In my last post you saw a photo of Lac de Creno (Corsican: Lac de Crenu). The special thing about this lake is, that it isn’t surrounded with rocks, but with trees. There are big trees and small trees in the water, and you can see reed in the lake, even in the winter.

Here you see a little pine tree. It’s growing on a very small island in the lake. If you were to walk towards this tree, you would defenitely fall into the water, even though it seems like you can walk on the snow.

Thanks for visiting and have a great day! I will try to post more as soon as I can.

Since a few days I’m back in Corsica again. I celebrated Christmas here with my family and I’m going to stay here for one more week. Yesterday I went walking in the mountains with my parents and sister. We visited Lac de Creno. It’s a lake in the middle of the mountains. We’ve been there before in the summer, when there were water lilies, but at this moment there is snow and ice around and on the lake.

Here you can see the icicles on the mountain. At some parts there were really a lot of them, and they were really long.

Before you reach the lake, you have to walk for a while. (about 1,5 hours) This was a bit difficult sometimes because the ground was slippery. Luckily, no one fell of the mountain.

This is a part of the lake. The water is frozen and there are a few small islands where trees grow. The lake is a beautiful place to just sit for a while, eating your lunch and enjoying the view!

Merry Christmas everyone! I would like to thank you all for visiting my blog so often and for leaving comments. I greatly appreciate that.

And what is Christmas without Santa Claus? That would be pretty strange! But did you know that Santa Claus is actually derived from the Dutch Sinterklaas? Sinterklaas is a man, who looks like a slender Santa Claus, that also gives children gifts. This is on December 5th. If you want to learn more about Sinterklaas, you can read this post I’ve written a year ago.

As you know, I went to Aachen not so long ago. I’m really sorry I couldn’t post anything about it earlier, but I was just too busy with school and other things. Luckily I don’t have to do anything regarding to school now, so I have time to work on my blog!

The Christmas market contains of wooden stalls around the Aachen Cathedral. It’s the oldest cathedral in northern Europe. Charles the Great (Charlemagne) built the Cathedral. He was the king of the Franks and also the Emperor of Romans. Charlemagne was canonized in 1166, around 350 years after his death.

This is the Cathedral in Aachen. You can also see a few stalls of the Weihnachtsmarkt. In the stalls you can buy many kind of things: a lot of food (there are some really special things!), toys, decoration, tourist items and more.

Last thursday I went to a city in Germany with my school. This was a project for all the people in my grade who have the subject German. I’m one of those people, so I was really excited to go to Germany for the first time in my life. We went to the city Aachen (also known as Aken or Aix-la-Chapelle) It´s a city just across the border of the Netherlands.

Since we had to drive for 4 hours with the bus, I already had to wake up at 5 am! I didn´t like that at all, but it was nice to see the sun rise and also see the sun set while I was in the bus.  This resulted in the next two pictures. They are taken when I was inside the bus, so the raindrops on the window give a nice effect.

I know it´s been a while since I´ve posted anything, but I´ll certainly tell you more about my day in Aachen!

Fata Morgana is a really fun attraction in de Efteling. The attraction consists of 14 small boats. The boats lead you to a complete different world: The Wonderful world of 1001 Nights.

You hear eastern music and sail through an arabic city. You see people working, poor people but also rich people. There is a market, there are belly dancers, tigers and all the other things of 1001 Nights.

All the people and animals in the attraction are robot dolls, but it’s very realistic. It’s almost as if you are really in another world. 

This is the outside of Fata Morgana.  Everything is completely in the Arabic style.

If you want to see a video of the inside of the attraction, click here. (Contains spoilers!) The video is not made by me.

It’s already autumn here since september 23rd. The flowers are gone, the leaves are turning brown and fall of the trees. Personally I don’t really like autumn because it’s starting to get cold again, but besides that autumn is actually a nice season because of its colors. When you walk through a forest you can see a lot of different mushrooms and every leave has a different color. I also found this mushroom in the forest. To me it actually looks like a (strange) kind of bread, but apparently it’s a ‘gele knol ammoniet’. Sorry, I have no idea what that is in English. Literally it would be ‘yellow tuber ammonite’, but I’m actually really sure that is not its real name.

Hope you enjoy autumn!

Villa Volta is one of my favorite attractions in de Efteling. I really like this attraction because of the beautiful decoration, the legend and the music. 

It’s a Madhouse, built by Vekoma in 1996. In that time it was one of the first Madhouses. In a Madhouse you get the idea that the building, yourself or both are turned upside down. In fact this is not happening, it’s an illusion.

