Street Scenes
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Le Grand Café
This magnificent building stands in the middle of Brussels beside the old Bourse, and I guess once kept the financiers of the city fed and watered as they traded their way to success or ruin in the industrial expansion of nineteenth century Belgium. Fortunately the hostelry didn’t seem to be suffering any lack of customers…
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A Door In Strasbourg
There are some very imposing front doors in Strasbourg – decorated but yet very solid – fine examples of French (or perhaps German given how often the border has moved!) workmanship. At the point where I had the shape of this image defined in pen I had high hopes for this picture. Unfortunately the watercolour…
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Christmas Tree
The corner of this earth that I call home is awash with these things at this time of year. Often they are very pretty, occasionally they are rather garish, only rarely are they disappointing. The tree on which this painting is based was (and almost certainly still is at time of writing) in Place Kléber,…
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Quiet Street
The Christmas Market in Strasbourg was busy enough this year, but the punters tend to favour afternoons and evenings for their festive purchases, so earlier in the day it is still possible to find quiet streets even near the city centre. This street (Rue de l’Epine) was genuinely empty when my phone snapped this photograph…
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Bunting
This is a view along Church Street in Hereford, looking towards the cathedral, which is where I spotted this bunting whilst visiting the city in early June. I’m not really sure why the bunting was up – there had been celebrations for the 80th anniversary of VE Day a few weeks earlier, so maybe the…
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Hagia Sophia
This is a remarkable building. It is almost 1500 years old, which is not bad for a building sited in the middle of an earthquake zone! It was for a long time the world’s largest interior space, and the design of this building, in particular its large central dome, effectively became the archetype for the…
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Pergamon
This is a view from the Asclepion of Pergamon towards the Acropolis, which true to its name is on the top of the hill in the background. We visited Pergamon as one of the seven churches mentioned in the Revelation to St John, found at the end of the bible. However, to me one of…
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Bus Montage
Many buses in Sri Lanka have very fancy decoration – this one was I think the fanciest but there were many others that had been glammed up to a similar extent. I was told that they do this to get noticed and so attract extra passengers. I’m not sure if the paint jobs attract extra…
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Tuk-tuk
The roads in Sri Lanka (as in many other countries) seem to be full of these three-wheelers. If you are looking for a lift they are very useful – otherwise they are something to beware of, both for pedestrians and for larger vehicle drivers. The tuk-tuk in the foreground of this painting is driving along…
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Albaycin
This area of Granada is a warren of narrow alleyways, some of which pretend to be fully fledged roads along which cars with scratched sides venture! At night the lighting of these thoroughfares creates many interesting pools of light and corresponding shadows. This drawing is an attempt to capture this lighting effect using charcoal. In…
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Tram
I know we now have trams in England again, but to me the sight of a tram on the streets of a continental European city still feels rather satisfyingly foreign. I was pleased therefore to discover there are many trams in Budapest. This particular unit is running along the “Pest” bank of the Danube, where…
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Two Statues
This unlikely pair are to be found in front of the Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest. The rather casual and lanky Attila Jozsef in the foreground was a very popular local poet writing between the 1st and 2nd World Wars. The more classical equestrian statue behind is of Ferenc Rakoczi, who fought against the Habsburgs…
Doodling ... 