Today was mostly spent catching buses, waiting in airports and flying and more trains to move from Athens Greece to Vienna Austria. What a cool town! The well organized sets of surface trams and subways and nice biking and pedestrian paths and the coolest paths below near the river makes for great biking and walking…

This morning the light and equipment worked to paint a view of the light house. Although the weather was more gray, I painted it with a bluer sky and sea which I had seen other days. It’s always interesting to see what different countries do to regulate and sell products. Greece has a huge vape…

Another sunny day in Greece with some swimming at the small cove with swim access and some painting of the coastline near there at the end of town.

This morning I took a short run and hike and explored more of the coast line north of Rafina and other places in town.

Today we took the ferry over to the island of Evia, a short ride. We walked around, sketching and had a leisurely lunch before checking the ferry back to Rafina.

This morning was spend walking the coast line near Rafina and finding a suitable scene to paint. The light was low and partly cloudy and the route lacked elevation and elements to paint. I finally decided on this one area that offered a good hill and a good vista of the bays and distant hills.…

Today was spent putting together the painting kit and some swimming and painting in the afternoon on the Mediterranean just walking distance from Rafina. My morning painting session didn’t happen as I left my paints and other parts back at the house so a morning coffee and town exploring was used instead. The afternoon session…

Today was a full day of bus and subway rides into the Athens city center to visit the acropolis area. We walked around town and visited the acropolis area in the afternoon before returning back to Rafina in the evening.

Yesterday was spent traveling from Florence Italy to Greece with a connecting flight thru Rome. At the Rome airport during my 3 hour layover I was able to find a nice baby grand piano in the terminal for folks to play and got recorded in many videos of busy travelers heading between gates. My high…

A busy last full day in Florence with a tour of the uffizzi gallery in the morning and a painting class in the afternoon. Evening was another pizzeria night and walking the Arno and lighted Florence cityscape along with thousands of fellow Italians also getting pizza, gelato and getting another leather purse.

Yep – it’s still leaning and everyone is still trying to push it back up in their photos. Today I decided to train out of Florence for a bit of scenery change. I walked around Pisa in places away from the main tourists spots which is only a small area. A cloudy and some rain…

The sun came out today to enable some plein air painting on the same river park on the Arno about 2 blocks from apartment. The rain in the past 24 hours has risen the flows on Arno significantly and the cascading series of dams are now flowing with larger falls than a week ago. Some…

The rain has arrived to Florence so the walks to the hill communities or sunset views on the Arno River are fit between the heavy rains at times. Today another long 4 mile hike up to Fiesole and another loop to plazzata de Michelangelo.

I started the morning with a class in painting with a palette knife with oils. I’ve never done full paintings with palette knives so Florence seems like a good place to learn and practice. In the late afternoon I walked up the Michelangelo pizzazz where it is famous as a place to watch the sunset…

Today I visited the larger garden across the Arno from the main city which had been there for a few thousand years. Artifacts and statues from the Roman’s in bc. In the afternoon I visited the same painting spot as yesterday but focused on the Ponte alle Grazie bridge this time. The long coming heavy…

Today I took all of the various painting kit parts and headed off to find a scene to paint plein air. I had spent the morning walking along the river scoping out potential spots and decided the bridge and river a short ways from my apartment was workable. Some painting and another gelato stop took…

Today I hiked up to the town high above Florence called Fiesole. A narrow and winding steep road is walkers get to this town with a wide view of Florence below. In the evening I took a pasta cooking class where we made three types of pasta and have a pasta dinner with them. I…

Spent a full day walking around Florence visiting various art stores to assemble a plein art painting kit to do some art and painting in the field. Hiked to a hilltop across the river to get a better view of the city and the river and famous bridges.

A long 14 hour travel day to get from Santiago Spain to Florence Italy via some walking to bus to a flight thru Barcelona and Florence and tram and walking across older part of Florence to get my 5th floor older building unit in the central part of town. This city is packed with students…

Today I finished the Camino finisterre hiking the last 16 miles into Finisterre. This last section includes several miles of the coast Atlantic villages rather than just the hilly farm villages of the Camino. These smaller seaside towns had nice beaches and steeper mountains leading to the sea. Once there I took the 3 hour…