Sprookjesbos

About an hour’s drive from Antwerp you will find Efteling, a beautiful theme park based around the fairytales or sprookjes of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault. Opened in 1952, Efteling is one of the oldest theme parks in the world. We’d been told that we couldn’t leave Belgium without making a visit, so on Saturday we spent a wonderful day exploring the world of fairytales.

The sprookjesboom or fairytale tree. He is a wise old oak who tells stories about the other inhabitants of the fairytale forest.

Efteling began it’s life as a fairytale forest where ten fairytales had been brought to life. Over time it has grown into a full sized theme park with a range of rides and attractions, but it is the sprookjesbos which is the most beautiful and unique part of the park.

The witch ascending to the top of the tower via Rapunzel’s hair.

Edie posing in the sprookjesbos.

The rather well-endowed Little Mermaid.

Gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel.

Tom Thumb attempting to steal the giant’s boots. He is known here as Klein Duimpje.

This castle is home to Snow White’s evil stepmother – complete with talking magic mirror!

The flying Fakir on his magic carpet.

As well as exploring the Sprookjesbos, we went on lots of rides. Our favourite was the Droomvlucht or Dreamflight ride, where we flew through a dream world of forests, fairies, castles and trolls.

Singing fairies in the Droomvlucht.

They were singing and swinging.

A dreamlike fairy world – so beautiful.

If you’d like to see many more Efteling pics, click on the link to my Flickr photos. We thoroughly enjoyed our day – we’ve been to a few theme parks now but have never stayed right until closing time as we did at Efteling. We can all highly recommend it.

Us girls at the end of a very long but very enjoyable day 🙂

Tomorrow it is Olive and Edie’s last day of school and then on Wednesday morning we fly to Virginia to have a look round. It’s going to be a big week, full of many emotions. I’m going to try and write a post from Virginia just to let you catch a small glimpse of our new stomping ground.

Take care everyone. Lots of love xxx

Zes jaar oud!

So we now have a very big six year old in our house. For Olive it was a very long time coming. For at least the last three months there was much discussion in our house around the topic of the 6th birthday. How many more days until my birthday? I’d like this cake / that cake and it’s going to be this theme / that theme for my party – I think you get the picture.

I love the theme that Olive finally settled on – children of the world. It just sums up perfectly for me one of the big rewards of this expat life. Both Olive and Edie are so interested in different cultures and languages, and are now so much more aware of the incredibly diverse world that we live in. Attending an international school just highlights this further.

I gave Olive the option of getting a professionally designed invitation – so easy to do and not that expensive if you use a site like Etsy – but she insisted that the design be hers. I was really proud of the effort she put into her invitation and we were all thrilled with the result.

First she drew the globe, then the children. She cut everything out herself then we scanned it into the computer. Voila! An original Olive design.

The other thing that Olive was determined to do was have her party at home. With 24 children on the guest list this was going to be something of a challenge but the teacher in me rose to the occasion and planning it all was lots of fun. The party itself was lots of fun too but I very much needed several glasses of wine come Saturday evening and I think it’s safe to say that’s the last big birthday party we host at home!

Here are some photos from the day Olive turned six and the big children of the world party.

Zes jaar oud vandaag! Hip hip hoera!

One of the great things about birthdays now is the parcels that come from New Zealand - especially when there are chocolate fish in them! Thanks Granny 🙂

A birthday hug for big sis.

Olive loved the fact that this year she could read all her birthday cards herself.

This is all she asked for -a kids cook book.

Berry pancakes for breakfast are a birthday tradition in our house.

The day of Olive's birthday was spent trying out a recipe from her new cook book. Just like her Mum, she went straight for a sweet one.

With Richard still in the States, cake making duties fell to me. My husband sets the bar pretty high when it comes to birthday cake making so I was feeling the pressure!

With a theme of children of the world the cake could really only be one thing - the world! Gulp!

All I can say is thank god for ready to roll icing and the internet.

Not looking too shabby.

The finished cake. The flags represent all the different countries in attendance at the party.

There was a wee bit of cupcake baking too.

