Purple City entry, Hué, Vietnam
beautifully restored roofs in Hué,
Central Vietnam
river Schelde near Antwerpen
romantic castle at Pierrefonds, France
mountain people near the Kasbah
of Chefchaouen, Morocco
crystal clear water,
the Elephant nature reserve
near Vientiane, Vietnam
Thai version of the Bahian trio eletrico
in Phimai, NE Thailand
view from Fira onto the inner sea of Santorini,
created by a prehistoric volcanic explosion
colourful rocks on the young volcanic island Nea
Kamenei in the inner Santorini sea
view from the volcano island onto Fira, high on the
Santorini rock face
beautiful sailing ship at anchor in Santorini Bay,
Greece
typical 'Americans in Paris' jazz band,
Seine south bank, Paris
frosty vineyards in the Mosel valley,
Germany
coffee service at a hip Salzburg café,
Austria
the Mad Hatter in Vienna
Post Office in Sopron, Hungary
doves in front of the Duomo
in Milano, Italy
impressive waterfalls
near Pakxe, South Laos
winter landscape
on the Mosel valley, Germany
evening impression of the beach
near Barra, Salvador, Bahia
palombière or doves' tower
in the Garonne region, S.W. France
winterscape somewhere in France
less than tropical beach at het Zwin
near Sluis, Netherlands
running girl statue at open air museum, Middelheim,
Antwerp
loveydovey birds at Fécamp,
Normandy (France)
frosty forest in the Alsace region, France
harbour lights on the Schelde
near Antwerp, Belgium
|
Interesting places and good addresses:
Belgium
Grenspark
De Zoom - Kalmthoutse Heide✶, natural
reserve with heather and dunes, North of
Antwerp
Kluisbos✶
(Kluisbergen / Mont de l'Enclus), hilly
region ('Flemish Ardennes') with birch wood
in the South of Flandres, with wood hyacints
in spring and beautifully coloured leaves in
autumn
Near our hometown Antwerp
- Old garnison and fortress Lillo✶ on
the Schelde river, North of Antwerp,
with some very good -fish- restaurants
- Former 'Zuiderdokken✶', one
of the loveliest places in Antwerp, with
many cafés and restaurants, the MuHKA✶
museum of contemporary art, the
MuHKA_media cinema and Zuiderpershuis✶, the
Centre of World Cultures that programs a
lot of world music and theatre
- Speaking of Antwerp movie theatres:
Cinema Cartoon's✶
- Middelheim park and open air sculpture
museum
Shopping & eating in Antwerp
- O'Tagine✶,
Moroccan restaurant
- Le
Pain
Quotidien✶,
expensive but very good rye bread (and
much more)
- Wapper Tien, café with famous
chocolate cake
- FNAC✶, the
best collection of CD's, books and IT
gear (even Apple!) in town
- S&S✶ is
our favorite supplier of all things Mac,
Autolei, Wommelgem
- restaurant Het Vermoeide Model,
Lijnwaadmarkt
- Saturday market on Theaterplein,
Graanmarkt (Davithaya fruits &
greens)
The beautiful city of Brugge✶
Brussels we don't like too much, but the
Atomium, the landmark of the Expo'58 World
Exhibition, is a must (and recently all
renewed for its 50th birthday). We also have
one shop to mention:
- Brazilian shop near South Station, rue
de l'Argonne, Brussels: goiabada,
queijo, guarana
Several regions in the South part of the
country have fantastic scenery, the Semois
valley, the Haute Fagne,...
