garyartista

[garyartista]

Royal Monastery of Santa Maria in El Puig and the legend of Valencia's bat

With the renewal of the €10 unlimited regional travel pass we’re again visiting the smaller towns near Valencia. Puig (officially El Puig de Santa Maria) is just 14k and less than 30 minutes away. The train wasn’t crowded on the way there, though bursting at the seams on the way back as people were joining the King’s Day festivities in Valencia. Walking to the center of Puig from the metro stop…

[garyartista]

Nude in Pompeii

Acrylic painting Acrylic

[garyartista]

Music video: Paintings, watercolors and figure drawings, 2024

Some of the art I produced this past year. Most of the watercolors were done aboard Viking. There is limited space and I have to put everything away each time so larger paintings are difficult to mange. It’s perfect for watercolors though! It was a wonderful year for cruising once the rains let up around June 1. Before that it was rather dreary and the Maas was running quite fast as we headed…

[garyartista]

Holiday Foods of Rome, and ditching Panettones

Christmas eve dinner here in Rome: I prepared a multiple course meal. Well it was mostly me, as the spousal unit managed to sneak in some very non-Italian smoked herring and salmon. You can get both of these in the stores here these days, but that is no excuse, IMHO. In Italy the meal is divided into courses: antipasto (before the pasta), Primo piato (first plate, meaning pasta) and Secondo,…

[garyartista]

Drawings from Roma

St Stephen’s Gate, Aurelian Wall, Rome (watercolor) Castle Sant Angelo from the Bernini bridge House near St Stephen’s Gate Persephonne, Bernini’s statue American Academy, Rome (pencil)

[garyartista]

Rome: pen and ink drawings

The Boxer. Bronze, Roman era Statue at the Altemps Museum Gaul couple committing suicide From statues at the Barberini Palace Reclining Couple, terra cotta, 750 BCE (Conte pencil)

[garyartista]

Religiosity in Italy

Rome is the seat of the approximately 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. Strictly speaking it’s the Vatican City State that occupies this position, but as it is surrounded by the city of Rome, it is understandable why so many meld the two. The Pope was the head of the Papal States, comprising roughly the center third of Italy, from 756 to 1870. By 1860 most of the Papal States had been conquered by…

[garyartista]

Rome: What's up with the 2025 Jubilee.

Rome is just a 2 hour flight from Valencia so even Ryan Air’s uncomfortable seats can be manageable. We plunked our two carry-ons in the overheads and sat with a sizable and friendly Bulgarian fellow living in Valencia somehow wedged between us. There went the manageability. He’s with his wife and children, with them to the rear of the plane although at first I thought they were hiding in the…

[garyartista]

At last! Our narrated video "From Amsterdam to the France 2024"

Filming and narration by Peg Kirkpatrick, editing and production by Gary Kirkpatrick. Copyright 2024

[garyartista]

Plovdiv

About 350,000 people live in Plovdiv making it the second largest city in Bulgaria. It was founded on the Marista River. People support themselves here on tobacco production, food processing, textiles and brewing, as well as high tech, festivals and tourism. There are six universities in this small city. It is known for its Roman era theater, still in use, and centrally located. There are old…

[garyartista]

Flood stories from Picanya

It was getting dark when we boarded the Picanya metro replacement bus, but there was enough light to see the fields of cars piled 4 and 5 high in fields near Paiporta. You can still see white bits of clothing and paper scattered about, sticking onto small trees and broken branches, left there by the raging waters. Unfortunately the bus was going too fast for shooting photos. On the walk into the…

[garyartista]

Family History Part 2: Who was Tony, really?

Tony This is another atypical post as it treats my family history, whereas I normally write about travel related matters. Nonetheless this may have some general interest for the twists and turns it brings. In my experience it was a mystery-like in slow motion. My motherś sister Anna aka Annette was married twice, first to a fellow named Mike Rini on March 17,1928. All I know about him is that…

[garyartista]

A flood survivor's story

We have friends in Picanya. We saw yesterday them for the first time since the flood. I sat with ‘M,’ whose house is located on the Rambla del Poyo, the normally empty gully that serves as drainage for the hills to the west. The Rambla is about 75 meters wide by about 15 meters deep and looks quite capable of holding a substantial amount of flood water as it almost always dry except for a little…

[garyartista]

Face from side and below, tilted, Conte pencil

Face from side and below, tilted, Conte pencil, unsigned

[garyartista]

Volunteers providing meals

We joined a hundred or so volunteers are helping at Valencia’s World Central Kitchen to provide hot meals for people in locations effected by the floods of a month ago. They are very well organized. When we arrived, we first had to check in. I was not registered so they took my name and phone number. You can register on Telegram if you have the group link. Then we visited the assignment board.…

[garyartista]

Bulgaria's Complexities

I have long seen Bulgaria as just a small, insignificant, and now former communist country in Eastern Europe. We went there primarily because it is one of the two EU countries we had not visited. Now that I have been there, my curiosity has been aroused, and I have learned more about this country and the forces that complicate its functioning. The following complicating factors are in no…

[garyartista]

Bulgarian Traditional Folk Dance

In days gone by we did international folk dancing with groups in Florida and Pennsylvania. I led the group in Pennsylvania for several years. Among our favorite dances were those that came from Bulgaria. While in Sofia we found a performance at a restaurant and walked the 1.8 kilometers for the performance starting at 8 pm. It was dark and pretty cold but the trip was worthwhile. I shot the…