Ready for the party to start. Fingers crossed!

Edie and Olive - children of the world.

They've even got the whole world in their hands - sorry, couldn't resist!

Neither of the girls wanted to wear their Maori costumes so I was left to fly the flag for Aotearoa.

Olive asked her friends to wear something from their culture. Here's Milla in her Aussie Rules t-shirt - brilliant!

We had a cowboy...

and a statue of liberty! She even had the torch.

Captain America came too.

Crowd control.

Working on the birthday flag that we got the children to decorate for Olive.

Kinderen van de wereld.

We are so happy to have Richard home for a couple of weeks and are planning a little trip away this weekend. Hope you are all well and we’re sending lots of love xxx

Paasvakantie

It’s paasvakantie or Easter holidays in Belgium at the moment. Olive and Edie have two weeks off school and Richard is into his second week in the United States. We’re missing him lots but are really looking forward to seeing him in Barcelona on Friday – yipee!

Thought I’d share with you a few of the things we’ve been doing to keep ourselves busy.

Olive went mountain biking. Technically this happened before the Easter holiday but I couldn't resist including this picture - so cute with her helmet and camelbak - just like her Dad 🙂

Olive and Edie went to a girls only birthday tea party. Naturally this called for the hair straighteners!

They are posing in front of the tree which will become our paasboom or Easter tree.

Edie with her great friend Chloe, who was hosting the tea party.

Olive got all dressed up for the Easter egg hunt at school. Her friend Harry told his Mum that "Olive looked so beautiful today". When I told her what he said there was a lot of blushing!

The girls blinged up the paasboom...

and did a spot of egg dyeing.

No matter how hard I try, I can never get ours to look like Martha Stewart's!!

Found these nifty egg holders in the supermarket.

Made adding some paint so much easier.

I even attempted making some hot cross buns. I really miss these.

I find any recipe that includes the words "yeast" and "kneading" somewhat terrifying. Fortunately our mixer has a hook attachment that does the kneading for you. Despite this I was still convinced that the dough wouldn't rise.

To my utter surprise it did and the girls proclaimed the buns delicious. I think they were a little on the tough side - a bit over kneaded I suspect - but not bad at all for a first attempt. Thanks Nigella!

We took a ride on this amazing wheel set up outside the central railway station.

Looking pretty happy with the Easter holidays so far.

Near the big wheel there were a few amusement park rides.

How could we resist a Popeye and Olive Oyl carousel?

We also checked out this movie from the makers of Wallace and Gromit. Very funny, great soundtrack and a dodo!

On Friday we have a very early start in order to be at Brussels Airport in time for our flight to Barcelona. Everyone we have spoken to about this city has had nothing but good things to say about it. Edie and Olive have Spanish friends, a brother and sister who come from Barcelona, and their Mum very kindly took me out for coffee and gave me a whole list of places to go. We are very excited.

Hope you all have a great Easter. Safe travels and I’ll be back early next week with the Barcelona update!

Dinant

On Saturday morning we packed up the car and drove south into Wallonia, the French speaking region of Belgium. As it was the last couple of days of the crocus vakantie, and as Richard is heading to the States next weekend, we wanted to have a bit of a family holiday. Plus we wanted to get back into travelling more regularly in and around Belgium. Our travel in recent months was focused heavily on New York and then New Zealand, and as our time in Europe is not unlimited we need to keep on exploring.

Notre-Dame church and the Citadelle of Dinant.

About a ninety minute drive south of Antwerp, you will find the small town of Dinant. This very picturesque settlement stands on the east bank of the river Meuse. Dinant is dominated by the gothic style, black onion dome of Notre-Dame church, and also by the escarpment or Citadelle perched high on the rocks above the church.

The traditional sites of Dinant had to wait however as Richard was very keen for us to explore some of the surrounding countryside on our fietsen or bikes. Olive and Edie are always keen to travel this way and as I do a lot of cycling in Antwerp, I couldn’t see any reason why not to…I had of course forgotten one of the key differences between Flanders and Wallonia…hills!

All ready to explore.

