ZOO Antwerpen

#ZooAntwerpen is just next to my office. And my company allows all their employees to take lunch from the Zoo cafeteria on cheaper rates. So we occasionally go to the zoo for lunch :). Otherwise, I am not a big fan of Zoos!.

It is one of the oldest Zoo's in the world and has a very decent variety of animals to look around. The elephants are the most popular animals, especially since the birth of #Kai-Mook (Belgium's first ever baby elephant). Apart from them, you can take a glimpse of some strange animals such as aardvarks, armadillos, tree kangaroos and koalas to name but a few (I haven’t seen them anywhere before; learnt these words only after going there).

The Zoo is just next to the central station, that makes it as the first tourist attraction to most of the visitors of Antwerp. However, the smaller area keeps much of the creatures locked up in small cages. They are not befittingly kept :(. I guess Antwerp should relocate the zoo to some other bigger place outside the City and make a better use of this central area.

This is a good place to go in Antwerp, especially if you have kids. I haven't visited that many zoos, but this is one of the good ones that I have seen so far. 

Fell in Love with Venice !

When I told about my Venice plans, almost every friend of mine said we should see the Venice, but warned that I might get disappointed too. Crowdy, Dirty, and much touristy most said (funny is that these were said by some of my Indian friends :).

I have to admit the first couple of our hours in the Venice was not that great. First of all, our bus got so much delayed, and we lost about 40 minutes trying to find our hotel amid the alleyways. We reached our hotel only by the noon almost. We had to have a very short lunch and run for the sight-seeing. It was very hot, we had to wait and stand in a crowded bus before we finally reach the City Bus stands.It was around 4 Ò clock in the evening, when we’re presented the beautiful view of St. Mark’s square. 

But every minute, after those first couple hours was a pure delight !!!

Venice – the city is full of history, romance and grand architecture, there are countless places to visit. But, we really underestimated, had only 2 days, so focused mainly on the city's major sights and attractions, on day-1. We had a great trip all over the historic Basilica di San Marco and the surrounding Piazza San Marco constitute the heart of Venice. On the 2nd day, we enjoyed one of the best beaches, Glass factories, and the colorful houses at the Murano and Burano’s—both neighboring islands that are just a short boat ride away.

Without any doubt, we thoroughly enjoyed the complete trip. However, I always feel the same or more happiness and excitement when I sit in front of my computer for hours, trying to write more about that trip too.

Well, am not sure whether my travelogues are going to help anyone; but I’m happy that these writings make me feel like re-living the cherished moments of the trip again, whenever I read them, even  after many days, months, or years. So let me put together all the moments of this trip too in the coming posts @ TRAVELOGUE-VENICE-ITALY

I believe in God - but...

A recent share on Facebook is the inspiration of this post. I read today, and it certainly made me to think..

The story is plotted around a dispute between the priests of a baptist church and a local Bar owner.

The Bar Owner begins construction on a new building to increase their business. The local Baptist church doesn’t want the Bar in their locality and they start a campaign to block the bar from opening with petitions and prayers. They begin to pray that God would intervene and stop the bar.

A few days before the bar is scheduled to open, a heavy lightning strikes the structure and burns the complete bar building to the ground. The people of the church are surprised but pleased - until they received a notice that the bar owner is suing them. The bar owner contends that the prayers are the sole reason for the collapse of his building. But, the church goers and priests deny the charge.

The trail goes to the local court and the judge become clueless and goes away with a remarks as "At this point I don't know what my decision will be, but it seems that the bar owner believes in the power of prayer and these church people don't."

How will you reach if you were in the position of the judge? Do you favor the bar owner who believes the power of prayer to his core or the people who chant bible all the day and discards the existence of God?

The story may be an exaggeration of its essential moral, but isn't the reality today? Don’t we set aside our faith, and it’s pride, when faith becomes problematic sometimes? Do we really stand up for our principles, their beliefs and proudly proclaim them, even when they bring some discomfort, difficulty, money-wise or otherwise?

Bangalore Traffic - "It's awful!”

I was recalling as how relax a weekday would start about a decade ago, …

would wake up at 6.30 AM, take a walk to the nearby nayar tea shop,  get ready to office and leave home by 9.00 AM, it would take just 10 minutes to travel to my office, park my vehicle and then complete my register signing formalities and by the time I get to my desk, it would have hardly taken about half an hour since I left home. On my way back home it used to take just about the same time as the onward travel.

But in the last 10 years, traffic has increased by leaps and bounds, and reaching office and going back to home has become such as hectic task. Travel time has increased to more than one hour, if I had been to travel to same office place. Well, the situation has changed now.......and am in a different city – Bangalore, where the traffic is even horrible.

