A day of culture

Have you guessed where we are yet?

A clue - the red sandstone City Hall dominates the market place and has the most wonderful painted walls in a small courtyard. We spent quite some time there this morning as we walked around the Old Town in the spring sunshine. The weather forecast was none too good for later so we tried to make the best of the day.

We pottered around one or two shops along the way, amused by the sight of this book, a German version of the one being chatted about by some friends in the last couple of days!


This statue of Helvetia will settle any doubts about this favourite of ours. We love the way she's resting her shield and spear, putting down her suitcase and making the decision to go no further!

After a morning walking around, we too were feeling a little footsore, so around lunchtime, we hopped aboard a tram and headed to the Fondation Beyeler

Reminiscent of the Burrell Collection, situated in parkland with large plate glass windows, this is a fantastic gallery of modern art. Sadly no photographs allowed inside, but you can imagine the wealth of treasures inside by Picasso, Mondrian, Van Gogh, Monet, Rothko, Kandinsky,
Giacometti...the list goes on. The special exhibition on right now is of Action Painting - with several pieces by Jackson Pollock amongst other artists of whom we'd never heard. All used some kind of energetic way of creating their art and the results were....well, "interesting"...It's worth following the link from the main Beyeler website to find out more about this fascinating show.

Back into town then, to buy sock yarn and other essentials - and of course, you've worked it out by now, haven't you? We're in Basel, Switzerland, and very nice it is too!

We are in...

...I'll let you guess.

If you have visited my 365 blog, you'll have suspected that we've hopped off to a concert, tomorrow night. But we couldn't resist an extra day in one of our favourite places and though we don't know this particular city as well as other parts of the country, it's lovely to be here.

The view from our window is of the mighty Rhine, in full flow and proving quite a challenge for the smaller boats as they struggle upstream. The huge barge that just went past had no problem!

Portrait of the Artists

Catching up with one or two favourite blogs and coming across an interesting link on the Photojojo site which ages an image to look as though it was taken sixty years ago. Of course, the artists themselves remain as young and vibrant as ever....

A day to play

Today, two friends came to play and oh my goodness, what creativity was in the air!

Sue was working on a project for a competition, and worked on the Embellisher for much of the day. Myfanwy, we missed you!
Liz explored the bind it all machine, having watched the DVD to get the tips and hints first. Sensible lady... As she was doing this, our friend Dorothy Skyped in to see how we were getting along. Of course, it was all her fault we got into the bind-it-all in the first place - wasn't it Dorothy?

As for me, well I had a new toy to play with, thanks to Liz - and did I read the instructions first? Since they were in Japanese that wasn't really an option, but with an expert on hand, I dived right in and with her help, look what we made!

Twenty-four cards for our friends...

Such fun to get together and share ideas and enthusiasms. We'll do it again soon (I hope)

oooh, look....!

Still excited by stumbling upon this in Waterstones, Bristol yesterday!

Would that be Salman Rushdie's work alongside mine, by any chance?