"What was that? A climb akin to the Wadestown hill? Yep..sure..no problem...gulp!"

Because of the aforementioned hills, there was a lot of huffing and puffing and a fair amount of walking whilst pushing the bicycles, but what we got to see made it all worth it.

"Just a bit further Mum...honest!"

Such beautiful scenery - Wallonia has so many more wide open spaces.

The reward for yet another climb.

Of course the great thing about climbing hills is that you also get to go down them – heaps of fun, if not a tad scary, on the fietsen. No photos of this unfortunately – all energies focused on surviving downhill dash with child behind me!

We covered about a 20km loop then reattached the bikes to the car and headed for our hotel, Les Grisons. We had planned to drop off our stuff and head out again but lo and behold we switched on the television just as the England vs Wales rugby match began. To be honest I was glad of an excuse to rest my aching limbs and made good use of the bath whilst Richard revelled in England’s defeat.

Les Grisons - just outside of Dinant.

The couple of times we’ve been in Wallonia, I’ve had the opportunity to parlez-vous Francais and I made very good use of my high school French on this occasion. There was a mix up with our booking which led to me opening the door into an already occupied room. I had to go back to the main hotel, ask the daughter of the hotelier – about 10 years old and no English – to go and get papa and then explain that “il ya quelqu’un dans chambre dix-sept”. I managed to get everything resolved without resorting to English once – tres bien!

We dined at the hotel restauarant – very formal, very quiet, an older couple next to us who appeared to grimace every time Olive or Edie muttered a sound, very stressed out Mummy – you get the picture. Halfway through dinner, the daughter of the hotelier appeared and promptly had Olive and Edie under her spell. Despite the fact that she had no English and their French runs to “bonjour” and “on y va”, they got on like a house on fire. The older, grim faced gentleman asked me about the girls and turned out to be quite lovely. We had a little chat en francais and dinner suddenly got a whole lot more relaxed – phew!

Sunday was devoted to catching the telepherique or cable car up to the Citadelle, and exploring Grotte la Merveilleuse – a fantastic cave which is renowned for its frozen waterfalls, stalactites and stalagmites. We also drove through the Rocher Bayard, a pinnacle of rock which marks the most westerly point reached by German troops during the Ardennes offensive.

Rocher Bayard.

Quick photo opp whilst there was no traffic.

Looking down on Dinant from the Citadelle.

The escarpment. It's possible to walk up from the bottom - only 408 steps.

Descending into Grotte la Marveilleuse.

Frozen waterfalls.

Our wonderful guide who switched effortlessly between French, English and Dutch - amazing.

Olive and Edie, who’d had a very late Saturday night, were starting to fade by the time we reached the end of our tour of the cave, so we started to make for home. Whilst the girls slept, we took a slow drive home via Namur and Leuven – more places for us to come back and visit. Belgium is definitely underrated as a tourist attraction.

If you click on the link to my flickr photos you will see many more images of our visit to Dinant, plus you’ll also find out who is Dinant’s most famous son – your clue is Henry Mancini’s famous musical score, The Pink Panther.

And I’ve written captions for the photos too – all the more reason to check them out!

Until next time – au revoir!

NYC Part 5

Our last day in New York was spent visiting the wonderful Metropolitan Museum of Art and then heading back to Brooklyn to explore the area known as Dumbo.

The Met is a renowned art museum, one of the largest art galleries in the world and home to more than two million works. Olive and Edie were very keen to check out the Egyptian rooms so this is where we began our visit. It was such a great collection of artifacts – including mummies – and the atrium like room set up with the remains of an Egyptian temple was just beautiful.

Outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Checking out the Egyptian artifacts.

A couple of old mummies!

So many interesting and beautiful objects on display.

The Met building itself is stunning.

Into the temple.

From there we wandered the halls and saw so many wonderful things – sculpture, paintings, architecture…it went on and on. We all thoroughly enjoyed it – the building itself is so beautiful and as for the museum shop…let’s just say I had to be extracted before another couple of hours went by!

A little bit of Tiffany.

Loved this Tiffany window - imagine that in your house!

