Time.....

I had a reminder that I was contributing to Sandy's Ideas of Inspiration blog and had fallen by the wayside, as indeed I seem to have done here. So full of resolve (not resolutions) when I saw the first idea of this new year "Time".  I was immediately reminded of the clock we had seen in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.  The Peacock clock.

This is a close up of the peacock,

because of the light it was difficult to photograph.  You Tube to the rescue.
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I apologise for the cross posting but I wanted the video here.

St Petersburg, Hermitage Part 2

These two slides shows represent just a fraction of what we saw and an even smaller fraction of the whole collection.

 

One thing I didn't capture in the Winter Palace was the way the marquetry on the floors reflected the design of the ceilings, quite amazing.

All at sea.....

The second day of our trip was sailing from Copenhagen to Helsinki, time to explore the ship and admire the art work ...

 

 

such wonderful texture

the handle reminded me of the prow of a Viking ship

We made friends with the dog

  we gazed at the sea

 and we ate

Gold leaf and windmills.....

We have just arrived back from an amazing trip, one,  that until two weeks ago today, I didn't know we would be taking.  We managed, with two days notice, to join the Seabourn Sojourn for a Baltic cruise. I will not be showing you all the 1500 photographs I took but for my own sake I will be putting some of them here for a reminder.

Thank you to everyone who left comments on my last post, I will try and answer them all when I've done the washing!