Travels With Picasso

After 20 hours of travel door to door we have arrived in London and are esconced in The London Guest House. http://www.londonguesthouse.uk.com/ This is a budget priced B&B in Acton, a west end burough that used to be Irish and is now home to many immigrants. Our room is modest, but adequate and the price is very low for London.

We took a couple hour walk around the area when we arrived. That served to get us moving after so many hours sitting and it gave them time to clean our room since we arrived at 9 AM. They graciously allowed us to check in at 11. They also have said we can use the dining room to paint if we want to spend a day or two doing so. There are several Indian and other Asian restaurants nearby, one Irish pub, and a little cafe that we visited during our walk.

Now we are settling in and taking care of some business online. I also need to program the GPS with things we want to see. We couldn’t program it until we arrived because the European maps didn’t know what Seattle was. Tomorrow we will begin to see the sights.

We’re under two weeks until our departure for our photography, painting, and art appreciation trip to Europe. New suitcases were packed with clothes this week and immediately found to be overweight. Unpacking, sorting things, and repacking brought the weights under the limit.

Then came art supplies in each of our second bags. These are heavy items! It’s clear that I can’t take many canvas boards for painting. Of course I can buy those in Europe, but the problem then becomes weight on our internal European flights and our return home. After all I do want to bring my finished paintings home. That brought us to investigating shipping items to and from Europe. Yikes! It’s expensive.  I’d settle for a slow freighter and a long wait, but that doesn’t help the cost much. It looks like I will have to carefully manage my use of canvas boards and send a box home in the fall. That means more watercolor painting because those papers are more easily carried or shipped. Jean has somewhat less of a problem because pastels are done on paper.

We are shipping one box to Europe in advance. It mostly has vitamins and minerals. One thing we discovered recently was that the EU has made vitamins and minerals more difficult to sell. They require such a testing regimen that only major pharmaceutical companies can afford it. We were concerned about finding supplements that are similar to what our bodies are accustomed to. Therefore, we are taking/shipping a 5 month supply. Most will be shipped due to the weight allowance on checked baggage.

Now that we’re ready we have to wait 12 days before we actually leave. It’s time to finish projects on the house to get it ready for our friends who will be staying here. Yesterday the lawn mower died. That’s just one of the items that needs attention before we depart. Not much time to paint in the next two weeks.

Yesterday we went to Olympia to hang two of Jean’s painting for a show. While there I decided to practice cafe sketching. I went to a coffee shop and sat at an out-of-the-way corner table with my sketch pad and pencil. For the next couple of hours I sketched people and objects in the shop. It was fun, some of the sketches were okay, and it gave me some practice for how I hope to spend some time in Paris this summer.

Today I took the first of three sessions of a drawing class. It is working with pencil, charcoal, and pastel pencil. These are mediums I don’t usually use, but could use for my cafe sketching in Europe. This class should give me a head start on that activity.

Only 18 days until we leave!

We are now inside of four weeks until we leave for our extended stay in Europe. Our itinerary is set and we have taken care of essential travel stuff. Now can get down to packing art supplies, clothes, etc. We also must get back into the routine of posting on our travel blog. That has been seriously derailed by the many details we’ve been trying to iron out these last several weeks. Traveling abroad for many months entails a good deal more preparation than our previous trips of 3-4 weeks.

I’m going to take the next couple of weeks to talk about our preparations. Perhaps some of you have other experiences, suggestions, etc. We’d love to hear from you.

My first topic is money. A few years ago the European Union gave banks permission to change to chip and pin cards for bank transactions. These cards have a computer chip instead of a magnetic strip and they require a PIN number for every transaction (charge or debit). For a few years the banks and businesses have maintained two systems: magnetic stip readers as well as chip and pin readers. However, early this year the EU gave countries, banks, and businesses permission to use only chip and pin machines. This means that U.S. cards will not work in an increasing number of places in Europe. I won’t go into the reasons U.S. banks are slow to make the switch. Read here for some history: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/travel/04pracchip.html

The good news is that a couple of American banks are beginning to offer the chip and pin cards. http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/wells-fargo-will-test-chip-cards-for-travelers/ However, they aren’t available yet and would not help us.