The Met is right next to Central Park and just as you enter the park there is yet another great playground inspired by the ancient artifacts on display in the museum – lots of pyramid shapes – heaps of fun. We let the girls burn off some energy and then it was back to Whole Foods for lunch.

More gorgeous autumn colours at the Ancients playground.

We ventured back to Brooklyn, keen to explore the area known as Dumbo. Richard was sure the name must have something to do with the elephant Dumbo but it’s actually just an acronym for down under the Manhattan bridge overpass. Jerry Seinfeld was once quoted as saying that New Yorkers added the O because they didn’t want to have a neighbourhood called “Dumb”!

In Dumbo there is a great playground and a beautiful carousel fully enclosed in glass. Unfortunately it was closed but we spent a fair amount of time with our noses pressed up against the glass. We sat and watched the ferries and tug boats on the river, listened to the roar of the trains as they thundered across the bridge to and from Manhattan and laughed as Olive and Edie goofed around in the playground.

Dumbo.

Little Miss NYC at Brooklyn Bridge park.

Thanks to the trains roaring over the bridge, this was one of the noisiest parks I'd been in!

In Brooklyn Bridge Park browsing one of the several picture books I bought about NYC - for the girls of course!

The Dumbo carousel.

Dinner that night was at Grimaldi’s pizza under the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s a bit of a New York institution and we’d been warned that we might have to wait for a table. It was only 5pm so we thought we’d have no problem but discovered a queue of about ten people waiting to get in. As customers left the owner would emerge and invite the next punters in. Because there were four of us we managed  to jump the queue and were soon munching down on some traditional coal-fired thin crust pizza. It was appropriate that we should have pizza on our last night in Brooklyn – they say it’s where the best pizza in the world is found. Dessert was ice cream from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory down by the water.

Waiting to get into Grimaldi's

It was worth the wait - yum!

Olive and Edie - crazy about New York City 🙂

And all too soon it was time to go home and pack and bid farewell to the big apple. It’s big and noisy and fast and intimidating – but wherever we went we met friendly people, got great service and just about every time we got on the subway at least one person got up and offered us their seat. In fact our only negative experience was the one I will describe below – as Richard said afterwards, “you have to put that in your blog!”

We’d emerged from a subway station and were a bit unsure as to which direction to take to reach Central Park. An older gentleman was walking in our direction – he looked a bit gruff but I stopped him and asked him which way we should head. After pointing us in the right direction he asked me where I was from and I noticed he spoke with a South African accent. I answered  “New Zealand” and he barked at me “you’re rugby team isn’t doing very well is it?” I was a bit stunned but laughed and said “we did just win the world cup!”,  at which he spat out “stole it you mean!” and stalked off.  We were gobsmacked! Going to New York you worry about being mugged or hassled on the street for money or being chased by an angry waiter for not tipping enough – being bullied for winning the Rugby World Cup can now be added to that list!

Right that is enough from me. If you haven’t already had a look you can see all our NYC pics by clicking on the link to my Flickr photos.

Thanks for sharing our New York adventures with us. It’s so nice to think that our next big adventure will be shared with so many of you in the flesh – Aotearoa here we come!

NYC Part 1

When Olive, Edie and I went to Italy in April we were introduced to the movie Night At The Museum starring Ben Stiller as reluctant night guard Larry Daley, who is hired to work at the natural history museum in New York. It is a favourite movie of the girls’ cousins, William and James, and it was watched numerous times during our stay in Tuscany. When we told the girls that we would be visiting New York they were very keen to visit “Larry Daley’s museum” and it was here that we spent most of our first day in the big apple.

Situated on Central Park West in the upper west side of Manhattan, the American Museum of Natural History is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world. It’s collection contains over 32 million specimens, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at a time. You would need days to see everything but we managed to fit in a fair bit during our six hour visit.

