impressions from travel. london-frankfurt-heidelburg. in no particular order.

halfway through the holiday i panicked that i wasn’t making the best use of my time in europe… and by this i mean i wasn’t seeing all the cultural wonders etc etc, but rather shopping, wandering, and doing stuff. but in reality when i look back at all the papery stuff that accumulated in my handbag, backpack and suitcase, i realise that we still did see enough. anyway, the main point of the holiday was to see friends. which we did.

captured above, tickets/passes etc tell me that i visited/saw/appreciated the following:

Botticelli (among others) at the Stadel Museum, Frankfurt

Saalburg – edge of the roman empire, germany

Tower of London – King Henry VIII exhibition

Porsche Museum, Stuttgart

Urmensch Museum, Steinheim (germany)

Historiches Museum, Frankfurt

Turmpalast Cinema – Julie & Julia (worthwhile if you enjoy cooking)

Natural History Museum (london)

Also, having visited london, munich and stuttgart in 2005, i had already seen many of the tourist attractions i bypassed this time around.

We saw a variety show at the Tigerpalast in Frankfurt. This is the funky menu:

Seen at the Stadel gallery (ignoring reality – wanted for my living room):

While the Stadel holds some important works from important artists, I found that what was on show was a bit limited – i.e. not enough of the type of art that I enjoy looking at. It has a large collection of german art – from the early 14th century through to 19th century, but religious art (which most of it is) is not really to my taste.

reading enjoyment was provided by english, german and australian mags:

crafty purchases + crafty plans

a few photos from singapore:

my first visit to the place. first impressions? clean (i.e. no street rubbish thanks to strict rules and fines); rather humid; mish-mash architecture; obsessed with shopping. would probably stop over again as part of a journey elsewhere (also as we know a couple living there), but would prefer to visit other places – perhaps next time i might fly with cathay pacific to visit hong kong…

the sights of singapore were a bit more exciting than what i captured in these photos – inspiration and the desire to photograph did not accompany me on this holiday unfortunately.

post holiday jetlag euphoria: just returned from london-germany-singapore in 3 weeks.

unpacking; washing; sorting; enjoying.

in 3 weeks we covered the following:

4 days in london.

4 hours in paris (a stop in our rail experience from london to frankfurt)

10 days frankfurt broken up by:

1 day steinheim (near stuttgart)

1 day munich

2 days hamburg

this followed by:

2 days singapore (to combat jet lag and break up the tedium of flying).

all intra-europe travel conducted by rail courtesy of eurail pass (very economical means of travel)

activities over these three weeks included (listed in order of most amount of time)

walking

chatting

shopping

site seeing

sauna-ing

breakfasting

and in hamburg – coffeeing and cocktailing (i.e. consuming numerous coffees by day, and cocktails by night)

the main purpose of this trip was to meet friends old and new (well, new to me) – which we succeeded in doing extremely well, and i feel now that i need a holiday from my holiday in order to re-capture lost sleep.

despite the time of the year, the weather was better than expected (i.e. in germany in only rained on 3 days out of 14; london it was actually SUNNY for 2 days out of 4).

at this present moment most of my photos are stored on laptop currently not within my access. fun photo moments will follow.

the ironed plastic bag pieces have now been sewn together. next step: cut out lining. then: sew lining and outside together along three sides. then: stuff. add velcro for closing. fold and sew along two edges to make pouch. stick in laptop and be happy!

on another crafty note: here is me adding beads to my crochet crown, while waiting for the train.

step 1 in making a laptop case a la threadbanger:

give your self a headache ironing plastic bags:

these pieces will be stitched together to create the outside of the case, then it will be faced with lime green polar fleece, stuffed, given velcro and loved.

i want one for myself now. sadly, although the whole point is to use up the unwanted bags you have at home, i really want to collect some really interesting bags during my travels in november (kind of defeats the purpose)! though on a positive greeny-note, the ironed bags in the photo represent most of the plastic bags we actually have. go green!

a note though on fusing plastic bags – its not as easy as it looks… the first bag wasn’t sticking so i turned up the iron, and then it shrivelled… bother. probably took about an hour all up to create the pieces in the photo above. but i think the end result will be worth it.

spotted outside my favourite cafe in perth: two lovely bikes. personally i do prefer gears on my bike, but i can appreciate the aesthetics of single speeds.

my archaeology honours proposal is due tomorrow, and rather than finish it off, I would like to commemorate milestone 1 in this year of study pain, with a lovely mosaic of a few of my archaeology moments (from greece, crete, england, and australia).

1. stone artefacts, middle island, 2. trescoe, UK, 3. historic site, middle island, 4. minoan bee pendant, Crete, 5. delphi, greece, 6. monastery, greece, 7. neolithic tomb, UK, 8. ceramic fragment, 9. delphi, greece

brompton cardigan: about to be ripped back to the armpits as denial made me believe that it wasn’t too big for me…

very proud of hem (below): knit one row purl, then knit stocking stitch to match length of basket stitch at bottom. fold over and seam. ta-da!

socks for my dad. pattern: diamond waffle socks