Brazil
Salvador, Bahia, city full of music
- Espaço Natural, healthy restaurant
that uses the 'kilo' system (you pay for
the weight of the food you piled on your
plate), 2nd floor, Itaigara Shopping
- Photo repair shop, Pituba Park Center
- Instituto
Sacatar✶,
'A residency in Bahia for creative
people'
Chapada Diamantina (Bahia State)
Poças, Conde, Sítio de Conde (Bahia State, N
of Salvador) on the Linha
Verde✶
Barra
Grande✶
, beaches and a sandy village (Baìa de
Camamú, Costa do Dendê, Bahia)
Jericoacoara✶, more
beaches and another sandy village (Ceará,
NE. Brazil)
Waterfalls at Pirenôpolis✶
(Goiás, central Brazil)
Brasília✶, the
entirely new federal capital, designed as a
giant dragonfly by Lucio Costa, and with
several buildings by the famous Oscar
Niemeyer✶
- some landmarks are the white
crown-like cathedral of , the flying
saucer of the National Museum, the
playful arcs of the Juscelino Kubitschek
bridge, the Templo da Boa Vontade, the
transparant blue cube of the Santuário
João Bosco
Brotas, nature, tree walking, etc. (São
Paulo State)
Thailand
Bangkok
- New
Joe's
Guesthouse,✶
excellent food, massage parlour,
bar and internet (trok Mayon, off Kao
San Rd, Boulamphu
- Oar's travel agency (Trok Mayon)
- Wat Pho, oldest and second most
important temple, with the enormous
reclining Buddha, all covered in gold
- Massage
School✶
at Wat Pho, get an authentic Thai
massage from the people that learn the
art at this temple school, not really
cheap, but you'll remember it for days
afterwards!
Sala
Kaew
Ku✶,
Buddhist-Hindu theme park with the Wheel
of Life (Nong Khai, NE Thailand)
Chiang Mai, capital of the North, old city
within a square moat
Chiang Khong at the Mekong river, opposite
Ban Huay Xay in Laos
Phimai
- Prasat
Hin Phimai✶
, Unesco World Heritage site, probably
the best restored Khmer temple around,
the square heart of the square old town
of Phimai, all squarely laid out...
- Phimai National Museum, with lots more
Khmer sculptures
- Sai
Ngam✶,
the One-Tree-Forest or the largest
banyan (golden ficus) tree in the world,
complete with fortune tellers and forest
temple
- Boonsiri Guest House, Th.
Chomsudasadet
- Old Phimai Guest House, in an ancient
teak house, off the same street
Ko Chang, elephant island in the NE of the
Gulf of Siam
- Elephant retreat for retired
pachyderms
- Jungle View Guesthouse, run by a
German-Thai couple, halfway down the
West coast
Laos
Muang Sing, market town with different
groups of colourfully dressed minority
peoples
- Adima Guest House (between Muang Sing
and the Chinese border)
Luang Nam Tha, main city of the North, and
also a place with several hill tribes
- you get there either by Gaz truck
through the rainforest from Huay Xay, a
trip that produces some kind of internal
massage...
- or by boat up the Tha river, from Pak
Tha, the confluence with the Mekong, a 2
of 3 day experience – boat travel is
still the best you can get in Laos, if
you find it, and the time it takes
- Boat
Landing
Guesthouse✶
Luang Phabang
- Red Cross herbal sauna, Ban Visoun
(opposite Wat Visonnalat)
- Tad Sae waterfalls
Vang Vieng karst region and the Ang Nam Ngum
artificial lake
Vientiane
- Wat Sok Pa Puang herbal sauna,
Sisathanak
- Wat Si Saket, 1818 temple
- Heuan Lao Guest House, in the SE of
town
- the morning market Talaat Sao
- Elephant Nature Park, east of
Vientiane (off road 13)
Pak Xe
Champasak
- Wat
Phou✶,
Unesco World Heritage site, a source
from the rock at the foot of what the
locals call 'Penis Mountain' has assured
this place a few millenia of fertility
worship. To the cultures of Chen-La,
Cham, Khmer, and present time Buddhists,
this place is holy. To me and Touché
also in some way, because she 'found' me
here, on a photo
showing me sitting under a banyan tree
at the entry of this site in 2002. In
2006, we went there together...
kind of a romantic pilgrimage.
Vietnam
Hanoi, the prettiest capital in SE Asia
- Temple of Literature, a mandarin
university founded in the 11th century
- Hoan
Kiem lake✶
in the centre of the old town
- Water
Puppet Theatre✶,
disarmingly naive, near the lake
- One
Pillar Pagoda✶,
a beautiful small temple on top of a
single pillar inside a lotus pool, near
the National Museum and the Ho Chi Minh
mausoleum
Halong
Bay✶
and Cat Ba Island, this karst rock region in
the South China sea is now a Unesco World
Natural Heritage
The Purple City of the Viet emperors in Hué✶,
destroyed by the US and Vietcong during the
Tet Offensive, but now being rebuild with
Unesco support
Hoi
An✶,
old seafarers' town for the Chinese,
Japanese, Dutch etc., but then the river
silted up
Remnants of the medieval hinduist Champa✶
culture in My Son, Nha Trang, and the Cham
Museum in Da Nang
Morocco
Royal palace in Tetouan
Chefchaouen
- Guesthouse
- cosy Medina with Kasbah fortress at
the Outa el Hamman place
our webpages:
- Personal website of my spouse Touché,
with writings and photos of my love, a
present for her birthday in October
2010.