Because of it’s close association with the movie, the museum provides visitors with a guide sheet of all the displays which are represented in the movie. This meant we got to see all the important stuff like Rexy the dinosaur;  Dexter the mischievous Capuchin monkey;  the amazing dioramas which capture beautifully so many parts of our plant and animal kingdoms; the statue of Theodore Roosevelt atop his horse and the girls absolute favourite – Dumb Dumb. Dumb Dumb is an Easter Island statue who is notable in the film for wanting to be fed “gum gum” every night.

Dumb Dumb!

In addition to our tour of all the movie highlights we watched a presentation in the planetarium about the birth of stars; visited an exhibition devoted to the largest of dinosaurs where the girls got to have a go at digging for fossils; watched a short film about tornadoes and the people who study them which was actually really interesting; got to see up close a range of exquisitely coloured but very poisonous frogs; and wandered through a beautiful display of butterflies – Edie was able to get up close and personal with one of it’s inhabitants.

Meeting Miss Butterfly.

Miss Butterfly takes a shine to Edie.

Olive preferred to keep her distance.

We also explored as many of the permanent displays as we could – the dinosaurs were a big highlight and Olive was very excited to discover a Wharenui not too far from Mr. Dumb Dumb. As the day turned into late afternoon we left Larry’s museum and crossed the road into Central Park.

Edie and her dinosaur.

Rexy!

A little bit of Aotearoa in NYC.

A playground was one of the first things we stumbled across and as Edie was still in the throes of her “why didn’t you buy me that dinosaur in the museum shop?” tantrum (!) we sought refuge amongst the strollers and other noisy kids. Olive had a ball whilst Edie sorted herself out and then we went deeper into the park to do some more exploring.

Olive right at home in Central Park.

It had been a beautiful day – in fact our whole week in New York we had great weather – and the park was full of autumn colour. We followed the signs to Belvedere Castle and even though it was about to close, the very friendly guard let us in for a quick look. Olive and Edie instantly recognised it as Gargamel’s lair from The Smurfs movie.

The Belvedere.

Beautiful view across the park from the top of the Belvedere.

Night was drawing in and we needed to find some dinner. We left the park heading in the direction of Grand Central Station. (We knew there was a good food court there and it also ticked off another “let’s visit a place that we know from a movie” – in this case Madagascar. Also a Ben Stiller movie. He also has a new movie coming out soon and every other yellow cab that drove past us was plastered with his image, which inevitably led to a shriek from one of the girls – “look! Larry Daley!”)

As we ambled toward the subway we noticed a building completely decked out for Halloween – and I mean completely. Every one of it’s four floors had something – a werewolf, zombie head, Frankenstein face – attached to the windows; the stairs up to the front door were littered with skulls, bones and spiders; the tree outside was full of lights and ghosts – there was even a body that appeared to be shuffling across the floor. It was amazing and the girls were thrilled. (The house we rented for the week was also decorated for Halloween. Edie would ask every day, “is it time to go home to our Halloween house?”) Unsurprisingly every tourist walking past would stop for a photo or two.

Outside the amazing Halloween House we discovered.

Even the trees were in costume.

The shuffling body! Eeeek!

My little Halloween monsters 🙂

At Grand Central we had a quick bite in the basement where you can find a great food hall, after which we went upstairs to look at the ceiling in the main concourse. The ceiling is astronomical – literally. It depicts in elaborate detail the constellations and is very beautiful. And I stupidly didn’t take any photos, probably due to the fact that by now we were all exhausted and very much in need of a retreat to the Halloween House.

The first part of next morning was spent hunting down the Brooklyn Trader Joe’s store and loading up our backpack with snacks for our trip out to Liberty Island. The weather again was great and despite it being a bit cool on the ferry, the trip out to Lady Liberty gave a us a great view of Manhattan and the bridges linking it with the other New York boroughs. The girls were very excited to see the Statue of Liberty – not least because it appears in the Michael Jackson film Moonwalker and also in Madagascar 2. It seems that everything they have experienced has a pop culture connection!

A fantastic day for visiting the Statue of Liberty.

Lady Liberty.

Spot the tourists!

Braving the cold on the ferry.