When you enter the house, you hear a story told by an old man, Hugo. The story is based on the legend of  ’De Bokkenrijders’ (The Goat Riders/The Buckriders). They were robbers in Kempen, Limburg and a bit of Belgium. The robbers made a pact with the devil and people said they saw them fly through the sky on the back of goats.

Hugo van den Loonsche Duynen is the leader of the robbers and Villa Volta is his home. One day, the goat riders robbed the Abbey of Postel. A woman in white clothes, who was floating through the air,  came to Hugo and warns him:

”Thou shalt not steal, never carry anything beyond this Holy Cross… Or else thou sthalt be banned in thy own house, and shalt never find peace of mind anymore”

Hugo ignored her warning and pushed her away. When he came back home he saw her standing there, on top of his house, her arms swinging in the wind. She tells him:

”Nowhere in your house, nor in any other place in the world, will you find peace… Only when a noble man with the clear conscience like that of a newborn child enters your house, you will find peace in your home and in your heart”

 

A few days ago I went to the Dutch amusement park ‘De Efteling’. It’s the largest amusement park in the Netherlands and one of the oldest theme parks in the world. (It’s opened in 1952) The park is fun for everyone: children, teens and adults. You can compare it a bit with Disneyland, but in my opinion it’s very different. De Efteling is twice as large as the original Disneyland park in California and less cartoon-like and more fantasy-like.

In the park are different areas: Reizenrijk (Travel Realm), Marerijk (Fairy Realm), Ruigrijk (Rough Realm) and Anderrijk (Differ Realm). You can also find many different cultures in the Efteling. There are places with an Arabian theme, Japanese, Dutch and many other themes.

In the following days I will tell you a lot about de Efteling and show you a lot of photos. If you visit the Netherlands for a long time, you really have to go to de Efteling!

This is the entrance of de Efteling.

Last week, October 3rd, was the opening of the Brasil Festival in Amsterdam. In the next few weeks there will be different events related to Brazil, such as: Brazilian movies, Brazilian music, Brazilian dance, Brazilian art and a lot more. Other years there were festivals about China and India, and this time we will learn more about the Brazilian culture.

In this post I will tell you about the festival and I’ll also show you many photos of the opening of the festival. Enjoy!

The opening was at the ‘Museumplein’ in Amsterdam. Some of you, who follow my blog for a longer time or who live in the Netherlands, probably recognize it. If you want to see how het Museumplein looks in the winter, when there is snow and when there is no festival, click here.

This is the Concert Hall, close to het Museumplein. On the buidling is an advertisement for the Festival. There will be many performances in this building.

”Musical riches of Brazil. From choro to capoeira and from classical to jazz”

Ants are actually strange creatures. They seems so fragile, but they are in fact really strong. Some people say that an ant can carry 20 times its own weight, others say it can even carry 100 times its own weight,. Even if it could ‘only’ carry 20 times its own weight it’s incredible. Have you ever carried something of 1100 kg or more? I don’t think so.

Ants aren’t only really strong, they definitely know what teamwork is. An anthill always seems so chaotic, but somehow every single ant knows what he has to do. When you look at the ants you can always find a few ants helping eachother. Real teamwork, isn’t it?

These ants were in my grandmother’s garden in Corsica.

It’s getting autumn here, but luckily some plants still have there flowers, like this one. When I took this photo it was around 1 pm and it rained a lot before, so the water drops where still on the flowers. The wind almost caused the drops to fall of the plant.

Almost falling down…

I love it how many different photos you can take with the sun, sky and trees. Each photo is so unique and the colours are always beautiful. When I was on Corsica I experimented a lot with this. This is one of the photos. Hope you like it!

Some of you may have seen the small letters in this photo. I decided to make some sort of watermark in my photos. It’s too difficult for me to make a real watermark, so now I put my initials in the photos.

Two weeks ago I went back home. I had a good time on Corsica, and still have many other photos to show you guys. These past days I haven’t been really busy with my blog, but that will change soon. I needed to get used to The Netherlands again. It’s really much colder here, haha!

We went back home by boat and car. I’ll show youtwo photos of the boats.

This is a boat of SNCM. The picture is taken in Ajaccio, while we were waiting for our boat. The boat is called Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon Bonaparte was born on Corsica so you can find a few things related to him on Corsica.

This boat, from Corsica ferries, is the boat we had back to Toulon. 

Last week there were some really beautiful fireworks by a hotel here. I took my camera with me and took some pictures. We even saw a falling star that night! Sadly I couldn’t take a picture of that, but I did take some pictures of the fireworks. I really like the colors and figures of the fireworks. It also reminds me a bit of the traffic lights photos I took a while ago. (See this post)

This one reminds me a bit of palm trees because of the figures.

Of course the fireworks are different in the photos, but I really like the effect of the different lights.