Hutongs are the typically neighbourhoods that you can find in Beijing. We were taken to them by rickshaw. Afterwards we walked through the small streets. I found it quite typical. I had never seen something like this before. Inside the streets you can see small shops like bicycle repair but also people on the streets selling hot potatoes,... In one of the shops, I bought some flowering tea: dried flowers are wrapped inside a bundle of dried tea leaves. When you put this in hot water, it looks like a blooming flower. We even saw a shop were you could buy Belgian chocolate, felt like home... Nowadays the number of hutongs has dramatically dropped. Many of them had to disappear to make way for new buildings. I've got the expression with the Olympic Games coming this ... read more

The Temple of Heaven park is a complex of buildings situated in southeastern Beijing. It was considered sacred ground, and the emperor performed the major ceremonial rites over there. Once a year, at the winter sosltice, the emperor and his entourage had to do a sacred ritual. If a mistake would occur, it was seen as an omen of misfortune for the next year. It was a rather big park. There were lots of visitors over there. I remember being very impressed by the the colors . Looking afterwards I regret that I have only taken pictures of the Temple itself and the Echo Wall. The form of the Echo Wall (65m in diameter), makes it possible to transmit sound from one side to another. Nowadays a lot of people from Beijing practice their taiji, before ... read more

These were our last days in Lapland. We first visited Karajosk, which is Sami Norway's capital. Here you can find the Sami parliament, in the shape of a Sami tent. From there we drove to the beginning and end of our journey: Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland. We visited the Santa Claus Village, where you can meet Father Christmas all year round. Rovaniemi has the most northerly McDonalds in the world, so we decided to taste some of the burgers over there ;-) The last thing we did was visiting the Arktikum. This complex contains both the Provincial museum of Lapland as the Artic Centre. From there we went to the airport.... read more

The next day we drove from Tromso -along the fjords- to Storslett and Gildetun. The day after we stopped in Alta when we were heading to Hammerfest. The rock carvings at Alta (a Unesco World Heritage site) are definitively a must-see. There you can see stone-age carvings estimated to date from 6000 to 2000 years ago. There are multiple themes to see: hunting, beers, reindeer, boats, fertility symbols,... The carvings are highlighted with red-ochre paint. At the nearby Alta museum, we saw an exhibition on Sami culture, the northern light and the military history of Finnmark. On the road to Hammerfest (and also in the city-center), we saw quite some reindeer. Hammerfest was the first city in Northern Europe with electrical streetlights. It is also known for a its undersea pipeline, transporting natural gas from the ... read more

The next three days we drove through the Lofoten Islands, the soul of Northern Norway. Henningsvaer, Nusfjord and Reine were some of the villages we visited. We stayed two nights in a typical rorbu cabin near Svolvaer. A rorbu is a kind of fishing hut, with the characteristic red color. The hut is entirely made of wood, which made them smell typically. Though you wouldn't expect it, the comfort-level was quite high. The Lofoten islands is wonderfull place to see. It impressed us a lot! A perfect mixture between mountains, fishing villages,... and stockfish. Stockfish is unsalted dried fish (mostly cod). You can see the fish on wooden racks (hjell) where dries by cold air and wind. On pictures the fish looked rather small, but in reality the fish were quite large. In the past several ... read more