After eleven hours of doing nothing

we are here

Santa Monica.

The sun is shining, the temperature's a comfortable 26C and we're feeling relaxed after a smooth flight.  Mary will be here in a min and we're off out to dinner.

Love it!

Reduced

Checking in for our flight just half an hour ago, we noticed how everyone seemed to have rather more bags than they'd brought.  The topic of conversation is how much has been saved rather than spent!  When we arrived on Friday, everything in my favourite shop was reduced by 25%.  In spite of such temptation, there wasn't much there to my fancy and I left with just a single pair of jeans.  But browsing in there yesterday, I spotted a jacket I'd not seen before and asked the assistant if the reductions were still in place.  Sadly not, she said, the ticket price applied - not megabucks, but nevertheless, more than I wanted to pay.

This morning, we dropped in again, spotting a new notice by the door "Up to 50% off".  Sure enough, there was the jacket, now on the rail with "take an extra 30% off" above it - and a red line through the price reducing it by almost half before that.  Just 24 hours and the jacket I fancied had been reduced by more than 60% - and because I have a frequent shopper card there (!) I got an additional 5%.

Crazy.

I especially love the Starbucks holiday theme this year.

 Though I haven't noticed a knitting theme going on in the UK yet?

Perhaps it started on the 1 December?

 

The Art Club

As we got off the train in Providence, RI, it started to rain, but being the indomitable English tourists we are, we put up our umbrellas and soldiered on regardless and headed for Benefit Street, in the historic part of the city.  In the gloom, two buildings stood out as a beacon, tempting us up a hill towards them.  The tudor house sits at the bottom of Thomas Street and just across the road was the most beautiful church - a very special one too, as it turned out.

As I puttered about taking photographs, a gentleman came out of one of the houses on the street and greeted me with a friendly "good morning".  Hearing my English accent, he stopped and inquired about our visit - what had brought us here, what did we plan to see and so on, introducing himself as the chairman of the Providence Art Club, one of the oldest art clubs in America, whose Club House lay behind the most lovely door I had just photographed.

I've written before about how these chance meetings with complete strangers turn an ordinary day into the most memorable.  This was one of those remarkable occasions and a rainy Sunday in Providence, RI, suddenly transformed into something far more interesting.

For the Providence Art Club House is a very special place indeed and our chance meeting with the chairman allowed us a privileged peek behind the scenes, where some considerable renovation was taking place.  We were invited through that lovely green door into a beautiful late 18th century house, complete with original furnishings and of course, pretty amazing artwork.  Hard to know where to look first!

We loved the silhouettes of members, painted on the walls of one of the club rooms and admired the very special painting hung in the upstairs lounge area, of a gentleman surveying some casts of classical sculptures, which captured our attention immediately.

The annual "Little Picture Show" was currently showing, but before we took a look at that, we were treated to a glimpse of the future for the lucky members of the Art Club, for extensive building works are going on and there is to be a new studio, print room and further club facilities here before long. 

My goodness, what vision, what commitment and foresight is here.  How fortunate the members of this club are and how I envy them their facilities!

 

It was quite hard to draw ourselves away from this fascinating place and charming gentleman, but the historic streets of Providence called us and armed with newly learned background to the city and the buildings nearby, we set off again through the rain.

 In spite of the weather, we enjoyed walking along an historic street and really enjoyed seeing so many buildings which were, to our untutored eyes, typically "New England" in character.

But Providence, for us, will always be a charming gentleman and his amazing Art Club.  Thank you, Dan, for being such a generous ambassador!

Providence

Anyone who knows us will understand when we say "Ker-ching!  Rhode Island!!"

Which makes a total of 33 states for me and 32 for Mark - because of Wisconsin! 

Saturday morning

Waking up this morning to news from Mumbai and from here in America.  The taxi driver who brought us from the airport was from New Delhi and as soon as he heard our English accents, was eager to talk about the events in Mumbai, too.

Black Friday here when we arrived and though the discounts offered by the shops are staggering - generally between 20 and 30% off a complete purchase, in addition to any discounts already offered - thankfully the crowds we encountered were good natured.  We did our usual thing and went out into the fresh air for as long as we could before caving in, exhausted, for supper at Legal Seafoods at 6.45pm.

This morning, we are up early and ready and raring to go and hoping to stay awake at the Symphony tonight!