It was back to Halloween House for a rest before we headed out to explore the Park Slope area of Brooklyn (notable for being the home of Mo Willems – the wonderful author of Knuffle Bunny, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and my personal favourite, Time to Pee!) After a quick dinner chosen by my worldly daughters – “let’s have Thai!” – we ventured back to Central Park for the Marathon fireworks display. We didn’t know exactly where it was, but when we stumbled across several police officers we figured we were heading in the right direction. I asked one of the policeman and he told me to go no further as this was one of the best spots to see them, “honestly they’ll be right over your head’. I was a bit dubious as we were standing in a pretty nondescript part of the park and there were very few people around, but it was dark and cold and we didn’t really want to keep wandering around aimlessly. As it transpires Mr NYPD Blue was right on the money. Everything unfolded directly above us and it was loud and magical and beautiful and long. After Olive and Edie’s initial shock at just how loud it was – poor old Edie just about jumped out of her skin – they were entranced. What a great memory for them – seeing their first ever fireworks display in Central Park. With the lights still twinkling in our eyes we turned our noses in the direction of home.

Two hyper girls waiting for fireworks.

It was a beautiful display.

What a great memory for Olive and Edie - seeing their first fireworks display in Central Park, New York.

Good night 🙂

Plopsaland!

It’s been two weeks since my last post. I think that’s my longest absence since starting this blog almost eleven months ago. I do have several good excuses! Since the start of September we’ve been focused on getting back into our day to day routine – a big part of which has involved the girls starting at their new school. I’m happy to report that they both love it and are really thriving. Richard has been travelling – he’s back in New Zealand for the second time in less than a month and he has a few more trips to take in the weeks ahead. We’re also focusing on our trip to NYC in November and then home to NZ in December, so we won’t be doing the little trips away that were becoming a very welcome part of our routine.

So what I thought I’d aim to do over the next couple of months is spend some time exploring many of the great attractions here in Antwerp which I’ve yet to visit, and share them with you.

Tonight I’m starting with…drumroll please…Plopsaland!! Aaah no! Not again! I can hear you groaning! I know I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel somewhat but it’s been so long since I posted I thought Plopsaland was better than nothing at all.

Saturday was a beautiful day here in Antwerp, and as Richard was off to New Zealand on Sunday, we thought we’d treat the girls and surprise them with a trip to the outdoor Plopsaland at De Panne.

Plopsa!

De Panne is a 90 minute drive from Antwerp and we weren’t on the road for long before the girls had guessed our destination and the shrieks and squeals when we arrived were deafening.

Photo shoot with Maya the bij.

Buzz,buzz.

We headed straight for Maya Land which is a new attraction at Plopsa. There was a small queue as we were there ten minutes before the official 10am opening time (nothing happens before 10 in Belgium). Richard and I found it very hard to stifle our laughter as the first two punters in the queue were not, as you would expect, excited children but rather an elderly couple dressed in matching red outfits, grim faced and determined that noone would beat them through the door!

Please God let me not end up at 60 odd going to children's theme parks without any children!!

It must be at least six weeks since we had a face painting pic on the blog so here you go!

With Pete Piraat...skip ahoy...hoy..hoy!

All ready to rollercoaster.

By far the best part of the day was running through the Plopsa fountains - almost felt like summer.

Wet,wet,wet.

Very happy girls.

Check out my Flickr photos for more shots of Plopsaland. And I promise my next post will be something of a much more intelligent and cultured nature!

Lots of love to you all – counting the sleeps until December 9th! xxx

La ville de papier.

This time tomorrow morning we will be having breakfast on the train to Paris. It’s going to be a very brief trip but one that we are all very excited about. It’s almost six years since Richard and I were last there. Olive was there too – in utero – which meant that most of my afternoons were spent napping whilst Richard wandered the city of light alone.

The girls have been doing a lot of talking about what they will see there, with the Eiffel Tower being their number one destination. And yesterday we found the perfect craft activity to get them even more excited.

