Culture - a little bit of art and Music, and amateur dramatics

On my last day in Dubrovnik I hoped we could get to see a bit of a cultural show, but when it turned out that it was not "on" that day I began to reflect that in fact we had seen quite a bit of music and art etc throughout our travels. These two are in the Church of St Antonia in Lisboa

The Annunciation.

Christ Appearing to Saint Vincent by Carvalho (1781)

Street theatre - very clever

This is part of a stained glass window in Palace Pena at Sintra. If you look at the top picture it is a large stained window, but in the background is a palace with a stained glass window.

And if you zoom in on that window you see an exact replica of the big window that you are looking at!

Also at Pena Palace was this handsome bronze Moor statue.The Moors moved up through Morocco to the south of Portugal. We were beginning to see the common threads of these two counties.

At Obidos we saw a young woman plaing a hand pan. It is a very bell like tone.

Duncan and Diana having a try - I had a go too, but none of us could make it work!

These models of Portuguese costumes were in a display at Batalha Monastery 

A feel of Gaucho here. There is a little bull fighting still having in Portugal

At Coimbra we went to  a Fado concert. This is a wall of famous Fado performers (who knew?)

There are three types of Fado. One to woo a girlfriend, one when you are leaving to go away, and the last seems to be for anything else that makes you miserable. The music is very emotional.

As I think I mentioned on Facebook they are double strung in each notch, and tuned in a minor key to give their distinctive  rich tone.

Although their is a great deal of mosaics in geometric patterns this one at the the Porto railway station was depicting a scene. These were huge scenes. The tiling is actually blue and white - a bit Dutch looking.

At Guimaraes we went to the castle where our local guide was dressed up as the Duchess of Braganza. Her husband was an illegitimate son of the king, but he was a great favourite and so the Duchess lived quite a comfortable life.

Duncan and Peter follow along as we explore the town of Guimaraes

 Now off to Morocco.

We went to a ceramic factory in Fes. It specialised in making Tagines. But this young woman was just learning with decorating a plate in a most unusual lilac colour.

 Now see the full tagine making process  - in about 7 or 8 minutes he has it ready for the firing.

There was an exhibition  of very early photographs (daguerreotypes) showing Berber women. These were the first migrant people to settle in Morocco (Some centuries BC)

Yves St Laurent used to do a large painting which was then replicated into cards which he sent to all his friends and acquaintances for the New Year.

Going through the old town in Split we came across this group of troubadours in an area that they were getting set up to perform an opera. Lovely voices.

A tableau showing the lavender pickers at the lavender farm on Hvar farm

Some folk songs from these guys on the way up the Neretva river to our dinner destination

We were in two boats and there seemed to be a grappa drinking competition between the boats!
Needless to say we all joined in on the Glenn Campbell/Neil Diamond/ABBA tunes on the way home.

When we got to Dubrovnik we were given a set of tickets to various activities in the Old city. One of them was the Art Gallery and we were delighted to find that their was a Salvador Dali exhibition on - but wouldn't you know it, NOT included in the free ticket. But we decided to go anyway. Dali had been asked to do a series of illustrations for an edition of the Bible. Some of them were quite fantastical  - not your typical church paintings. There were some other series of paintings there as well - one on horses, one on Alice in Wonderland, and one on Knights of the Round Table

Work Horse

Woman Horse

The Red Queen

Duncan bought a Dali teeshirt!

Also in Dubrovnik we went to see the birthplace of a playwright  Marin Drzic. He wrote a comedy (in about Shakespeare's era) which is greatly revered in Croatia