- The Alhambra
in Granada, Spain, that we visited at
Easter in 2005. It is one of the
highlights of Moorish art in Europe,
part of Unesco's World Heritage and
truely one of the Wonders of the Modern
World.
- The Wheel
of Life: "Life is a pattern of
influences ranged around the edge of
your horizons", a sculptural
representation of life inside a very
original 'theme park' that mixes Hindu
and Buddhist imagery.
- Greece
2004: Words and images inspired by
our trip to Athens and the Greek islands
of Paros and Santorini.
- 175
Cavalos: gallery of photos
from an exhibition of horse sculptures
around the Royal Museum of Fine Art in
Antwerpen, 2005. One statue for each
year of the existence of Belgium.
- Champignons
1 and Champignons
2: galleries with mushrooms in the
Belgian nature and thereabouts. "Why we
photograph mushrooms? Because we think
they're beautiful."
- Jericoacoara:
a
photo
series
from
our visit to a small fishers' village in
Ceara state, N.E. Brazil, July 2004. Two
sandy streets, giant sand dunes,
cristalline lagunes, and the tropical
ocean. Before the apocalypse arrives...
- Belgian
autumn: a first attempt at webpage
composing, with a few photos from the
beautiful colours of autumn.
- and finally reminescences
of high moments of our love: our Belgian
and our Brazilian wedding, and the feast
for five years together.
|
Germany
Naturpark
Lüneburger Heide✶
(south of Hamburg)
Lüneburg✶ (SE of
Hamburg), a small and lovely city with many
old houses with step-gables
Münster✶, another
lovely city just outside the Ruhrgebiet
Mosel valley between Trier and Koblenz
- Keltenhof✶, Tina
& Lothar Bremm, Zell-Kaimt: B&B
and wineshop
- Burg
Eltz✶,
a medieval castle in the middle of the
forest
Schwarzwald✶
(Baden-Württemberg)
Farm camping in the middle of nowhere: Waltcamping
Hüttenhof✶
in Rosenberg, in Schwaben✶, NE of
Stuttgart - Luigi speaks Italian
At the Danish border: Pension
Seeblick✶
at Fehmarn (Puttgarden ferry)
France
Normandy, with the famous Mont
Saint-Michel✶
Brittany, land of Merlin
the
wizard✶
, with prehistoric menhirs, dolmen and
alignements (at Carnac✶)
Parc
de Bercy✶
, a quiet and well-designed park in the SE
of Paris
Les Ardennes, just over the Belgian border
Vallée de la Semois, meandering river on
both sides of the border
- Camping municipal in Givet
Franche-Comté
- Restaurant Rouget de Lisle, Lons le
Saunier
the Netherlands
Drenthe
Nationaal
Park De Hoge Veluwe✶,
more heather and dunes, with deer...
Keukenhof✶,
beautiful coloured gardens, almost
exclusively with flowers from bulbs (tulips,
daffodils, crocuses...)
Texel, the first of the Wadden islands that
form the northern barrier of the Waddenzee
- Nature Park Texel Dunes, the Slufter✶
- Lighthouse on the North tip of the
island, Stenweg, de Cocksdorp
Valley of the Maas and Zuid-Limburg
Hungary
Gyöngyöspata in the Matra Hills (NE of
Budapest)
- a lovely camping, Kiraly
Völgy✶,
in hilly landscape and with a brook at
its foot for picnics and barbecues. The
service is top ten, and you can buy
local wines at one of the cellars in the
hillside of the village.
- Hungary's highest peak is nearby:
Kékestő (all of 1014m)
- the living folklore village of Holókő,
yet another Unesco site.