I’d had the website – http://www.madebyjoel.com – recommended to me. The site has been set up by a Dad, who’s also an artist and who’s really into doing arts and crafts with his kids. One of the great activities on his site are the paper cities. I knew he’d been asked to design a paper city for Sydney, but when I checked his site yesterday morning I discovered that he’d just added a paper city for Paris – perfect timing and just the thing for a dreary, wet summer’s day!

After a quick download and printout of the templates, we were ready to start construction.

All the important Paris landmarks - even a little citroen car!

Edie was the first to get her La Tour Eiffel up. Even got the colours on the tricolore in the right order.

Olive, being just that bit older and more focused, put a great deal of effort into her Paris. Not the city of light but the city of colour.

Edie's Paris - mostly made by Mum. Uncle Joe, that's you in the natty pink suit under the arc de triomphe!

Olive insisted on doing just about all the cutting herself. All those Montessori cutting activities have really payed off!

Volia! Paris - la ville de la couleur - as made by Olive.

I can highly recommend madebyjoel.com. He’s got a book coming out in November too which I’ll definitely be checking out.

We’re saying au revoir to Richard in Paris. He’s flying back to New Zealand not long after we hop on our train back to Antwerp. What a different space we’re in as compared to his last trip to NZ in January. Then, I really didn’t want him to go. Now I’m thinking – mmmm  two weeks of evenings to myself. Peace, quiet, uninterrupted viewings of my Brothers and Sisters DVDs  – all that important stuff!

Check back soon for an update on our Paris trip.

Love to you all xxx

Speelgoed

With another five weeks or so of zomer vakantie left I’ve been exploring things do with the girls outside of Antwerp. As I haven’t driven since I’ve been in Belgium us girls have had to rely on my bike or public transport to get around. Fortunately Antwerp has a great public transport system and as we now live so close to the beautiful central railway station, I’ve been focussing on places we can visit which require us to take a train to get there.

Inside Antwerpen Central Station

The city of Mechelen is about 25km out of Antwerp on the way to Brussels. We’ve been there before to visit the science and technology museum Technopolis. Mechelen also has a toy museum called the Speelgoed Museum – speel meaning play. Situated only 100 metres from the railway station it was the perfect place to start our train excursions.

We invited our friends Christina and Charles to join us. The girls were very excited to meet  friends in the big train station, find and climb aboard the right train and look after the ticket until it was time to hand it over to the conductor. After a short ride we arrived in Mechelen and found the toy museum. Edie had been in the midst of a grumpy tantrum but as soon as she saw the window of the museum, “I want to go home!” rapidly transformed into “I want to go in there!”

And they didn’t stop squealing and pointing and oohing and aaahing for the nearly three hours we spent in the museum. It was fantastic – a huge and varied collection that would appeal to young and old. The first two floors house the permanent collection and the top floor is home to temporary exhibits, the current one focusing on The Circus.

Charles turned into an amazing strong man when he went into the museum!

There were dolls and dollhouse furniture...

some seriously stylish tea sets...

Barbie, Ken and all their groovy pals...

even Jacinta's Barbie kitchen from when she was little!

Harry Potter and Hagrid were made out of Lego...

as was this old favourite.

Some elderly but rather distinguished teddy bears...

and so many beautiful puppets, marionettes and wind up toys.

The train section was a big hit with the kids. Here they are looking down through glass at trains zooming around underneath them.

"Send in the clowns..."

and the monkeys!

So all in all our first train excursion was a big success. Have got a few more up my sleeve so will keep you posted.

Take care everyone. Lots of love xxx

Naar de Zee / To the Sea

"Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!"

We spent the past weekend at the Belgian Coast in the city of Oostende. I was very keen to sea a Belgian beach although I have to be honest that I was not expecting much. We have many amazing, rugged, breathtakingly beautiful “seaside” spots in New Zealand so I was preparing myself to be disappointed. For some reason I was expecting it to be all very British – not that I have spent much time on any English beaches – I don’t think a few hours in Brighton nearly 6 years ago counts!
Olive and Edie were very excited about our beach trip. After school on Friday we had to make a quick dash to Bart Smit – Belgian equivalent of Toyworld – to invest in some buckets and spades. The fact that the buckets were heart shaped and bearing images of the ubiquitous Hello Kitty just made it all the more exciting.
After battling through the city traffic we arrived in Middelkerke, a small town just outside of Oostende, and our digs for the weekend – the Zeegalm. It was a bit like an upmarket holiday camp – lots of cabins and bungalows arranged around a swimming pool and cafeteria – I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a yellow coat pop out and greet me with “Hi De Hi!” – there I am back to my British comparisons again! After a quick dinner we all hit the hay – Edie could not be parted from her bucket and spade…

I've always enjoyed cuddling up to bits of plastic.

