visit, I defy you to walk in without saying ‘wow’ when you first see the ship. It is absolutely breathtaking.

Well, you may recall that yesterday I went to the National Museum to find that it was shut on Mondays. So the next call on my list was to the same National Museum. Those of you who are saying to yourself – he was only so determined to see it because it’s free are being very harsh (but fair). This was a bit of a revelation. The National Museum has a superb collection of paintings, and I spent a couple of hours there, and could easily have spent longer.

It was a beautiful day again today. The weather here has taken a little getting used to. I’d better try to explain that. Firstly, although for a lot of yesterday, and all day today, the city has been bathed in brilliant sunlight, the fact is that the sun is quite a bit lower in the sky this time of year, even at midday, than it is at home. What with it being winter as well, the light is, well, I hesitate to use the word ‘sharp’ but somehow it seems the most appropriate word to describe it. Also, there’s a gentle wind which blows fairly continuously, which doesn’t feel at all vicious, until you stop moving. If you’re in the sunlight you’re okay. If you’re out of it, though, you suddenly start to realise that you’re cold. Walking through the Gamla Stan old town again today, I found that I had to wear my gloves and hat because the high buildings and narrow streets were in shadow, and as they say in these parts , nobblingkold.

Nonetheless, in the sunshine it was warm enough to sit in the open and sketch the Radhusset – the Civic Hall, and look across the water – er – ice – to the Ryddarholm Island, and make a sketch of that as well. The sketches either aren’t any good, or the Stockholmers just aren’t very demonstrative people. Several of them stopped for a look while I was sketching as they passed by, but none of them made a comment.

Speaking of comments, I have to say that I finally got round to checking the exchange rate between GBP and Swedish Kroner, all of which confirmed what I already suspected, that, compared to the other cities I’ve been to in the last few years, Stockholm is expensive. Such is life. It hasn’t spoiled my enjoyment at all yet.

Well, that’s just about it for day two

August 16th Elche

John is better than he was yesterday, I’m very glad to say. I went with Jen to see him this evening, and he’d got his colour back, and was talking a lot more easily. He’s still being kept in the hospital for observation, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him home tomorrow, or possibly Saturday.

I offered to go to the hospital with Jen this morning, but she didn’t want me to, so I thought that under the circumstances the best thing I could do was to carry on just as I would have done in other circumstances. I didn’t fancy a long excursion today though, so set my modest sights on Elx/Elche. That dual name business is easily explained – Elx is the name in Valencian. I’m not going to upset any of the my friends in the area by getting involved in the discussion of whether Valencian is a dialect of Catalan or not.

The first time I ever heard of Elx/Elche was actually 11 years ago, which was when Jen and John bought their first home in the Alicante area. When you drive away from airport on the motorway past Elx/Elche you pass a large brown (cultural, same as in the UK) sign with a face wearing a curious headdress and the words – Elche – Patrimonio De La Humanidad. Which intrigued me, and which I’ve since learned means that Elx/Elche is a World Heritage City. This has as much to do with the huge palm groves, of which the city is very proud, as anything else. However it does have quite a lot else going for it.

Once again I took the Smart Car to the station, and then the Cercania train towards Alicante. It was only three stops, and the price of 2 Euros 80 was an absolute steal in my opinion. Mind you, there was a certain amount of frustration as I was waiting to buy my ticket at the machine. The couple in front of me just couldn’t work it. What made it somewhat worse was the fact that as their frustration level was rising, they began to curse the machine in the native tones of my own home town. I helped sort them out, anyway, and we all of us made it onto the platform in time.

So, Elx/Elche, then. Getting from the train station to the centre of the older part of the town involved crossing the Rio Vinalopo. In August, crossing a river in a large town or city in Spain is an interesting experience. Usually there’s a vertiginous drop from the bridge to the surface of a tiny little stream or trickle which runs underneath. I would imagine that it’s a different story in the winter. The tourist office was just a couple of hundred yards from the bridge. Normally I like tourist offices. They give you helpful maps, and all they ask is that you tell them your nationality for their statistics. Not this one. I asked for a map, and the lady put it on the counter, and then insisted on making her own personal recommendations, circling them on the map for me, recommending hotel accommodation, launching on 5 minute monologue about the delights of the land train sightseeing tour, and finally giving me a blow by blow account of the Misterio de Elche, or the Elche Mystery Play. Now, don’t get me wrong, UNESCO has declared this a Masterpiece of the oral heritage of Humanity. But it is performed on the 14th and 15th August. Today is the 16th. The words stable, door, horse and bolted did come irresistibly to mind.

