Early September, I went to Athens to see Stamatis Spanoudakis in concert in the Odeon of Herodes Atticus at the Acropolis. Because going to Athens for one day seemed a little silly, we spent about a week in the city. Even though it was pretty hot, we went to see all the sights and we had an awesome time. The cherry on top of the cake was definitely the concert of Stamatis Spanoudakis, which must be one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to!

Anyway, below is a small photo recap of our trip, the captions describe what it’s about.

Thursday: Panepistimiou street, Acropolis, Monastiraki

Friday: Roman Forum (including the Tower of the Winds), Ancient Agora  (Stoa of Attalos, Temple of Hephaestus)

Saturday: Hadrian’s Arch, Temple of Olympian Zeus, Zappeion Palace and the Acropolis by night

Sunday: Sidetrip to Delphi, Syntagma Square, Lycabettus hill at sunset

This Odeon was built at the Acropolis of Athens in the year 161 by the nobleman Herodes Atticus in memory of his wife, Aspasia Annia Regilla.The theatre was used as a music venue. Nowadays it is still used for such purposes, and one of my favorite artists, Stamatis Spanoudakis, will again perform at the Odeon in September.

Because my mom and I are crazy fans (there is really no other way to call ourselves this time, lol), we bought ourselves tickets to the show on September 9th and booked a trip to Athens. I’m really excited about it, especially to think I’ll be sitting on a seat people have been sitting on nearly 2000 years ago, too.

So in case you’re curious as to why we’re making such a large trip for this artist, here are a few YouTube videos of his songs. His music is a bit of a mix between classical music, contemporary music and traditional Greek influences. He performs live rarely and the previous time was a show in Beijing for the Olympics in 2008.

The following two tracks are from his album Alexandros (The myth of the East, the dream of the West), which was the first one I listened to. The album was once described as a “soundtrack of a movie that was never made,” but it’s not hard for me to imagine scenes from Alexander the Great when I’m listening to these songs. The first song, Hephaestion, is a music video, but the second one is a live recording of his performance at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in 1998.

A soundtrack he did compose though, was the soundtrack for the movie Nyfes (Brides) which came out in 2004. It’s a gorgeous, very emotional and touching piece of music. The second one, Klemena filia, also comes from the Nyfes soundtrack and features (female) vocals.

In January 2007, I travelled across Europe as the tour manager of two bands and we also performed in Stockholm. Seeing as it was the second-to-last concert of the tour and I was pretty much exhausted, I didn’t really pay a whole lot of attention as we visited the city. The cold was horrible too in January. Still, I liked the city and I decided I would return to Stockholm for a proper look.

So when my friend and I were looking for a place to visit for a few days, Stockholm seemed like a good option. We booked a holiday for five days in the Swedish capital. Here are my observations:

• The Vasa ship museum is awesome;
• All you want to do in an ice bar is take pictures for 30 minutes and then leave;
• In general, food is overpriced;
• Not only is it overpriced, the meals are also very small and not properly heated (seems this is normal?? Happened all the time!);
• Midsommar celebrations are really quiet;
• Public transport is great;
• Swedish restaurant/hotel staff do not know any hospitality;
• It is perfectly fine to work in a 4-star hotel and have tattoos in your neck/face;
• Lots of girls have really large tattoos;
• Swedish men spend more time on their looks than Dutch ones;
• Skansen is overrated. And boring;
• Bathroom queues are often longer for men than for women;
• Ballerina McFlurries are yummy;
• Pubs close at 10pm on Sunday;
• The Stockholm Archipelago looks pretty but isn’t too interesting;
• A child transportation card is much cheaper than an adult’s 8D;
• Metro men smell really bad;
• Changing of the guards at the Royal Palace looks unprofessional with the guards chatting;
• The same Vikings and trolls inhibit Sweden and Norway;
• There’s a cool drawing of Nils Holgersson on a 20 kronar note;
• Great views from the Kaknastornet tower;
• Karlsbergs slott is not a pretty castle at all. Actually it doesn’t even look like a castle at all;
• It’s perfectly fine to sunbathe in your bikini in a public park;
• Having herring for breakfast is not a good idea;
• Five days is enough time to see the most interesting sights.

Conclusion: I had an awesome time with my friend but overall most sights and the city in general are rather overrated. I wouldn’t quite recommend it as a holiday destination.

I like to travel! Here’s my Dopplr profile with my past and future trips.

Exactly one year ago, I had just come home after a trip with my friend Cynthia to New York City. Seeing as I arrived at six in the morning, I got the worst jetlag ever and it took a few days to recover.

Anyway, seeing as I’m ‘only’ a year late, I thought it was about time to post the photos. Cynthia and I did all the typical touristy things, which was lots of fun!