Saturday brought blue sky and warm sun – a perfect beach day and we headed into Oostende armed with buckets, spades, towels, bikes and scooters. We parked the car and walked, biked and scooted along the boardwalk.
My initial impressions were not good – hard to be inspired when faced with architecture like this…

There were many buildings like this - huge blots on the landscape.

As we got further down the boardwalk things started to improve and there were several beautiful old buildings which hinted at how picturesque it must have been in days gone by – before the destruction of the first and second world wars.

The zee.

Richard mucking around outside a particularly grand old building.

Imagine all the buildings along the seafront in this style and you can picture how beautiful it would have been.

Olive and Edie were completely uninterested in the architecture – they just wanted to get their togs on and hit the sand!

Squeezed in a little bit of cycling first - look at my baby riding her bike!!!

Bathing beauty number 1.

And number two.

I love how everything at the seaside has to be stripy!

After a very enjoyable morning spent on the beach we headed a bit further down the coast to explore Fort Napoleon. Oostende’s strategic position on the North Sea Coast was advantageous for it’s role as a harbour, but also brought with it lots of trouble. It was frequently ravaged, ransacked and destroyed by conquering armies. Napoleon Bonaparte was concerned about an attack from the English and so commissioned a fort to be built in Oostende. The fort is a pentagonal design with bunkers over two floors. It was occupied by the German army during both world wars forming part of the defence known as the Atlantic Wall. It was a fascinating place to visit – even the girls liked it.

Inside Fort Napoleon.

The bakery - very important to have one of these if you are under siege.

Climbing to the top of the fort.

The view from the top of Fort Napoleon.

With all the sun, sand and interesting local history, Oostende was starting to win me over. When we went into town after our visit to the fort I felt like Oostende was calling to me from every street corner…

Christinastraat 🙂

Mmmmmm - Christina's patisserie!

After dinner we headed back to the beach and did a bit of kite flying. Olive and Edie loved it – especially when the kite nosedived into the sand!

It was a beautiful evening (and yes Alix that is the kite you gave us - bet you never expected it to be flying over a Belgian beach!)

Kite runners.

On Sunday we surprised the girls with a trip to Plopsaland de Panne. You might remember Plopsaland from one of my earliest blog posts. I think there are 5 Plopsalands in total and the one we had visited previously was an indoor Plopsa. Plopsaland de Panne is an outdoor Plopsaland. (I have probably just set a world record for the number of times the word Plop appears in a single paragraph!)
De Panne is not far from Oostende and as the weather was cool and grey we thought Plopsa was a better option than another day at the beach – Olive and Edie needed no encouragement – the squealing was deafening!
Plopsaland takes it’s name from Kabouter Plop – the main character in the television show Plopsa. Kabouter is the Dutch word for gnome or leprechaun. In folklore Kabouters are usually tiny men who live underground or in mushrooms. Our first ride of the day was a boat trip through the kabouter forest – it was very cute – the girls were waving to all the kabouters and calling out “hello, hello” – I’m sure they believed them to be real.

Little Kabouter firemen putting out a fire - so cute!

Kabouter Plop himself outside his mushroom house.

Olive and Edie with one of Plop's friends.

Our good buddy Mega Mindy showed up too!

I won’t bore you all with endless theme park photos – we had a great day – a great weekend in fact. We’re already thinking of heading back to Oostende for a longer stay. Piha it definitely wasn’t but it had a certain charm which worked it’s magic on us – or maybe that was the leprechauns!!
Missing you all and sending lots of love xxx