Tag: travel in Europe

Hortus Botanicus and Other Delights

Dear Jasper and Kestrel,

I am writing to you because I will be seeing Liza very soon. So, hello, Portland!


We woke up Friday in Leiden, hungry and ready to explore. The city center wakes up pretty slowly, but we found a shop, called Vooraf en Toe, that sold us coffee, juice, and the best apple pie I’ve ever had. Notice my restraint: I didn’t have the whipped cream!

Once we were fed, we walked through town and across canal bridges to the Hortus Botanicus, one of the oldest botanical gardens in Europe. It is in the grounds of the University and is a teaching facility for students as well as a delight for visitors of all ages.

There were tiny mulched trails through forests for a fern garden.

There were signs all over explaining about the really cool details of botany that my Momma got me interested in…. Spores and seeds and Linneaus, biomes and bees and calcium-rich soils.

And when we had looked and read and smelt everything, it was time for lunch. The cafe had a wonderful zucchini soup with fresh baked bread, which I slurped down like a starving woman (which I was!).

Grandpa Nelson is always good company in gardens, museums, and walking around cities. But like most of us, he’s happiest when he has a place to sit and a cup of coffee. Here he is, looking particularly handsome.

I’ll tell you more about Leiden tomorrow!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Danish Travel Journal

Dear Liza,

Yep, there is a new travel journal, and it’s heading your way! I will be bringing it this week when Grandpa Nelson and I visit you in Denmark.

As usual, I started with a nice thick mixed media spiral bound sketchbook. Their paper is good for writing, collage, and even watercolors, if you don’t get too wet.

My front cover is frenetic and busy, like I am feeling about the trip. I used a weird polar map projection and a compass rose to show travel, a flag and color scheme for Denmark, and words to tell about the excitement of anticipation.

Since most of our travel once we get to Denmark will be by car, my inside cover shows a road trip. The background started as a celestial map, and you can still see some of wording under the grey acrylic. I wanted a grey and red color scheme, and found all those little figures in a magazine ad for Target. Posca marker let me write in WHITE.

Since the back cover represents the end of the journey, it has words like ‘exhausted’ and ‘I had an enormous breakfast’ as well as things I hope to see. And just because I had them, I included the Danish national anthem in Danish and English.

Since every trip is different, every travel journal is different, and I can’t promise anything special. But I’ll show you what I come up with. Heck, you’ll probably see some of what I’m drawing while I’m drawing it.

And I will like that very much.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Belated Travel Journaling

Dear Liza,

Your Auntie Bridgett Spicer is an amazing artist. Not only can she create delightful comics like her “Auntie Beeswax” and wonderful paintings and collages, but she can draw and vacation at the same time. Here is a page from her sketchbook of our trip.

Her brain works like that.

Mine does not. I made a really cool cover for my travel journal for our last trip to Europe,

but am only now (three weeks after we got home) finishing up my account of our journey. Here is a page showing our train ride from Amsterdam to Utrecht.

I started with good intentions, but then it just got away from me.

I happily sacrificed journaling time for time spent with family in wondrous operas, delightful museums, and fabulous gardens.

So now I’m catching up, and I’m glad I waited. Not only is my Journal a more interesting synthesis of the journey, with my own sketches and all the sorts of paper you collect on a trip, but I am getting to re-live the whole experience!

It’s like watching my favorite movie all over again.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Cousin Invasion!

Dear Liza,

Our visit had been busy, but when Auntie Katie, Jasper and Kestrel showed up, the energy level went to the moon! You three wound yourselves around each other like a bunch of silly eels and jumped and shimmied down the streets of Horsens.

Climbing on fountains….

Finding the first signs of spring….

and generally making up for the years since you have all been together.

You found the public play areas and trampolines, bought lunch for everyone at the grocery store, and even managed to get Cousin Jasper a bump on the chin bad enough to go to the hospital to close it up. But as you can see, he was fine in time for dinner.

And after a few days of finding new ways to wear yourselves out, it was time to head to Copenhagen! We all piled on the train and enjoyed the scenery,

Conversation,

And just being family together.

And now we will find some new adventures.

Love,

Grandma Judy

…And Onward to Paris!

Dear Liza,

After a very full three days in Utrecht, with more adventures than I had time or space to tell (I will save those for a slow day sometime in the future), we caught the TGV (train grand vitesse, or Very Fast Train) south to Paris.

We needed to take the regional train back to Amsterdam to switch to the TGV for Paris. We had some time to play with, so we stepped out of the station to find some pastries. I’ll tell you, in Europe, train stations are like cathedrals!! Have a look.

Our trip to Paris took a few hours longer than planned, however, because of a back-up of train traffic. I thought it was because of the general strikes that have been happening in France, but the official story is that there was a wire that got damaged somehow. Whatever the reason, we had time to get to know some of our fellow passengers. Thanks, everyone, for making a long trip fun!

We took the number 4 Metro from Gare du Nord to the St. Germain de Prés neighborhood and walked just a few blocks to the Crystal Hotel. The lobby is very stylish, with this horseback warrior woman keeping us safe. Tristan checked us into our small but comfy room.

We were hungry and tired. Our old favorite place from long ago visits, Le Café de Beaux Arts, is just down the block. French Onion soup and a few glasses of wine put us right.

Auntie Bridgett’s new traveling buddy, Miffy, got into the act as well. Miffy is the creation of Utrecht designer Dick Bruna and is exactly as old as Grandpa Nelson, being created in 1955. She is now world-famous, fits in a pocket, and is fun to pose.

Once we were fed, we realized how tired we were, strolled back to the hotel, and crashed. Exploring Paris would have to wait for tomorrow.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Visiting Vincent

Dear Liza,

Vincent van Gogh, one of our favorite artists, only lived to be 37 years old. He didn’t even decide to be a painter until he was 32! Most of his paintings were done in the last year of his life, many at the mental hospital in Rémy, France. He would sometimes paint more than one painting every day.

We found this early work called “Portrait of a Farm Woman”. I can see that Vincent was still painting mostly in the browns and grays he had learned from his uncle in the Netherlands.

Later, after his time in Paris, Vincent used more and brighter colors. He did this colorful, animated “Portrait of a Man” in 1889. The way the fellow’s head is on crooked makes me wonder what sort of character he was!

This is my new favorite Van Gogh painting. The bright blue sky and pink blossoms are so pretty, and you can see the sunshine and shadows moving on the ground under the tree. It is like seeing a breeze.

I love this painting, as well, because I have crossed little bridges like this in Amsterdam. The style of bridge that is very popular in the Netherlands. Since the land is so wet there and the people make canals to help drain the water away, bridges are designed to be both inexpensive to maintain and easily opened for boats to go through.

I also like the blues of the water and sky, and how he shows the ripples in the water where the women are doing the laundry. The ripples sort of tie the man in the wagon to the ladies washing, saying “they are all a part of this place.”

There were more works of art than I could photograph, and more than I can tell you about here. Maybe you and I can travel to the Kröller-Müller Museum some day and I can show them to you. I’ll even buy you lunch!

Love,

Grandma Judy