Festival season

No Borders Music Festival in Italy has one of the best settings possible. 

First you climb up to the two lakes

Then you are completely mesmerised by Ludovico Einaudi's music.

 

And then the storm comes :-) 

More Italy

We visited another interesting town in Italy, Treviso.

No pictures from the exhibition that we visited, but some from the town itself.

 Just layered mesh. What a great idea!

 

Satyr piper from the 13th century, once in Casa Gobbato.

The depiction of the writer Giovanni Comisso by Mario Martinelli (2000). 

Snowy days

We've spent some wonderful snowy days in the Italian Dolomites. 

 

This picture was taken before it started snowing :-)

What a wonderful place to be.

Tolkien in Trieste

Holidays are also a great time to visit exhibitions. So we drove to Trieste and visited the exhibition about J.R.R. Tolkien. 

Jigsaw puzzles

During the holidays one finally finds the time to solve some jigsaw puzzles.

I love Fabio Vettori's design. This is my third puzzle with the ants and the amount of detail on these puzzles is insane. Love love love!

 

But I think I am done with the Exits... lovely wolves but not really my cup of tea. Unfortunately.

Masters!

Escaping the Christmas-approaching craziness, I visited a wonderful exhibition, From Gauguin to Hopper, in Villa Manin, close to Udine.

 

My favourites were the self-portrait of Van Gogh, pine trees of Cezanne, Bonnard's sunset at Saint Tropez, Gaugin's Martinique, Monet's Antibes,  Courbet's wave ... and many more. Such masterpieces!

Of course no photographs from the actual exhibition. But some from Udine and Gradišče. 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Music!

Call my musical taste eclectic or whatever you want. Because ...

I love Mika. 

And I love Nick Cave.

Indeed.

Away ... again

A short break at Lago di Garda. 

A bit of climbing, a bit of rain, a bit of swimming, a bit of history...  

I always like to go/return there.

And we've been away

When temperatures hit 35+ degrees, it's time to go someplace else. 

 So we did :-)

There were also 35+ degrees, but we had this wonderful sea to cool down. 

And plenty of shade. And ice cream. And granita :-D

Trieste in Advent

Last year we went to see Advent in Zagreb, this year we went to Trieste. Not as special, but not bad nevertheless.

National day of culture

This year I celebrated the National cultural holiday abroad, in Ravenna, Italy.

Casually walking around mosaics dating from the year 450.

Yes, 450.

They did have a questionable fashion sense back then...

 

But with this calendar they could predict Easter for the years 532 to 626.

 

 

Plenty of new mosaics around the town.

 

And other sorts of modern art as well :-)

Italy

And we went to see Mika playing at NoBordersMusicFestival in Italy.

Unfortunately, after ending up in an ambulance, we had to spend the rest of the concert in the shade, so the recordings are not that good...

But the scenery is fantastic!

 

So pretty!

 I found the images of this beauty on my phone, from the recent trip to Aquilea:

The pieces fit so perfectly together, you can hardly believe this is a jigsaw puzzle!

Oh, yes, it is. And a beautiful one!