Tuesday 19 July 2016

An Eighteenth Century Grand Tour Updated



By dint of working through endless weekends over the winter , supervising the rehousing of her firm's headquarters to larger premises the other side of town , Youngest Daughter earned two extra weeks holiday this summer .The offer of a flat in Budapest , a friend's desire to go to the Opera in Vienna and a love of Italian food ...  and she was off on a 2016 version of the Grand Tour .

I'd get 'phone calls from minor airports  , Alpine river banks , libraries , forests or street corner cafes ( preferably next to a tram line )  .
She was having the time of her life ,  and not even a superfluity of " potatoes and pig's elbows " on Munich lunch menus was daunting .  A couple of German castles revived her spirits swiftly .

The fact that Prague smelled of forests , had a municipal diving center in the middle
of the city and that the people all seemed to love living there made her want to stay for ever .

A huge park in Salzburg , breakfasts in Budapest , chocolate cakes in Austria , the Kunshistorisches Museum in Vienna and  having the Vermeers to herself ...  surviving the Marriage of Figaro in a 38C degree Opera House  , ...  the apericena in Venice with Aperol spritzers and buffets of endless delight  , five hours in Florence's Uffizi and some risotto ,



the market and food in Milan and a treasure hunt in its Salvation Army thrift shop made it all most uplifting and every bit as educational as any Grand Tour could hope to be  .

The first card is a self portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola  , "Her eyes look like mine in a Viennese cake shop "
And the second is Agnolo di Cosimo's  portrait of Giovanni de'Medici as a child in the Uffizi ... is it possible to adopt a postcard ?

3 comments:

Marcheline said...

Ha! Dude, you can have that fat creepy baby... what is it with antique paintings of babies? They're soooooo creeeeeepy!

Proof:

1. https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-07/27/16/campaign_images/webdr08/heres-why-renaissance-babies-look-like-creepy-mid-2-18992-1438029923-15_dblbig.jpg

2. http://67.media.tumblr.com/ec1970c6dfbfb68eba8b579f64e7a06a/tumblr_myovwemLx61r6f0d9o1_1280.jpg

3. http://bugbuzzy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/600x315-1421085074.jpg

I could go on, but at this rate I'm not sleeping for at least a week.... urrrrrgh!

Lucille said...

Your report of daughter's itinerary makes me want to book flights today. Perhaps not to Vienna though where I received my A-level results from England in a phone box near the museum. Not good enough. Babies must have been very co operative if they had to be dressed like that everyday. The Goldfinch too has to be slightly pitied.

rachel said...

A Grand Tour - how lovely! We would like to do one of Britain - The Gardener says in a camper van, I say in decent hotels! So we dream on.....

That baby looks like a smooth smiley version of how he will grow up to be..... he'll probably become a great deal fatter too!