Therefore, we had to find an alternative that would work in Great Britain, Ireland, and France. Travelex currency conversion stores offer a pre-paid chip and pin card in either Euros or Pounds Sterling. Our solution was to get a card of each for our trip. We loaded them with some starter cash, but we will be transferring more money to them as we need it abroad. In this way we will have a European card! Another advantage is that these cards are loaded with the local currency so we don’t have to pay fees everytime we withdraw money from an ATM like you do with your US Bank cards in Europe.

It’s all a new world to us. The folks at Rick Steves’ Europe Through The Back Door were very helpful with advice. Do not trust solely to your American credit or debit cards the next time you go to Europe!

Campgrounds and RV parks collect a broad spectrum of travelers. We often found ourselves among people with values, beliefs, and habits unlike ours. Many campers carried guns and anti-abortion bumper stickers were common. Dogs and cats are common among the RV set. Satellite dishes sprung up as soon as RV’s were parked and leveled. Every campground seemed to have a recreation center of some sort and there was subtle pressure to attend potlucks, lectures, and other events. Any of these issues presents potential conflict among campers.

Instead of conflict I found campers sought common ground on which to establish a working relationship with fellow campers. After some initial “feeling out” of newcomers, everyone talked about topics that we had in common. Of course camping equipment and experiences were a safe starting topic. With some small groups the introductions revealed other kinships and these were safe topics in that group. However, when someone else joined the group reverted to assured safe topics until the newcomer could be assessed. Gradually the included topics expanded.As a result campgrounds and RV parks proved to be pleasant places and the people were consistently friendly.

There are some valuable lessons there. The way to get along with others is to find common ground rather than debate your differences. I learned to be much more tolerant and enjoyed meeting people and learning about them. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if we all applied this to our everyday lives?

As you may remember our next trip is a long stay in Europe starting next month. We thought it was pretty well planned, but our plans have been changing daily. It seems that sometimes what you think is certain is not. First we learned that Americans can only stay in the EU for 90 days out of every six months without a special visa. To get the visa we would have to make an appointment with the San Francisco French consulate and fly down there to complete the process. England and Ireland do not count, so with some reconfiguration of our itinerary we decided to eliminate Spain and Portugal in the fall and come home after 90 days in France.

Our plan was to fly into London and return from Paris. However, when we tried to get return tickets with our frequent flyer miles we learned that it would take twice as many miles to return from Paris than it would from London. Itinerary change – we’ll go from Paris to London to get back home.

Last fall we reserved our first place to stay in London just to be safe. We didn’t want to wait until spring because we know how popular London is. This week we received a message from the place we rented saying that the unit was no longer available and we could have a refund or rent another place for more money. Needless to say we hit the panic button, questioned their ethics, etc. They told us the apartment had been sold and the new owners would not honor our contract. We got the refund and started looking for new options in London. Self-catering apartments were no longer available, so we ended up booking a B&B for more money.

Due to having to return to London to come home we decided to stay in Great Britain a while in October. It doesn’t count on the visa issue, we have fond memories of our honeymoon there, and it gives us a chance to see our friend Carrie in Wales. Therefore, we will be spending a couple of weeks there at the end of our journey.

The itinerary as of today: London in late May, Ireland in June, Paris in July and August, rural France in September, and Great Britain in October. Of course this all could change with another message from Europe tomorrow. We’ve learned that when planning such a long trip the best asset is flexibility.

Soon comes the hardest part – deciding what to take and getting it packed. It will be a relief to get there and start blogging our adventures. Stay tuned!

Here are two just-completed painting inspired by photos from our winter trip. The Altamira Oriole was from Falcon Lake Texas and the Yucca was from a beautiful sunset hike in Joshua Tree National Park. Enjoy.