Crystal clear instructions

"Stop at noon.

It's at 12h French time that William will marry Kate. Stop your computers and phones. Get a sandwich and find a TV."

My mum, 6:47am

This new version of the song is bad, the video is very lame... BUT one should never miss an opportunity to highlight Brittany on TV.
Believe it or not, my family had picnics on that beach!

The queen's greenhouse

Every year around end of April, the queen of Belgium opens her greenhouse to the public. For 2.5 Euros one can walk around in her greenhouse and enjoy the flowers blooming in the Spring. The money collected is donated to a charity organization and hundreds of thousands people come to have a peak at the palace from the garden.

Truth be told the queen has a pretty nice collection of flowers in her greenhouse and I enjoy visiting it every year. This time Wolfram lent me his macro lens so I could do some close-ups on flowers.

Empowered with this heavy lens and my brand new flash, I tried my best to get a perfectly sharp picture of at least one flower. I even stepped away from the P mode and dared the Av mode… but only under supervision :)

I’m afraid I never reached perfection but as agreed with Wolfram’s father the most important is that to most eyes my pictures are ok… if they are not meeting Wolfram’s sharpness criteria, I can always blame it on the photographer (me) or the camera (a modest Canon 450D).

PS: while waiting for someone I happened to be rightly positioned for a few shots of a bug of some sort getting pollen in the rhododendron behind me. Sometimes one can get lucky :)

Lemon pie

It's been a while I haven't baked a lemon pie. This week-end, with Wolfram's parents visiting, I thought it would be a nice dessert.
So tonight, I squeezed the lemon, prepared the lemon cream, added the meringue and delivered a "tarte au citron meringuee"... which based on the reaction was "amazing".
It's more work than the every day cakes I usually bake but given the success I start thinking I should make Lemon pie more often than once every other year :)

No picture as the pie didn't resist long enough for one.

Bruges - Brugge

After the sea came Bruges. Bruges is one of the few places I really enjoy visiting in Belgium... but not in spring/summer because inevitably you are in Bruges with 3 millions of tourists. Sadly this was the case today. We even bumped into one of our colleagues, visiting Bruges with his parents (sounds familiar?).
With the crowd I gave up any perspective of a good picture, unless you want to have the Befroi with the fair or the church with a group of Japanese.
After a short walk in the city we settled down on a terrace in the shade for waffle and/or ice cream (note... amazing Melon de Cavaillon sorbet... good that we'll be there in August). Rested, we queued 30min or so for the boat tour.
The "captain" of the boat was quite entertaining, full of stories, and I grabbed the opportunity for a few shots. Probably not the best ones, but give a feel of a boat tour on the canals of Bruges by a sunny afternoon.

 Bridges in Bruges... including the lowest one (Wolfram had to bend his head).

If it was not invaded by tourists, I think I would enjoy living in bruges.

Cadzand

Wolfram's mum likes to go to the sea whenever she comes to Belgium. This year Wolfram was advised to try Cadzand, in the Netherlands, just across the border.
I'm not a big fan of the Belgian coast, therefore I was not expecting much and I was not disappointed: it looks pretty much the same as this side of the border.... I just cannot understand why people would want to go to a beach with container boats passing in front of them every 5 minutes or so. But again, that's better than nothing for most people. It's also one of those beaches where a tent is handy to protect from the wind.

This said it was nice to be outside given the sunny weather and I played around with a few flowers and shells.

PS: shrimp croquettes were, of course, a must for lunch in Zeeland.

Target achieved

It took me 13 months, 2 swimming suits, 1 sport outfit, lot’s of motivation and persistence to achieve my target.

It’s done, I’ve lost 20 kilos!
I feel good obviously and also proud after 1 year of effort.
Challenge will be now to stabilize; well after enjoying Easter chocolate.
Good thing now is I get to go shopping BIG time as all my summer clothes are too big now (not that I need a reason to go shopping…).