road trip from Reno... :D

Reno Nevada to the Napa valley California....
and all the Americana along the way ...
"good morning Truman...."

Napa valley vineyards

the Francis Ford Coppola estate...


Coppola's enchanted tree ...it bears lemons, limes and oranges
just like the magic faraway tree !!!

he has the most incredible collection of magic lanterns from the year dot ...
so beautiful ....




on a secret road back to Reno we found a field of odd scarecrows guarding ...
weeds...or are they...?

definitely something from a scary movie ...
(makes mental note for later use...*)

of seagulls ,san francisco, skeletons and sailing boats

last week a fast jump from the Nevada desert to San Francisco...
i think we covered pretty much everything ...from cable cars to boats under the golden gate bridge,good Italian food,bagel dogs (one eyebrow raised) ,china town,trams from Milano,...(wierd ... what are they doing here i travel on them every day in Italy...)
beautiful Americana retro trams from the 50s ,antique game halls at the ferry terminal and fabulous shops entitled ...
"tasty salted pig parts"
ermmmmm i guess you cant really go wrong .... :D

old frescoes of the building of the transcontinental railroad,
love the mix of wall art and construction here

throughout the city are old poster stands, lamp posts and public toilets imported from Paris
...its a bizarre mix of modern American culture and recognisable European classic pieces



its a good looking city ...reminds me a little of Sydney and Auckland
(apart from all the Americans)...


watching street theatre down at the fishermans wharf i was attacked by enormous marionette human skeletons,....



completely traumatised ...they were horrifically giant and real



recovering my equilibrium....

it's bizarre

lurking in the Nevada desert with a pirate .... who would have thought the desert was so full of life ,.... i knelt to take photos of some tiny desert pansy/violet flowers ...and as i looked up i realised the entire plateau was a carpet of little purple flowers defying the dry dust wind and cold blizzard snows and scorching sun that changes from one hour to the next




yesterday i saw my first real live wild coyote .... and a few days ago on the way to San Francisco i smelt my first skunk and ate my first bagel dog...weeeeeeeooooowwwwwww nasty

lying on the lawn in a bikini one day watching an american eagle swooping around scanning for ... marmots and chipmunks...? ....and the following day in a blizzard on the same lawn dressed for antarctica .... whuh?????

ahhhhhhh Americana,.... kitsch and squeaky clean perfect front yards ...flags and big big trucks the wild wild west movie continues....

kiwiana .......

Kiwiana ..... all the kitsch and classic icons of our past ,....
it's amazing how comforting it is to find fish and chips wrapped in newspaper in a 50s tearooms style restaurant ....






..

..


i have excellent memories while flatting, of moving all our furniture outdoors on to the lawn on the weekend having the indoors outdoors ...including massively heavy deco lounges ,lamps, tables and dinosaur garden sculptures...

yesterday after lurking around in the art galleries, i found a new favourite bar reminiscent of that .... scruffy old couches out in the alleyway ...a huge firewall ... good cloudy bay NZ wine







and a guy walking the tightrope between the buildings in the alley above us...



doesn't get much better than this .........in my opinion ..... :D
ahhhhh lovely !!!

secret goings on ....

...in european-street-team-etsy-land ... we have secret easter bunny project ....
today my secret bunny sent me a present that is absolutely sneaky....
the wonderous Mitsy alias Artmind is the co-ordinator ....
she interrogates and matches euro etsy babies together with astonishing persistence and cheekiness....

today my secret easter bunnys gift arrived from
Germany



from ... the amazing Dindi .... whose silver smithing works and word-play, i totally am addicted to .......
just as she is addicted to collecting words ...
i am a collector of her hearts ....

and she remembered my great great meltdown when she first showed her little bandaid heart ....which seemed entirely appropriate to me for the repairs of every kind of contusion or catastrophe of the "Amour" kind ....

so today ... arrived the little bandaid heart full full full of good Dindi vibes

and here .... my little bandaid heart



thank you so much Dindi
for all your beautiful wishes and love


matchstickgirl whispers ......"it has worked..."

matchstickgirl is most happily dindi-fied

:D