Latest posts
-
Merry Christmas and a happy 2014
Merry Christmas and a happy 2014. Kees van Reeuwijk Lucia Beatriz Pitanguy Sampaio Daniel Sampaio
-
The Sultan’s elephant in Antwerp
The Sultan’s Elephant was a street theater performance by Royal de Luxe, a theatre company. It was originally performed in Nantes and Amiens to commemorate the death of Jules Verne a hundred years earlier. After that, the show was performed in London, Antwerp, and other places. In all cases it drew huge crowds.The story and characters of the…
-
Things to do: visit Claude Monet’s house and garden in Giverny
One place that is certainly worth a visit is Claude Monet‘s house and garden in Giverny. Monet first saw the small village of Giverny from a train, and he decided to live there. Eventually he bought a house there and lived in it for 43 years. Next to the house he had a large studio, and around the…
-
Things to do: use the channel tunnel
Admittedly this is mostly a symbolic thing to do, since all tunnels look alike. Nevertheless, the channel tunnel between Calais and Dover, connecting France to Great Britain, is a very impressive engineering feat, and that makes it worth visiting. See on: Google maps, OpenStreetMap (Image courtesy of wikimedia commons)
-
Things to do: visit the Fox Talbot museum in Lacock village, England
The englishman William Henri Fox Talbot was one of the most important inventors of photographic processes. He invented the calotype process, one of the earliest photographic processes. He was also one of the earliest photographers. In the abbey of Lacock village in Wiltshire, England, Fox Talbot took in 1835 a photo of a lace window. The…
-
Things to do: visit Palais Idéal du Facteur Ferdinand Cheval
One thing to do is visit the surreal building called Palais Idéal in Hauterives that the postman Ferdinand Cheval built. The photos I’ve seen, and the story behind it, look very intriguing: he started with a single stone that looked intriguing to him, and over many years he built a surreal castle with stones that he found…
-
Things to do: visit the Machines of the Isle of Nantes
One thing to do is visit the Machines of the Isle of Nantes. I have very good memories of the street performance The Sultan’s Elephant that I saw in Antwerp. The machines they show in Nantes are not the same, but to see a (variation of) the elephant again is already worth the visit, and I…
-
The Sun Clock Widget for Android
The home screen of an Android tablet or phone is where you put the shortcuts to your favourite apps. Android also allows widgets on the home screen, A widget allows an app to fill part of a home screen with its content. It is typically used to display information such as weather predictions, stock market…
-
Park of the Fiftieth Anniversary in winter
The Parc du Cinquantenaire (Park of the Fiftieth Anniversary) in winter. This is an area that is a little outside the center of Brussels. The arch commemorates 50 years of Belgian independence from the Netherlands. Considering the size of the arch, it must have been a great relieve at the time to be independent, although King Leopold…
-
The botanical gardens of Rio de Janeiro
The botanical gardens of Rio de Janeiro are the largest in Brazil. They are an important for research, but they are also a very popular tourist destination for Brazilians. They are also frequently home to some very remarkable human birds.