Perugia

Palace dei Priori, window circa13th century

We visited the Palace dei Priori which was built from the 13th-18th centuries and incorporated some other buildings, including 2 towers. The upper floors of the Palace are the National Gallery of Umbria, Italy's richest art collection. A maze of rooms with all sorts of paintings and sculpture.

view of Corso Venucci

Here is a view of Corso Venucci from the upper floors of the Palace.

entry hall Palace dei Priori

 The entry hall to the Palace contains the gift shop and ticket office to the National Gallery and has beautiful Gothic arches.

Perugia, the City

Street in Perugia

You can see from the photos how narrow the streets are. This particular one is closed to cars but even where you can drive they are this narrow. Remember this is the oldest part of the city; most of the buildings here are 500+ years old.

I am facinated by how they have built little bridges between the buildings, which you can see in this first photo. Some seem like open terraces and others are closed in and even look like they are part of an apartment.

built over the street, Perugia

You can see in this close up the lowest bridge in the other photo. To me it looks like it might have been just a walkway with the railing which was later filled in and built on top of.

The streets are very confusing, especially if you are driving, since you can't drive on all of them and some of them are one way. Of course they are all so narrow they don't seem large enough to have two way traffic, even if the cars are smaller over here!

We Arrive in Perugia

Agriturismo San Fellissimo

After about a 3.5 hour drive from Rome, we arrived just outside of Perugia at the Agriturismo San Fellissimo; this is our lovely bed & breakfast. A bit more than I expected; They make up the rooms each day as in a hotel, free wireless internet and a small fridge in the room.

A lovely breakfast in the morning on the terrace; fresh plain yogurt, freshly pick blackberries, croissants, about 6 kinds of preserves, (plum, kumquat, quince, others we couldn't name but were delish) along with a very light honey. along with tea, coffee and juice.

black berries grow everywhere and are ripe now

begonia on the steps

The B&B is up on a hill with beautiful views and lovely landscape full of fresh herbs and flowers.

pergola

This lovely pergola is on the terrace by the swimming pool.

elise

Elise meditates in the early morning light.

potato vine blooming in the garden

quince?

shadows

In Italy!

My friend Elise and I met up at the airport in Rome on Wednesday afternoon and picked up our rental car.It took a bit to figure out how it worked since while it is an 'automatic' as you can see it does not work quite the same as cars at home. Automatic here simply means you don't have a clutch to push in; but you still have to change gears yourself ;-)

We did manage to get out of Rome without too much trouble, it did help that Elise had brought her GPS. On our way to Perugia we saw this unusual wall. Actually I think it is probably the remains of an aqueduct; that is sort of a raised canal for moving water from one place to another.

Near where we parked to take pictures of the aquaduct was a cute little place with a garden so I took some pictures of it until the dogs came out, they were barking and we didn't want to bother anyone so left quick.

Lovely eggplants of different sorts

A small town we were driving through.

On My Way To Italy!

scorpion suckers

At the airport in Washington, DC I went in a shop to buy some water as you cannot bring even commercially sealed water through security. And I was greeted at the checkout counter by these suckers with scorpions embedded in them. yuck! The clerk said they sold a lot of them, they are very popular. I don't see the attraction, frankly. I don't think I could get one in my mouth!

scorpion sucker

From DC I flew overnight to Rome. A pleasant flight, I had an aisle seat and it wasn't too full so the girl that was in the window seat decided she needed more space and went and found herself another spot. That meant I had two seats and could actually stretch out a bit.

The flight itself was only 8.5 hours, but Italy is quite a bit ahead of Arizona.

dawn  over Ireland at 35,000 feet

As the sun rose we were just coming in over Ireland where we turned, crossing just over Cornwall, then over Spain and on over Italy to Rome.

More Calvin, Yellow Lab

Calvin, 18x24, acrylic on canvas, work in progress

I worked on Calvin some more yesterday before going to work. I think I am finally getting his face right. I would like to thank everyone for stopping by last week and encouraging me. I think I still need to work on those paws too. That one in the foreground really bugs me, I think I've figured out the problem; it doesn't look thick enough to me, what do you all think?

I've been trying to get finished because I fly out Tuesday morning for 2 1/2 weeks in Italy and really need to get this guy delivered before then!

Happy Paint Party Friday! Join the party by clicking the link over on the right.

Changes to Yellow Lab, Calvin

Calvin, 18x24 inches, acrylic on canvas, work in progress

Oh my it's been forever since I've been able to paint and post an update! Things in my life have been crazy in July. But they are getting better!

My client thought Calvin was looking too serious and described him as a big goofy clown. One of the photos he sent showed him smiling with his tongue out so I have changed his expression here. Still have a lot more work to go, and I need to get a move on!

His feet still look a little awkward to me, but they are getting better and of course I need to work on his face some more.

Happy Paint Party Friday! Hope I can get around to seeing everyone else this week too. To see the other things that have been happening around the place you can check out my other blogs.

On another note I have recieved two of my postcards from the Liberate Your Art postcard swap. I think this is really cool, tho I haven't had time to go and check out the artists websites yet. I don't know what the deal is with the post card photo. That image is vertical on my computer but twice blogger has uploaded it sideways.  When I get a chance I'll take some better pics and link them to the artists websites. In the meantime you can visit participating artists sites through the Liberate Your Art link on the right.