                             

Tell me, Will a 4 lane serve our bumper-to-bumper traffic at rush hour, or even a 8 lane road?. The important question is not how many lanes must be built to ease congestion, but to go for some proven alternates like carpooling, Cycling/using 2 wheeler, and public transport….etc.

Most of us know that widening roads to fight against traffic congestion is like buying larger clothe to fight back your obesity :), but still why do we cry for road widening ,while killing 100s of good old trees. It’s awful !!!

Tulpenpluk 2015

Well, this weekend we went to Berendrecht #Tulpenpluk (translated as Tulips Pick) and  I must say, "We just loved it".

It’s a fantastic initiative by the City of Antwerp. Every year during November time frame, the district commune of Berendrecht plants thousands of tulip pulps on the meadows near the Berendrecht Port. And all these pulps bloom beautiful during april., and be opened up to the public to come and enjoy!

This year Berendrecht meadow was filled with 160,000 colorful tulips and we’re all allowed to pick upto 10 tulips per person and take back to home :)

We went from Antwerp Central to the Berendrecht by public transport; from then there was about 15minutes walk to the tulip meadow.

 By the time we reached, the crowd had already turned out well over and we joined-in over the long queue. But it was not that bad, the queue was fast moving.; and in about 20mins of queue, we got straight into the meadows !

The meadow with all colorful tulips looked so beautiful, under the bright spring sunshine. We snapped hell of nice pictures and grabbed a  few beautiful tulips for home too.

Furthermore, there was a lot of nice events such as a ducks ‘parade, children's village, hay stack maze, kids painting, picnic area  ...etc. 

After spending a good amount of time, we returned home, and our house got brightened by the beautiful bouquets :-).

Anne Frank House, Rijks & Van Gogh Museum

Like every other European City, Amsterdam too has many museums. Heard that at least 75 of them are still very active and attracting 1000’s of visitors everyday! .

Anne Frank House, Science Museum, Rijk Museum and Van Gogh museum are a few that we could see, well just from outside ;P . There was no time to get into all the museums in a single day. Madame Tussads itself took half of our day.

#Anne_Frank House:  
After Madame Tussads and lunch, we planned to go to the Anne Frank House. From the day we came to know about the book “The Diary of a Young Girl” (Anne Frank ‘s biography), we always wanted to visit the Anne Frank House; but there was already a mile lengthy queue and we realized that we could never make it happen. If I come back again to Amasterdam , am sure to see this place.

During World War II, Anne Frank hid from German soldiers with her family in this canal side house. Anne Frank couldn’t not survive and captured by the Nazi troops from this house, but in 1947 when her father published her wartime diary , the world came to know about Anna and her families struggles against the Nazi. After that this house started attracting so many visitors from all over the world, and become a museum later.

#Rijksmuseum:
It’s the National Museum of Holland., is located at the Museum Square in the  Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum.

Well, it was our second of three museums scheduled for that one day; and we’re almost at the closing time of the museum. So we did not go inside, but had a good time outside the museum gardens. The gardens at the rear side of the museum was so beautiful and are ideal for a relaxing picnic.

#Van_Gogh museum & Vondelpark:
We were eager to get to the Van Gogh Museum nearby…But unlucky againJ, the Van Gogh museum was under construction, but some of his painting samples were kept outside for public.

Last of all, we saw the “#IamAmsterdam” sign, a giant sign where each letter is the size of a person. While this isn’t unique in and of itself, it led to us visiting Vondelpark as well, a park filled with locals, tourists, kids and adults enjoying playgrounds, jogging trails, and great weather!

Between these two destinations we spent a good amount of time before  we started back our boat trip back to the Amsterdam Central station. It was a very relaxing finish to a nice trip.

Ofcourse, this trip is not of my typical way of touring. We just passed through all the places without getting-in to them, exploring nothing…, but never failed to click the snaps at all the attractions..;(

Anyway, I consoled myself that “it is okay, when you are a tourist, to do some things that are just a little touristy :) .”

Madame Tussauds, Amsterdam

Our first stop was at the #Madame Tussauds (which doesn’t need any introduction, right?). It was walkable from the Central Station, we reached in another 10minutes. Good that we had purchased the express entry tickets, so we could avoid the long queue and entered directly in to the museum.

I’m not a big fan of any celebrity in particular, nor a fan of wax figures, so I can’t say Madame Tussauds is my favorite spot. But it was not disappointing or boring.  The amount of work and dedication put into the making and maintaining the wax figures is really impressive !!!.

We could meet many movie superstars, political leaders, sport heroes,.. and many global celebrities.  Seems this particular Madame Tussads gives some special focus to their local culture, the first floor is full of Dutch royals, politicians, painters … and pop stars.

