Venetian art

I took the kids to Oita today to visit the art gallery and see some Venetian Renaissance and Baroque art. No Titian or Bellini, but there were several Giorgiones and Tiepolos. The girls really enjoyed it - Lena loved having found someone who can draw better than Amy and rubbed that in! The plethora of questions needing to be answered was mindboggling! The Bible stories, mythology, European history, religious practices, clothing, techniques!

We had lunch at the kids favorite, Joyfull, then went to go to an exhibition on the human body, which was closed. So we went instead to the ruins of Oita castle, and walked around the perimeter, hoping one or another of the guard towers would be open. None were. A bit of a non-event, but the girls had great fun pretending to be ninjas. Not that you can hide too well wearing white coordinated sparkly Pumpkin Patch skirts and blouses.

After that I promised to take them to a pirate ship I was sure I had seen on the coast, but I couldn't find it, so we made a brief impromptu visit to a beach. Again those sparkly white pumpkin patch outfits weren't exactly suitable, but we all tucked our skirts into our knickers and went wading. Their joy and glee was uncontainable, I haven't seen them bounce so much for ages! We must go to the beach again.

We finished the day with ice cream, of course, and came home to collapse into bed. I hadn't intended to walk so far - the castle and beach were unplanned - so I had a bit of a sore tummy, which Kanji graciously rubbed for me. Next time I will check the holidays of the exhibitions I go to see!