Farewell Costa Pacifica - Hello Lake Como

You may be thinking why haven't I mentioned my husband in all my photos and sketching.

Part of the reason for taking the cruise is that my husband was working with two musicians and a singer who perform on this ship to play and record his music. My husband composes music and for the last 8 years has been working with the violinist Daniela David who transcribes his music for him. For this particular cruise she was working with a pianist and singer and they had been performing some of his songs. We recorded the group performing some of his music, but I have not yet figured out how to upload the clips I videotaped. I keep getting a message that they are too long. LOL When I figure it out I will provide a link to the songs. For now you will have to settle for a photo of all of us taken the last evening after they performed.

From left to right are Vlad (pianist), myself, Daniela (violinist), my husband, Jerry, and Kathy (soprano).

In the morning we were back in Savona, Italy and we disembarked from the ship around 9:30. We got our luggage and headed up to the Savona train station. Since we had some time before the train was departing of course I sketched. This was the view out the front windows of the train station.

We had reservations for our next leg of our trip which took us back to Milan and then to Varenna which is a small town right on Lake Como. We rented an apartment there for 11 days. The apartment was on the third floor of a building and had a spectacular view of the lake because we were close to the lake and nothing was directly in front of us. The apartment had French doors that opened onto a little balcony that you could stand on but it wasn't large enough to sit on. I could have watched the view forever since it changed constantly as the light, the clouds, and the fog moved across the lake.

I did this sketch sitting right in front of our balcony.

Savona Part 2 & At Sea

Savona had an interesting old town area with narrow streets that reminded me of Venice. One street must have been behind a theatre because it had a sign for "Phantasma dell' Opera."

I loved the look of this street too.

Here are a few photos I took in Savona.

This was the street I sketched.

The outside of the Savona Cathedral.

Savona at night.

From our room at the hotel we could see our ship come into port. We were within a half block of the cruise terminal, so once it docked I walked over to take a photo of Costa Pacifica which would be our home for the next 11 days.

There was a very long period of waiting before we boarded while everyone was checked in...so of course I sketched.

Here is the view as we departed Savona.

We were at sea the entire next day, so I sketched along the outside pool deck. That orange thing was a water slide that went from the very top deck. I didn't go on it.

I also did some small pencil and some ink sketches of people on the deck.

Of course I was sketching individual people when there were many, many occupied chairs crowded together. More to come.

Savona - Part 1

The first part of our trip was a cruise on the Costa Pacifica that left from Savona, Italy. In order to make sure we weren't delayed and would be on time for the departure we spent two nights before the cruise in Savona which is a small town, but pretty. I did all of these in my concertina sketchbook that I made for the trip.

Right across from the harbor was La Campanessa, the bell tower. I sat in the square in front of it to sketch it the afternoon we arrived.

It really looked lovely at night. You can see that the perspective in my sketch was a bit different. I was sitting much closer to the towers, so you didn't notice the difference in heights.

The following morning I headed back down to the harbor to sketch one of the old fishing boats. I focused on one and a fisherman was sitting on the boat repairing his nets. While I was doing the sketch his friends kept coming down to talk to him, but they noticed what I was doing and came over to look. I got a lot of "Bella, bella!" Then the fisherman himself came over to see. He didn't speak any English but I figured out that his name was Momo and that was his boat. He left with a big smile. I guess nobody has ever sketched him before.

I did some walking around the town and just loved all the arches along Via Paleocapa.

I did another sketch of the bell tower from across the harbor from a spot near where the photo above was taken.

More to come tomorrow.