On our arrival day, we checked in to our hostel in Brooklyn and then took the metro to Times Square. On the second day we basically explored all of Lower Manhattan. We started off with a trip to the Statue of Liberty Island, then went to Wall Street, the World Trade Center site, China Town and Little Italy.

Our trip included The Metropolitan Museum of Art which was definitely on my NYC to-do list. Although the Greek, Aboriginal and modern stuff didn’t really interest me, they had some great works by the European masters. We also visited the American Museum of Natural History, which wasn’t really my thing, lol.

Also on our to-do list was to walk the Brooklyn Bridge. After we failed to do it on one of the nights because we accidentally fell asleep, lol, we finally walked across it to see all the pretty shiny lights.

We of course went to take a walk in Central Park as well, which totally killed our feet. We were even such tired bums that we decided to take a bicycle taxi to Strawberry Fields, the memorial for John Lennon who was killed nearby. We also undertook a trip to Coney Island because Cynthia liked doing so, and for some reason we decided to do it at night, lol. It was lots of fun though!

During this holiday, I also developed the Japanese habit of taking photos of my food. Here we go!

Since the first time I came to Japan, I’ve been making it a tradition to visit the temple Sensoji in Asakusa. This time I went by night, which was much much more comfortable than it was during the day as  a thousand tourists try to be in the same street, Nakamise, at the same time. I can’t help myself to go over to the Mikuji and get a random fortune. Unfortunately this time it predicted “bad luck” so I tied it to the lines so the ‘bad luck’ would stay there.

This year I went to Japan for the third time, to spend one and a half week in Tokyo. I wasn’t solely going for vacation this time, as half of the trip was to attend a conference. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to really travel around just like I did the previous two times, but I did make a day-trip to Nikko with a friend. Nikko is 125 km and a 2 hour train ride from Tokyo.

I went at the end of October, when the weather’s still really nice in Japan and we were hoping to see some nice autumn foliage but it seemed we were too early. We went to visit the temples and shrines first and then went up the mountain to see Lake Chuzenji, where it was unfortunately very cold. We only were able to see the Kegon waterfall and not the Ryuzu falls as we had planned due to limited time and there was some trouble with the busses and we weren’t sure we would be able to catch our last train otherwise.

Seeing as my old digital Fujifilm cam was giving me more and more problems, I recently bought a new one. It’s a cute little Canon Ixus, black, and makes lovely photos.

So to try it out, I took it along to a butterfly garden (at the Orchid Farm in Luttelgeest) and was very pleased with the result.

NEW YORK CITY – Coney Island is niet meer wat het is geweest. Ooit was het een populair vakantieoord en attractiepark voor New Yorkers, maar de attracties op het schiereiland van de wereldstad worden al sinds de jaren 50 verwaarloosd. Ondanks dat, heeft Coney Island nog een sprankje roestige charme over en een nachtelijk tochtje naar het lege strand, op een flinke afstand van de luidruchtige kermis, kent een zekere romantiek.

“You’re in da hood man, you’re in da hood!” schalt het over Mermaid Avenue, maar de paar mensen die op dit late uur nog op straat zijn, besteden weinig aandacht aan de man en zijn vrienden. Een zwarte vrouw probeert haar kinderen mee naar huis te krijgen, maar de kids hebben een onuitputtelijke fascinatie voor de kermis, die het hele jaar draait op Coney Island.

Een flink aantal van de attracties is gesloten en de ‘R’ van het felverlichte reuzenrad Wonder Wheel is er van ellende afgevallen. Toch is het op zaterdagavond nog vrij druk op de kermis en hangen er veel tieners rond. Er komt niet alleen van de attracties een hoop lawaai, maar ook een vechtpartijtje tussen zwarte jongens met aanmoedigend publiek zorgt voor veel kabaal. Het is niet duidelijk of het om een serieuze vechtpartij of een plagerijtje gaat, maar niemand lijkt er van op te kijken.

Op het strand is het echter rustig. Een verliefd paartje zit stilletjes bij de waterlijn naar het donkere water te turen. In de verte zijn verschillende lichtjes te zien: de gebouwen aan de overkant van de Lower Bay, maar ook verschillende boten en veerponten die met twinkelende lampjes heen en weer varen. Naast het strand staat een enorme roodgloeiende paddenstoel: de Parachute Jump, een attractie die al sinds de jaren zestig niet meer actief is.

De rust contrasteert sterk met het rumoer van overdag. Met een onverwachts warme temperatuur van 30 °C is het zelfs begin mei zonnig strandweer dat de New Yorkers aantrekt om verkoeling te zoeken bij het water. Ook ’s nachts is de temperatuur op het strand aangenaam en verre van koud.

Het legendarische Coney Island is niet meer wat het is geweest, maar doet zijn best om de tand des tijds te doorstaan. Misschien geeft ooit een volgende generatie het zijn glamour weer terug.

It took me nearly two years, but I have finally finished my entries about my trip to Japan in 2008! Click here to read.