A Trip to Europe Part 1: Italy

 Once again, my posting of things has slowed down greatly. Most of May was a flurry of non-hobby activities. My own school year ended followed by my daughter's university graduation! 

It was very emotional for me. My oldest is now flying off into the "adult" world. She is the oldest of my two and I felt like we have always had this special connection. 

Almost right after that, we did a long planned family vacation in Europe. Probably our last one as a family of four now that she will be starting work as an electrical engineer in Milwaukee Wisconsin. I will not bombard you with a million pictures. Just a few highlights for each place we went to.

The plan was to work our way north across Europe so the first country on our tour was Italy. We only had about three weeks total, and my wife really wanted to see Florence and Venice as well as Rome. We began our trip by landing and staying four nights in Rome. Of our various cities on our tour, I enjoyed it the least. I'm sure getting pickpocketed on a crowded right headed to the Vatican no less, didn't help! I was very sure I was careful, but the thief must of been even better. Its not to say that I hated Rome, it is more that I enjoyed the other places we visited. It was very hot and seemed dingy for some reason. It was a good thing there were all those public water fountains. Anyway:

Trevi Fountain. Hoards of tourists, plus you had to pay to get any closer to the fountain 😦: 

The Pantheon

The Pantheon

The Colosseum and Forum. I have to say that spending the extra on a guided tour was really worth it. The tour guide really knew his stuff: 

The Vatican and Vatican Museum:

A very tired Ivan contemplating which pizza to dive into first at our Air BnB:

Our next stop was Florence. I was a much happier camper there. There were a lot of tourists, but I didn't feel squished. We only stayed two nights, but we get a good tour of the city. Florence and Venice had a much higher "chill" factor than Rome did according to my kids. 

Enjoying a delicious sandwich brunch:

Pitti Palace:

Uffizi Museum:

Primavera (Spring) by Botticelli is probably one of my favorite paintings. 

It's mainly due to this woman. She is the only one in the painting looking directly at the viewers. There is something mysteriously intriguing about her. I first saw her back in 1984 when I was touring Europe. I didn't notice it back then, but she is pregnant. 

The kid has to have her cappuccino:

Of course, we can't forget the star of Florence...David:

The last stop in Italy was Venice. Again, we only stayed for two nights. It was warm there, but there were some breezes off the Adriatic that helped moderate the temperatures.

Gotta have a Gondola ride:

The Bridge of Sighs:

Next, Basilica San Marco and the Doge's Palace that included the Bridge of Sighs and the prison. Again, it was worth it to have a guided tour with a guide who really knew her history:

Ivan passing across the Bridge. Not build for a 6'4" person:

The Boy was getting rather mopey from too much culture and I was tempted to leave in the prison, but he got all happy when we let him go have a dessert at the Cafe Florian, the oldest coffee shop in Europe, while we toured one more museum: 

So ended our visit to Italy. I was going to make this one long post, but for your sake and mine, I decided to break it up. Next stop Paris. 

Newish Ironsides

 I noticed that I have two posts that I have yet to put up on my blog. One was started over a month ago and the other about a week ago. Unfortunately, I have had very little time to do much of anything and they remain unfinished. For the past month or so, I am lucky if I can stay awake long enough to get in a half hour of hobby time at night. So, if push comes to shove, I choose working on stuff than blogging about it. 

My current work in progress is tiny ironclad based very loosely on the US Civil War USS New Ironsides: 

Source: US Library of Congress

From my brief research, the masts for the sails were removed and replaced by two simple pole masts for signaling purposes. It was not very sea worthy and had a lot of mechanical issues. It did participate in the First Battle of Charleston Harbor but most of its action at sea consisted of bombarding forts. 

Here is my take on the New Ironsides:

Just to be clear, it is not done yet. Mine has a flying bridge, the original does not. In fact, I'm not sure how the original New Ironsides was steered. It took me a while just to find its conning tower, which looked no bigger than a garbage can and aft of the funnel. Mine has fewer gun ports and lacks a ram. I will finish it, but I plan to make a New Ironsides II. For some reason, it came out shorter than I would have liked. Measuring in at just under 4 cm, the gunboats that I have made are longer than this thing. Therefore, I want to lengthen it by at least another centimeter. A longer ship will mean I can add more gun ports. I will keep my flying bridge and add a conning tower just to the front of the bridge. I will also add a ram to it. I might or might not add sail masts. 

The Fleet Continues to Grow

 I had my spring break. As in the past, I had plans to accomplish many things, but probably a fourth were accomplished. This included building a lot more ships. Like everything else in my hobby endeavors, I jump from one thing to another. I probably have ten ships at various stages of completion. That being said, I think I have enough built to finally have a sea battle. Of course I say that about a bunch of things. My previous post showed the work-in-progress of the protected cruiser and gunboat below.

Protected Cruiser

This ship is loosely based on the Russian protected cruiser Boyarin.

The differences are the greatly reduced ship's boats, and the secondary guns are peeking out of the bulwarks on the superstructure rather than sticking out on small sponsons. 

Gunboat

This is the second gunboat made. This one is based on the imperial Russian gunboat Khrabri. 

There were some rearrangements such as repositioning of the bridge from the forecastle to behind the mast, and the number of secondary guns due to size constraints. 

Latest ships on patrol

Destroyers

Destroyers of the time period are pretty generic looking. This is a plus because, barring color scheme, they can fit in with any navy. I guess since they are technically torpedo boat destroyers, their initial emphasis was on destroying torpedo boats and the carrying of torpedoes was secondary. I wanted one that took its torpedo duties seriously. So, I made one patterned after a British WWI destroyer that had twin torpedo tubes. 

I wasn't in the mood to mess with gun shields, so I just added blobs of thick UV resin on the middle part of them and quickly cured. This represents the wider part of the gun. It doesn't even have a flying bridge....lazy builder!

Older model on the left.

Several things I have noticed as I build these ships. Not surprisingly, old photos are a hit or miss, often a miss. Ship plans are far more useful but you are only getting a top view and a profile view. Sometimes, I cannot really tell what is going on, especially with the superstructure and bridge. In a lot of ways, photographs of models are the most useful, especially when paired with plans. I've had a lot of "oh, so that is what this structure looks like" moments. They really helped a lot and my increasing level of detail on these ship is due to using ship models as a source.

Game Board

I did manage to spend a day expanding my hex board. I needed to make new sections and paint the underside of the sea hexes a green. This way, I can flip over the sections to make land. 

Sea

Land

The sea side is more unified in color than the land side of the sections. I experimented a lot with different colored alcohol markers. I avoided acrylic markers except to highlight the edges of the hexes. The hex tiles are a thin wood and I was afraid that the acrylic paint would potentially warp the tiles. I tried different glues to put together the sections and the best seems to be contact cement. Super glue works but the tiles snap off too easily, and the glue from a hot glue gun dries way too fast. I have been doing my gluing in my garage with the door open. It helps with the fumes, though Gorilla Glue makes it in a tube form, so I cap it as soon as I put the bead of glue on the edge of the hex tile. 

I think I have enough hexes to a least get a 3' x 5' board done. I will use any extras to build islands, some of which will have forts on them.