Recently in Travelling Category

As I have been blogging for 10 years now, I thought it would be a nice idea to look back at almost 1000 posts on my sites. Today an overview of the year it all started: 1997.

Though I already had a personal web page for some years, I didn't spend a lot of time on it. My main interest these days were Jong Nederland and Fimcap. In November I had a great weekend with all JN volunteers on a national level, and in December I joined a Fimcap meeting in Rome. Though the meeting was only a weekend, I spend the entire week in Italy.

Note: This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day, joining thousands of other bloggers to write about one topic for a single day. This year’s topic is the environment.

Camping is my favourite holiday activity. In our tent I feel free and I feel at home as I use my own stuff and sleep in my own sack. Furthermore, it is very easy for a shy person like me to have contact with others on a camping. I feel a lot more comfortable on a camping than in hotel and apartments.

However, lately I noticed a trend of people camping more and more luxury: huge caravans with satellite television, microwave ovens, washing machine, skottelbraai, and even a motor to move around on the camping. While I like some comfort, one of the things I like about camping is its simpleness: less things around you means less  cleaning and less worrying and thus more relaxing. And it still is possible:

When I still lived in the Netherlands, I was a member of the NTKC, a club of people who love camping in a simple and quiet way. The NTKC owns 22 campings in natural areas, and all the maintenance and administration is done by club members. On the NTKC terrains, people camp with tents up to 1.90 meters high and always in natural colours. When staying for a longer period, members move their tent to prevent dead grass.

Most of the time there is plenty of room on the campings; in spring and autumn it might happen that you won't see anybody else from your tent!

For me, being in the middle of nature is a very relaxing experience. If you live in the Netherlands and enjoy camping and nature, be sure to check out the NTKC. There are similar organisations elsewhere, such as the Camping and Caravanning  Club in the U.K..

Very neat. At TravBuddy you can check the countries you have visited, and they will produce a good-looking map for you:

Holiday is over, the hard life is back!

After a bad start, our holiday was great! We spend one week in St-George's-de-Didonne (tasting oysters and great wines at the beach) and one week in St-Jean-Pied-de-Port (hiking in the mountains and eating some of the best tapas).

One of the first things I did after coming back was fixing this site by upgrading Movable Type to the latest beta release. Of course I know that I shouldn't have upgrated the software just before leaving for vacation, but I took the bet and lost...

I am ready for it! Within a few hours I will leave for Germany to participate in the CeBIT. That also means that the coming two weeks this weblog will be even more quiet than it already is, as I will have very limited time.

If you happen to be in Hannover as well, feel free to drop by in hall 1, stand G33/1.

See you later!

I am on the road again. Today I am traveling from Barcelona to Cyprus, spending over ten hours in airpanes and airports. No distractions, just me, so I could get a lot of job done. I carry a laptop computer, and already wrote some documents, I checked my e-mail and read all interesting news in Google Reader. I am in the 'flow', but will soon have to stop working. My laptop is running out of batteries, and I still have about half the trip to go. I searched in every corner of the airport, but haven't found a single power outlet!

Many travelers nowadays carry laptop computers and other electronic devices, and most of those devices need electricty. Batteries only serve for some hours, so power outlets in airports would be useful to many travelers. I can't imagine the number of productive hours lost each year in Milano alone! Please airports, give us power outlts.

Cal Paller is a lovely little cottage (Casa Rural) in the mountains near La Seu d'Urgell. We had the pleasure to spend three days in one of the six available rooms, and have enjoyed it a lot. Cal Paller is the perfect starting point for mountain walks, mushroom 'hunting', horseback riding or skiing --winter only of course.

We found Cal paller a very special place. The location is fantastic and the 18th century mansion has been restored with great care of detail. There are many little corners where you can sit down and relax. Eva and Pep, the owners of the place are very caring, and the food Eva prepared us for supper was absolutely fabulous.

I have uploaded some photo's we made during the weekend, so everybody can see what a fantastic place Cal Paller is.

N.B. If you also have a Flickr account, let me know, so I can give you access to even more photo's.

This weblog will remain quiet for some weeks as I will be on holidays. If you have any question, remark or news, just drop me an e-mail. I will occasionally read my mail, but probably won't respond until the end of this month. I assume that you won't miss me, as most other bloggers already have returned from their holidays.

See you later!

One more week to go until the start of our holidays. Yes, we go when everybody else already forgot about their holidays.

Our plans are simple: we are going to spend one week in the Netherlands, and two weeks in Andalusia. We've tried to visit my family before, but the flights were simply too expensive in the high season. So we decided to use part of our holidays to visit my family and our friends. As we have plenty of time, we will go up by car, saving a few bucks along the way.

After that we plan to spend some days at home to pick up our tent, and drive further down to Andalusia. In the almost five years that I live here, I haven't seen a lot of Spain besides Catalonia. Of course there is plenty to see over here, but I feel a little bit ashamed of my lack of knowledge about the other parts of this country. The two weeks we will be spend in the south will be a little start in getting to know more of Spain.

I feel good!

We just came back from a week's holiday in the Netherlands. The aim of our holiday was to relax, and we succeeded. Instead of running from one 'obligatory' visit to another, as we usually do when visiting my home country, this time we put the emphasis on what we want. This visit to the Netherlands has been touristier than any previous visit, and we loved every minute of it.

Of course the fantastic weather helped a lot; it was sunny every day so we could spend a lot of time outside in nature and on the terrace. We visited amongst others Amsterdam, Utrecht, 's-Hertogenbosch, Zeist, Amelisweerd, Lelystad, and Enkhuizen.

Now that we're back in 'real' life we are already looking forward to our next visit at Christmas time!