The wonderful black pottery made by Fazekas
Ferenc✶,
who has his workshop on the main street in
Nádudvar, S.E. of Hortobagy. Fõ út 152. Tel:
54-480-569 or 30-481-3441 e-mail: info@nadudvarifazekas.hu✶✶
The B&B houses of Horvath
Laszlo✶
and Nagy Laszlo in Szentendre (St. Andrew),
a little bit away from the maddening crowd
of Budapest. These friendly people offer
noce rooms with breakfast for a reasonable
price, and Buda is only a trainride on the
HÉV (S-bahn) away.
Hungary has a rich (and often bloody)
history, and many small towns harbour a
treasure of buildings in various styles. Sopron✶, Győr,✶
and Eger✶ are some
of these friendly and colourful towns. Eger
is the only town where we found a minaret,
although Hungary has been governed by the
Turcs for many years. Maybe the Habsburg
rulers didn't like them? We also liked
Eszterhazy's castles, one in Eisenstadt✶, Austria,
the other in Fertőd✶, at the
Hungarian side of the border.
Austria
The idyllic setting of camping✶
Putterersee in Aigen im Ennstal, at the side
of a lake with three swans and some ducks,
in a valley surrounded by fields, forests
and mountains. It's smack in the middle of
Austria, in Steiermark✶.
Also in mountainous country, we found a very
good place to sleep at the Carinthian
Music Academy✶
in Knappenberg/Hüttenberg✶. There's
also a museum about Bergbau, the Heinrich
Harrer Museum (an alpinist, friend of the
Dalai Lama), etc.
In Vienna, we particularly enjoyed the
Hundertwasser housing estate, designed by
the inventive and quite funny architect and
painter Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser✶
(1928-2000)
Italy
The Fréjus tunnel under Mont Blanc
Milano, looks sometimes like Paris, maybe
because of Napoleon... Famous for its
fashion shops, the Duomo (cathedral) with
its populated spires, the castle of
Sforza... and Leonardo da Vinci
- Milano is indeed one of Leonardo da
Vinci's towns. See his Cenacolo or last
supper with its incredible perspective
in the Santa Maria delle Grazie
- in the direction of Pavia is the
Certosa di Pavia, an interesting baroque
church and monastery.
- Pavia has its own Castello Visconteo,
in the same style as the Sforza Castle
of Milano.
Spain
Malaga
- Picasso Museum
- Roman Amphitheatre and Arab Alcazaba
fortress
- marina in Torremolinos
Granada
- Alhambra✶,
World heritage site, particularly the
Nazrid Palaces
Denmark
Møgeltønder✶, a small
'historical' rural village, in the SW corner
of the country (Southern Jutland)
The island of Møn, SE Denmark, with its white
cliffs✶
on the East side
Copenhagen is well worth a longer visit. We
were particularly enchanted by the beautiful
expositions at the National Museum, in
particular the Prehistory✶ section
The farthest tip of the country, near Skagen✶, where
the Skagerrak and the Kattegat meet each
other, sometimes with wild waves
The walking dune at Råbjerg
Mile✶,
with 3,5 million m3 of sand, moving along
the coast at 15 meters a year
- Tranum
Klit✶
camping, a quiet place at a few miles
from the sea shore
Norway
Norway is without doubt one of the most
beautiful, dramatic, and also
friendly countries in the world.
- Fennefoss✶
camping and huts near Evje in Setesdal
- Trillhus camping and huts in Torpo
with granma Bro
- Seim✶
camping in Røldal
Undredal✶ village
on the Aurlandsfjord, with goat cheese
specialty and the smallest stave church in
Norway
Sweden
Uppsala, an old, very nice and a bit sleepy
university town near Stockholm
Tanumshede✶
prehistory museum and park in Bohuslan (N.
of Göteborg), another Unesco World Heritage
site
Siljan lake in Dalarna (NW of Stockholm) was
made by a meteor ages ago, and it is kind of
a heartland for the Swedes, with the Dalar
horse as its symbol. We camped in Sollerön
on Midsummer's Eve and saw the traditional
boat races
Stockholm is a fascinating city (places with
a river or islands always have a special
appeal, and Stockholm is build on a lot of
islands). Gamla Stan, the colourful old
town, is a must see.
- we found a camping ground near an
underground station south of town:
Skärholmen. The place is run by the
local girls' football team, FC
Sätra✶,
but instead of grass, you'll find
gravel...
Arvika is a place about halfway between Oslo
and Stockholm. We found a nice camping at
the lake:
|
|
