Anne's Short Musings

I woke to a watery sun creeping through the window. Yesterday, I’d looked over terracotta rooftops and onto an Umbrian countryside so classic as to be breathtaking. Now Assisi lay hidden by mist. Spires and steeples appeared and disappeared at the whim of a cold breeze, and every noise came as if from far away. Water dripped from the roof and onto the windowsill beside my hand.

I knew I would love this place on seeing the sour-faced guards. It was late on a rainy afternoon, and they so obviously wanted to be elsewhere. Somewhere preferably involving beer.

I, however, wanted to be here. The Schwarzenberg Palace Museum is in the palace precinct in Prague, in a sgraffiti- decorated Renaissance palace on Hradčanské Square, beside Prague Palace. The gardens of the museum are a beautiful formal affair, an elegant introduction to the museum proper. The statues shimmered in the soft rain, ready to move as soon as I turned the other way.


I entered to marble staircases and elegant corridors. Beautiful blue and white pieces of Renaissance ceramics adorned the stairs. Even the windows offered amazing views over the city. I could have spent an hour walking up those stairs.

Schwarzenberg Palace Museum is part of the National Museum, which is housed not in one place but in a few buildings across Prague. The museum was virtually deserted, with many of the rooms empty. Comp…

Nothing quite prepared me for these giant trees. I've seen so many images of them (and yes, we've all seen the movie) but to actually wander through the temples and see trees sprouting from stones is an eerie site.

Not the best photo, perhaps, but I just love these road signs in France. They take me straight back to old war movies, often in black and white with one army in retreat as another advances.

Or perhaps watching a newsreel from WWII.

This sign greeted me outside where I was staying in Bayeux, en route to Mont St Michel, a place where I continued my ponderings over the paradox of time.

One of the delights of travelling: taking a step to one side, away from where everyone else walks, to finding those little things which immediately transport me to a past I thought vanished, but instead simply run parallel to our own world.


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“Come on,’ he said, “it’s easy.”

Perhaps for someone raised on these waters. Perhaps for someone who had been using these boats from the time they could walk. Perhaps, like the gondoliers of Venice, they are born with webbed feet, the better to walk on water. Or so the myth goes.

As I went around in circles, my guide has his boat rocking and rolling across the water.

The laneways in Melbourne are famous for their street art. It is a constantly changing world, where few images stay for long but while they are there, their voice is strong.




A snap shot of today, to be buried under more layers of paint. May be one day rediscovered, but essentially ephemeral.
Which is what gives the art is poignancy.