Finally she momentarily let go of the map, and I grabbed it, said bye, and got while the going was possible. Across the road and round the corner was the magnificent Basilica de Santa Maria. Perhaps not quite as impressive as the Cathedral in Murcia, it was beset by pretty much the same problem , namely that it’s hemmed in by other buildings making it extremely difficult to find an angle where you could comfortably attempt to make a sketch of it. I did manage to sketch part of the back of it, but didn’t find any suitable angle to sketch the main dome and the tower until later in the day.

Funnily enough, it was in my next port of call that I actually found that angle. When you cross the bridge, at the old town end you’re struck by quite a striking castle tower, and on the remains of the castle the MAHE – Elx/Elche Museum of Archaeology and History has been built. When it comes to History, Elx/lche certainly has a lot of it. Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines and Moors have all left their mark. However that wasn’t the most interesting thing for me. No, the most interesting thing was that it answered the 11 year old question of who or what the strange head on that brown motorway sign was. The lady in question, for a lady it is, is La Dama De Elche – the Lady of Elche. It’s a very well preserved bust of a woman – maybe a goddess – wearing ceremonial headdress and robes, probably dating from the 4th century BC. It’s a striking piece of work, albeit that the strange headdress has probably made other people than just me nickname it Princess Leia’s granny. The museum hosts a couple of replicas. The original, incidentally is housed in the National Arhcaeological Museum in Madrid, which I visited last week. I cannot, in all honesty, say that I noticed the Dama in there thought.

I could in all honesty have stayed a bit longer. However, you remember that I mentioned there was rain yesterday? Well, after I came out of MAHE a huge, filthy, angry looking grey cloud covered the whole town. All I had with me in the way of wet weather gear was my sun cap. Jen did mention yesterday that on the rare occasions that they get summer rain like yesterday, it does tend to happen across three days. When it clouds over like it did, it means one of two things. A) It is going to rumble and make all the noise of a thunderstorm, but not do much else. B) You are going to get drenched very, very quickly and very, very thoroughly. So, to cut a long story short, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and headed back to the station.

Well, that’s today’s sketching expedition. The rain followed me back to San Isidro, and I’m not unhappy that I came back when I did. We nipped over to the hospital to see John, and as I said, he seemed a lot better. And if that’s not a positive note on which to end for now, then I don’t know what is.

Madrid - Alicante

Day Five. It started badly since Montezuma decided to well and truly take his revenge. My guess is that it might have been something to do with the fried rice I had from a Chinese takeaway just outside Anton Martin Metro station earlier in the day. Who knows? Anyway, I doubt I got much more than a couple of hours sleep, and those came in short instalments.

Still, for all that things started looking up when I started packing. I didn’t mention this in my last post, but I was quite upset on Wednesday because I lost my wedding ring. I told you about my visit to the Puenta de Toledo. Well, while I was there it suddenly occurred to me that my right finger felt a bit funny. I looked at it and I saw why. My wedding ring had gone. Now, I did cling to the hope that maybe it had come off in the shower earlier, but when I got back to my room for a siesta I checked and couldn’t find it there or in the wash basin. Then, yesterday morning, as I was making the bed for the las time I picked up the pillow, and there it was, just as f the tooth fairy had put it there. Honestly – that was my first thought, that I was being rewarded for my obvious virtue. More prosaically I guess that during Tuesday night I must have put my had under my pillow and it came off then, but even so, it made my day yesterday.

I don’t think of myself as a luddite technophobe, but I was very anxious about the fact that I hadn’t printed off my train ticket. So much so that the night before I’d downloaded it to a) my wee laptop that comes with me on all my trips – b) my phone, and finally c) my Kindle. Even so I made sure that I was at the station 2 and a half hours early AND went to customer services to check that my ticket on my kindle would be okay.

With a long time to kill I went for a walk along the Paseo del Prado and then came back to the station. I know that this sounds silly, but my train was at 12:15, and I didn’t want to go back into the station until the previous Alicante train – the 10:45 – had gone. To be honest, the Atocha station in Madrid seems to be going through a bit of an identity crisis, as I’m sure it thinks that it’s an airport. Before you could go into the Departure (Lounge) Area, you had to go through an airport style luggage check. Then when you got into the Departure area you couldn’t go onto the platform until your train was called, in the same way that you get called to the Departure gate in an airport. For all of that, though, the system seemed to work. I sat in one of the more comfy chairs which faced the glass doors onto the platforms and sketched one of the choo-choos which was waiting there.

