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VOLUME 38 NUMBER 1 | SPRING 2020

Heidelberg Castle was an extraordinary adventure to explore, designed with so many nooks and historic rooms, including ancient laboratories filled with impressive blown glass vessels. The partial remaining stonewall arcade facades adorned with figurative sculptures had mazes of staircases and doorways. Vilppu and his students perched alongside a cool, shaded, stone wall in the main courtyard to capture and interpret the dramatic ruins.

the Danube River to Budapest with legendary master drawing instructor Glenn Vilppu. As with life and especially with cruising, the best option is to always go with the flow. So, the artists rescheduled to sail AmaBella on the Danube August 1, 2021 from

Every page of each artist’s journal tells a personal story through color, pattern, contrast, strokes, texture and words that cannot be captured in a photograph. When artists visit their own journal entries, it ignites all of their sense-memories from their once meditative moment as if they were back in time at that very moment. Onboard AmaSerena, the artists occasionally would gather in the lounge on sofas and chairs to regroup. One by one, each artist performed a “show and tell” of their recent journal entries. Vilppu gently critiqued and made suggestions, for all of the artists. Not only did we learn from Vilppu critiquing our own journals, but with the wealth and diversity of talent and techniques onboard, we learned a lot from each other too. As we debarked in Basel, we reunited at sites around town and met for lunch and dinner as we slowly headed our own ways. I continued to the beautiful Lake Lucerne, Lake Como, Milan and then to Rome. There I met two ceramists who had just arrived from Ojai, Firestick Pottery and escorted them to my favorite Tuscan village for a Raku workshop with master Raku ceramist Mara Funghi. This summer, fellow artists and I planned to merge from around the world to meet in Bucharest to sail

Château Gütsch view in Lucerne, Switzerland

Giurgiu to Budapest with a pre-cruise in Istanbul and post-cruise in Vienna! If you are interested in joining the group, please contact me for details at val@blueribboncruise.com. Learn more: www.freemanart.com