Netherlands

For the last two years, I have dedicated the arbitrary date of December 13^th to recording a snapshot of my life. In what is quickly becoming an annual tradition after last year's repeat of much the same, I present to you this year's effort.

To set the scene, you need to know that it's been unusually cold across Western Europe lately. Today was certainly no exception, and as the previous night was spent avoiding my company's Christmas Party in favour of another company's, you can understand that things were a little difficult…

As with the last two years, all photos here have been taken hastily with my Nokia E70 and have not been modified.

A friend of mine has recently started working for Thalys, and therefore she's gained access to some free tickets for the Thalys network as an employee perquisite. We decided to exploit this for some time away from the Christmas-shoppers in Brussels by going to The Hague for a weekend of tourism.

Well, at least the original idea was to go for a bit of tourism…

I've been pretty busy with work lately, so today a day was taken off to do something not many people would do: Drive up to the Netherlands on a work day and go and visit a new amusement park. In this particular case, John (who also wrote a trip report), Aline and myself ignored the warnings of bad weather and headed to Walibi's sister park, Walibi World (not Wally's World — ahem).

With the exception of a few large electrical storms and brief showers, the glum weather of the morning pushed off and we were lucky to enjoy mostly blue skies in the very green but awkwardly laid-out park. The park seems to be roughly the same size as Walibi Belgium, however designed in a more hub-and-spoke manner with most of the paths being dead-ends.

To its credit though, the heavy greenery and the winding path layout hides many rides and pathways without becoming a labyrinth, effectively making the park seem larger and quieter.