When they allowed us onto the platform at about 5 to 12 I had time to quickly sketch the outlines of some of the people waiting, and when we got on the train – 5 minutes late so no bonus points to Renfe there – I completed the shading. The blokey sitting next to me seemed very interested in what I was doing. Finally he started talking to me, and even after my standard apologetic – ‘soy Ingles, no hablo Espanol mucho’ he kept talking. I kept picking up the odd word here and there, and after he pointed to my sketch, then the colourful logo on his T shirt I gathered that he was saying that my sketch would be a lot better with colour. Everyone’s a critic. I tried to show him the watercolour sketches in the book, but he wasn’t interested in a retrospective of my Madrid period, and said nothing. So, in an act of revenge, I noisily ate my crisps and drank my drink at him. That’ll teach him. I’d like to think that when he got off at Cuenca he had seen the error of his ways.

Fair play to the driver of the train. We left Madrid late, but we arrived at Alicante early. The last stage of the journey was to use the Cercania train out to San Isidro-Catral. Unbeknownst to me, the ticket machines are actually on the little bit that leads to their platforms. In all honesty I just didn’t see them. So I went to the ticket office. Now, in Madrid, on the very rare occasions that I did attempt to speak Spanish, the person to whom I was speaking invariably replied in English. So rather than messing about I asked the chap behind the desk if he spoke English. He looked at me as if I’d just asked him if he’d like a sniff of the dirty laundry in my pack, and replied, “No!” I’ve always wondered why they use two exclamation marks in Spanish – one like we do, and the other upside down at the start of the word. Now I know – I could actually hear the other exclamation mark. So I asked him in Spanish for a ticket to San Isidro – Catral – Albatera. He seemed most disgruntled – in fact I would dare to say that there wasn’t a single inch of him that was still gruntled – but he gave me the ticket anyway.

Madrid - Day Four

So, if you’ve ever read my posts on previous trips you’ll know that there are certain things I like to do whenever I go to a new city. I like to ride a funicular if they have one. Well, I haven’t found one of those, but there is a cable car, the Telerifico, but sadly I just haven’t been able to cram it in. Maybe next visit. I also like to ride the trams if they have any. No, but I have been riding on the Metro, and you can see the picture I sketched this morning. I had to let three trains go before I’d ‘got’ it mind you, but wwe all have to make sacrifices in the name of Art. Then one of the other things I really want to do is find if the city has what I would call a ‘signature’ bridge.

You know what I mean, I’m sure. If you think of my previous sketching adventures, Prague has its Charles Bridge, Berlin its Oberbaumbrucke, Budapest has the Chain Bridge, and even Kaunas has the Vytatutas the Great bridge, albeit that’s rather more modest in scale. I was beginning to think that Madrid maybe didn’t have one. A bit of googling first thing this morning, though, brought up the Puenta de Toledo – the Toledo Bridge. This was completed in the 1720s, and in my humble opinion, as bridges go, it’s a bit of alright. Mind you, at this time of year the Rio Manzanares really isn’t anything to write home about. One of the other things I try to do is to take a river sightseeing trip, and up until I got to the bridge I wondered why I couldn’t find anyone in Madrid offering them. Having seen the Manzanares I think I now know. Basically you can forget about getting a boat down it. The closest thing you could have to a river sightseeing trip is wading through it in a pair of wellies.

I’d taken the Metro to the bridge, but I walked back along the river path towards the palace, and from there onto the Temple of Debod. Basically, the Egyptian Government donated it to Spain since it was going to be flooded by the Aswan Dam anyway. It’s, how should I put it? – a bit – bleh, mind you, it was built in the Roman period anyway.

I walked back to the hostel for lunch and a wee siesta, and then decided to check out the Parque de Buen Retiro. Now, the path that I took from the main road took me up hill, along an avenue full of what looked like little green beach huts on either side. Each of them belonged, so it seemed to a bookseller. I asked one of them if she minded me doing a wee sketch of her, and whether she understood - difficult to tell since she replied in fluent grunt – she didn’t make a fuss when I did. And so, good people, she became my Madrilena of the day. Thence to the park.

