Tag: Europe

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i was in Belgium…

Two Fridays ago, it was Mother’s Day. Two Fridays ago, i packed my boy off to school and make sure his father knew the plans for the day and left for the airport. Two Fridays ago, i gave myself the gift of attending my first-ever writer’s conference, for an entire weekend!

It was the Europolitian, organised by the 5 regions of SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) for Europe. Loved it!

It was held in the lovely city of Brussels, Belgium. i had never been there before and had a great time walking around a small part of the city for the Scrawl Crawl, which was a pre-conference event.

 

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Some of my favourite buildings we saw on our Scrawl Crawl through the city.
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The weather wasn’t great; it was rain one minute, sunny the next. But we made it through; rain, sun and fun.
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The Grand Place with its gold painted buildings. Quite impressive, indeed.

There was a lovely dinner after all that walking and then it was off to bed because we had an early start to a long day.

 

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The conference venue was a beautiful manor house in the suburbs, with lush green grounds, stunning grand rooms with wood paneling and sparkling chandeliers. It was an inspirational place to have the conference.

i enjoyed the lunches which were served from food trucks! And it was an informal stand up affair.

The keynote speeches were superb (one made many of us cry, another made us laugh a lot), the workshops were helpful and insightful, my one-on-one crit was good, the many chats with fellow attendees made it feel warm and family-like. i came away stirred and recharged with ideas to move ahead with my writing!

Thank you to the hardworking, amazing team which put the conference together.

 

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What a contrast! The cathedral at Grand Place on a rainy day and at night. Both beautiful!

The next one is in Switzerland in 2019 – i am definitely there! 😉

 

syc

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Paris… at last!…

i have lived in Europe for 13 years and we finally got to Paris!! This winter holidays we were unable to go skiing because Tobias was still recovering from his broken arms (see here if you would like to know details of what happened), so we opted to do a city trip and my beloved husband decided on Paris 😀

We were only there for 3 days, leaving on the first flight from Zurich to Paris and returning on the late evening flight. But we made use of the 3 days fully and saw quite a bit of Paris. i will just give you a picture summary here. Click on each photo to read captions and find out more about our trip.

Left: The interior of Charles de Gaulle Airport is so retro-space-like with its plastic covered escalators criss-crossing each other. Right: What a beautiful building Gare du Lyon is.
One last shot of the Louvre before we leave this fascinating city.
Left: The square, Place de la Concorde, where Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antionette were executed during the French Revolution. Right: The obelisk given to France by Egypt.
Left: Walking down Champs-Élysées. Right: The Grand Palace.
Top: Arc de Triomphe, Bottom: Watching the traffic negotiations around the circle which the Arc stands on is frightening and amusing at the same time.
Left: Going up the Eiffel Tower, Right: It was fogging that morning so this was our view from the top.
The famous Eiffel Tower on a foggy Parisian morning.
Left: If this is the size of the crowd during low season, i don’t want to be here at high season. Middle: This is as close as i got to the Mona Lisa, Right: View of the glass pyramid from below.
This is one of my favourite buildings and it houses a lovely tropical aquarium.
There are lots of monuments around the whole city.
We enjoyed riding the Metro. It’s a great system once you get to know the lines.
Our first sit-down meal in Paris, dinner at a small local cafe on St Michel at the Latin Quarter. It was lovely! And they have a drink i love but i don’t know any place which serves it besides here; it’s a cup of warm milk with honey – YUM!
View of the Eiffel Tower from the River Seine, during our evening river cruise.
All the lovely views from our evening river cruise.
Of course, we could not go to Paris and not see a platform near the River Seine which is covered in locks.
Left: See that double height glass? That’s the apartment i want if i could afford it. Right: Love the houseboats too!
The Notre Dame! It is huge and i would recommend getting the audio guide. We didn’t do that because we were limited by time.
Images from our very first walk around the city, we crossed the River Seine and walked around Jardin des Plantes. Paris has quite a number of these big parks.

Of course, we also did other things (such as cleaning the house, visiting friends, watching a movie and going to the Glacier Garden in Lucerne) during those 2 weeks but Paris was the highlight 😉

syc