I would have expected some more exhibits in the museum, however the existing ones itself gave good opportunity to enjoy and to be photographed. Ever thought that we would meet Barack Obama, Ronaldinho, Michael Jackson and Einstein in just half a day? :P .  I liked the Charlie Chaplin exhibit as I could dance along with him and appear in a video with him whilst doing this.

A bit pricey for the little time (2-3 hours max) we could spend there. If you've never been to any Madame Tussauds elsewhere, you can go ahead and visit this one, you may like it.

Now, a short history about the Madame Tussads Museums: Marie Tussaud was born in 1761 in Strasbourg, France. Her mother worked as a housekeeper for Dr. Philippe Curtius in Switzerland, who was a physician, skilled in wax modelling. Curtius taught Tussaud the art of wax modelling.

By her 17 years, she mastered the art and during the French Revolution she modeled death masks for many prominent victims. They became very popular and her death masks were held up as revolutionary flags and paraded through the streets of Paris.

Following the doctor's death in 1794, she inherited his vast collection of wax models and spent the next 33 years travelling around Europe. By 1835 Marie had settled down in Baker Street, London, and opened her first wax  museum., which became the origin of all the today’s Madame Tussads all over the world.

Amsterdam Canals & Cruises

Our decision to go for the boat pass turned out to be a very good one. Indeed only from the boat, you could catch more details of the unique and beautiful buildings all along the city.

Most of the tourist attractions can be reached via these canals. There are quite a few boat tour options, we picked up the whole day pass , which allowed us to hop-in and off any number of times/boats, throughout the day. These boats also had a audio tour - we could hear a narrator explaining what we’re are passing and its history, specialties …and etc.

These canals are also the venue also provide a popular place for recreational activities, from boating to parades. Many of the city's special events are held upon the waters of the canals. Once you get familiarized with the waterways and their routes, you can catch cruises all over the places and see every corner of the city.

These Canals don’t seem to be formed naturally, rather they are consciously planned and dug. The canals have been part of the city's landscape since the early fourteenth century. However most of the current canals were built only during the seventeenth century. Obviously, they are the primary and most beautiful mode of transport within the city., but actually they are much more than just a pretty sight.  Their main purpose is to control the floods coming in from the sea. Natural & artificial dikes present in the canals prevent flooding of sea water flowing into the city.

With more than 100 km of Canals and 1500 bridges within, Amsterdam is truly the "Venice of North Europe".  And Undoubtedly these beautiful and scenic canals are one of the big attractions of the city. I would say, Its a "must to do" in Amsterdam ... :)

Trip to Amsterdam

Amsterdam – the capital of Netherlands, is our first tour outside Belgium.

Most of my friends had already created an image about #Amsterdam that it’s only for the young adults ; and is why Amsterdam is often referred as the city of drugs and sex. But, I went with my family and still did not get disappointed. There’re a lot more good and beautiful things you can enjoy in Amsterdam.

Our travel from Antwerp to Amsterdam was through train. The journey was about 2 hours, and we reached Amsterdam Central at 8.40AM. I always prefer to explore any city by walk, but this time , went for a whole day boat pass as am with kid, can’t walk much.

Amsterdam city has so much to offer, a single day is not at all sufficient. We just tried our best to cover the places as much as possible. We started our tour with the Madame Tussads, and could touch-up Science Museum, Rijk & Van Gogh museums via a long boat ride within the short duration. After dinner at around 8.45PM, we started back our return journey to Antwerp.

Will write more about some of the interesting things/places that we experienced during our trip, in the following posts...

Aquatopia - Aquarium Of Antwerp

It was a little rainy weekend, wanted to plan something of indoor sort. Aquatopia was a perfect fit for the day. We visited aquatopia and were pleasantly surprised !

The aquarium is in a prime area just next to #Antwerp central station. It has a huge collection of underwater species. we got to see so many of them that I can’t just list. It accommodates more than 10,000 fish and a large quantity of reptiles.

The key attraction is the big shark tank. With a capacity of 360 000 liters of water, I guess this is the biggest shark aquarium of Belgium. Visitors can walk through a thick glass wall tunnel or over a bridge that hangs above the tank.

Another very special (but little scary to me :P ) was the reptiles section. It’s open and there are some that climb up the tree and jump on you! The snakes section was also open but with a door that can be only opened or closed with switch. Still it was scary too!. But I'm sure they cannot be dangerous as all precautions would have been taken by the aquarium.

Overall, it’s a very nice place to go for 3-4 hours indoor. Especially children would enjoy hours of everything that #Aquatopia offers.