Considering that the park is in the middle of one of the busiest areas of the centre of Madrid it is incredibly peaceful and tranquil. Mind you, it’s huge. However most of the pathways are lined with trees, so it was well shaded, which is just as well since the tips of my ears were burning – although I notice that my legs are staying stubbornly white, a legacy of my Scottish ancestors, I’d guess.

One of the features signposted in the park was El Palacio de Cristal. Now, even with my poor Spanish I could work out that this probably meant crystal palace. Well, I’m very sorry, but offer me the chance to see a crystal palace and I’m your boy. I have to say, when I reached it I really wasn’t disappointed. It was built a couple of decades after the London one, and like that one, for an International Exposition. According to my research the plan was to make it in Bilbao, which they did, and construct it in such a way that it could be dismantled and re-erected elsewhere. The Spanish authorities had the good sense to leave it where it is. It’s terrific.

I shan’t lie – I’ve loved Madrid, but I’m cream crackered. So I’ve decided to call it a day. The train to Madrid is just after midday tomorrow, so if there’s anything I’m desperate to sketch I can maybe do it before I leave. I sketched the Toledo Bridge about 8:30 this morning, and it was so lovely to do because the day hadn’t really started to heat up, so maybe there will be an opportunity tomorrow morning.

So that’s almost it for Madrid. However don’t worry – for tomorrow we’re off to Alicante.

Even Closer to Home - Swansea

Swansea is the nearest city to my home. It's a city with an industrial heritage which goes right back to the industrial revolution, and a maritime heritage which goes back further, although it only received the Royal Charter granting it city status during my own life time, in 1969, to commemorate Prince Charles' investiture as the Prince of Wales.
Here's a selection of my Swansea sketches: -

The full figure just above is Captain Cat, a character from Dylan Thomas' play for voices, "Under Milk Wood". That play is set in the fictional Llarregub, which is supposedly based on the sleepy seaside village of Laugharne, further west along the coast of the Bristol Channel. However Dylan himself was born in Swansea, and as one of the most important poets of the 20th Century Swansea is justly proud of him, and actually takes its role as a cultural centre for the area very seriously. This statue, and the statue of the seated Dylan Thomas himself also picture above, are in Swansea Marina, and literally yards away from the Dylan Thomas Theatre and centre for the arts. 

The Marina itself was constructed from the Swansea South Dock, which was closed at the end of the 1960s. It took over a decade for plans to be approved and for construction to be carried out, but the Marina now is possibly the most vibrant and interesting area close to the centre of the city. If you look at the sketch on the immediate left, you can see the Pump House restaurant which was built inside the shell of the Victorian former pumping house of the docks.  Fairly close by are two of the country's collection of Historic Ships which are moored outside the Waterfront Museum, which is the more modern and interactive of the two museums close by, and which pays special attention to the city's Maritime and Industrial History.

As I've already mentioned, the Marina is one of the more vibrant areas of Swansea. This next sketch shows the luxury flats which have been built on the old docks, and also gives a hint of the wide variety of boats moored there. Funnily enough, despite me saying it's a vibrant area, which it is, I do find it a calming and peaceful experience to take a sketchbook to the Marina in the middle of the day, and just sketch anything that takes my fancy.

One historical fact that most people who don't live in or near Swansea don't tend to know, is that Swansea was the home of the world's first ever passenger railway. It opened in 1807, but it was horse drawn rather than steam powered for several decades. In the 20th century it was really a tramway, although the decision was made to close it in 1960, scrap the trams, and rip up the tracks. Sadly only one front end of one tram remains, and this is on display in the tramshed adjacent to the Waterfront Museum, which you can see in the sketch alongside. 

The Waterfront Museum houses a replica of Richard Trevithick's first ever steam locomotive. This actually first ran in relatively nearby Merthyr Tydfil, which problems with the cast iron rails cast doubt on its potential. Trevithick was one of those inventors who sadly never received much wealth from his invention, and had to watch credit go to later work by the Stephensons, amongst others. 

Close to Home - Cardiff

Just a couple from another capital city - Cardiff - capital of Wales. We have the Cardiff Central Railway Station: -

and also a statue in the National Museum of Wales called "The Drummer Boy"

Budapest - supplementary

Here's a picture I made in biro, using a photograph I took in Budapest's Deak Ferenc Ter Metro Station: -

- and another, sketched from the deck of a flyboat, during a sightseeing trip along the Danube