Joyce’s Quilting Quandary

Tony Delroy, Ron Radford,me and Arnie at the exhibition

A very busy week! Momi is coming to stay again with the girls from Shibuya High School. It was delightful to be able to host her again. She arrived on Wednesday.

 On Thursday morning  we had to be up very early because we were off to Canberra for the Degas exhibition! I knew that the exhibition was on at the National Gallery in Canberra. I had thought of various options to go, including driving up for a couple of days or flying up for a day. But, after some consideration I had decided that as we were going overseas , that I could not justify the cost etc. But then one afternoon on Local Radio 774 they announced a competition where you could win a trip to Canberra to see the exhibition. You had to choose one of four Degas paintings and write 100 words about it. I thought that I could have a go at it, so I did!   And I won!!!  A trip for two to Canberra, staying at the Hilton, a Cocktail party and tour of the exhibition with Tony Delroy hosting the occasion. We were then offered an extra night in Canberra and lunch with two senators, Trish Crossin from the Northern Territory and Gavin Marshall from Victoria. What to wear to the Cocktail Party was a little worrying. I eventually decided on a pink silk shirt and I made a new black silk skirt from a Sandra Betzina pattern.  I had bought the silk in Bangkok.  After organising Momi, we drove to the airport, flew to Canberra, got a taxi to the hotel – lovely- and then walked up to Parliament House. We met up with the winning couple from Darwin, Simon Elliott from the National Gallery and the two senators for lunch. 

We had a delightful lunch, went to Question Time and then walked back to the hotel. The Canberra Hilton was wonderful! Built in 1927 so that visitors had somewhere to stay, it has all been restored in the 1920’s style.  The next day we went to the War Memorial in the morning and then came back and were ready to go to the Cocktail Party at 5pm.

We met up with the other competition winners, four couples from NSW, one couple from South Australia, one from Queensland and one from Tasmania. We loaded onto the bus and went up to the Gallery. We gathered with people from the ABC and the National Gallery. Simon, who we had met at lunch, took us under his wing. Ron Radford, Director of the Gallery and Tony Delroy introduced the exhibition and then we went for a tour. It was wonderful!  Prints, drawings,  a beautiful pastel from the Mildura  Gallery and some other  great paintings. The painting that I wrote about,  ”Dancer with Bouquets ” was in pride of place with the Little Dancer. The painting was suprisingly large. Our guide was great, but it is not the way that I usually look at an exhibition, I usually like to take my time. But, it was great to be there with only 50 other people.

After our viewing, we  had a Cocktail Party in the Members’ Lounge. We had a chance to chat to Tony Delroy, which was great. Tony hosts the  Nighttime show on Local Radio across Australia from 10pm to 2am Eastern Standard TIme. From 12 Midnight he runs the 25 Question Quiz.  He told us thast he had someone phone in from the oil  fields off the coast of Scotland complaining about one of the answers. We usually listen to Tony as we are going to sleep.

After the drinks, we were then taken back to the Hilton where some of us had a little more to eat.  The next morning we flew back to Melbourne and then came back to Ballarat and picked up Momi from Rosemary’s place. The Canberra trip was wonderful. Eleanor Kirkham had done all the organising for us, so thanks to her. Momi

Peterhof fountains

We flew to St Petersburg from London. We had five days in St Petersburg where we had a guide, Tanya, and driver, Marat, who kept us on the go! It is a beautiful city, with many rivers and canals. There are no tall buildings ( a amximum of five stories high) and very few advertising signs.  The Hermitage was an amazing experience! Amazing art in equally amazing surroundings!  The Impressionist collection, including the ones that the Russians took back from the Germans, is great. We went to a Russian musical night and to the  ballet, Swan Lake performed by the Kirov-Marinsky Ballet. We came out of the performance at 10.15pm, into bright daylight.  Daylight was at about 4am and it did not get dark until about 11pm.

Cathedral of the Split Blood

We caught the overnight train to Moscow.  There was not much English spoken on the train, but we had a great sleep! We  did a tour with the delightful Anna, and then flew out to Tokyo. We had run into trouble with accommodation in Moscow because of the Euro-Vision song festival, so thought the one day tour was our best option. We were standing in Red Square at 7.45am. Anna, our guide and Marat our driver gave us the swift 7 hour tour of Moscow.

I was a little stressed about navigating in Tokyo, but thanks to Momi (a Japanese travel guide, who has stayed with us in Ballarat), our Michael’s instructions and the help of an Irish fellow who was on the train with us, we found our hotel at the Shinjuku station without getting lost once!  We had left our BIG  suitcases at Toyko airport .Thank goodness for Japan Rail hotels and helpful Irishmen working in Tokyo.  We were very fortunate because Momi was able to spend the next day with us, showing us around Harugku. She knew all the best places! We had great fun cooking our Japanese pancakes for lunch. And the 100 yen shop was a treasure trove.  The bustle and lights of Tokyo was a huge contrast to Russia! 

We navigated our way back to Tokyo airport and then home after just over seven weeks away.

The stopovers in Russia and Tokyo certainly helped with the jet-lag. 

We had a wonderful, wonderful trip! No major hassles! We had seen some amazing things and been part of some amazing experiences. Apart from a minor brush with the strange taxi driver in New York, we always felt very safe.  We stayed with some very precious friends and relatives which is a great way to travel, and we were really pleased that Arnie got to meet Thea and Jack in Santa Rosa and Andy and Kate in Boston.

There were many, many highlights. Special moments that one remembers with a smile! One was certainly the spring flowers. What we saw depended on the latitude of our location at the time. Sometimes the tulips were just coming out, other times they were in full bloom. Sometimes the trees were still their soft winter brown, in other places they were covered with bright green foliage. We were too late for the cherry blossom in Tokyo, but had seen the apple and cherry orchards in flower in Faversham (near Dover) ans in Durham, and had seen the blossom trees and forsythia out in Central Park. The bed of purple tulips backed by the lilac tree in Moscow was wonderful. As were the bluebells and primroses flowering wild in the English and Irish woodland.  

The brown, burnt hill as we flew down from Sydney brought us back to the reality of the bushfires.

Natalie and Ewan picked us up from the airport.