My parents invited me to come along for a visit to the Floriade, a horticultural expo that is held once in a decade. Every time it's held, the expo is situated in a different part of the country, and this time it was in Venlo.
The park was split in 5 themes: World Show Stage, Environment, Education & Innovation, Relax & Heal and Green Engine. We didn't feel like rushing through the park, so we decided to just take it easy and see where we would go. Eventually we managed to visit Environment, Education & Innovation and World Show Stage before my mom's batteries ran out and we decided to head home; so we still visited quite a big chunk of the park.
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One thing worth mentioning was the catering, and in particular the "soup". As is traditional with theme parks, the catering was ridiculously expensive. When we entered the restaurant, our hunger disappeared quite fast as soon as we saw the pricetags on the menu's. They had the balls to charge € 7,- for a hamburger which roughly consisted of a bread bun, a thin slab of meat, a slice of tomato and a leaf of lettuce; condiments were to be purchased separately for € 0,50 per packet.
Eventually we decided to go for the organic tomato soup (€ 5.70 per bowl), a choice we ended up regretting quite a bit. Somehow I suspect that they opened a 1 liter can of soup, then added half a liter of coffee creamer, 5 liters of water and 500grams of vegetables to it; and that was to be the soup of the day. It was just a very lean broth with a tomato-ish flavor to it.
All in all a great day, but next time i'm bringing my own food
Because I enjoyed the music and atmosphere so much last year, I decided to attend the Amphi Festival in Köln, Germany again this year. Armed with my new camera-gear and accompanied by Fresia and Daniel, I ventured to the Tanzbrunnen congress center, where the event takes place every year.
My goal was to get some nice close-up shots of artists, like the ones I had seen on various websites. With my 70-300mm zoom lens, I figured the job should be doable; and I was right. I still need a lot of practice with this kind of photography; The shutter speeds and light measuring are totally different, because of all the bright lights behind the artists. In most cases I had to boost the ISO quite a bit to get fast shutter speeds, and this causes a bit of noise in the images.
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It somewhat pleased me to see that the drinks were still (too) expensive, and the pizza was still decent (although pricy). It was a bit of a relief to see that the prices hadn't been raised this year. On Sunday I had gotten used to the weird settings a bit, and was able to shoot some more photos. Too bad it started to rain quite a bit later on in the day, which prevented me from shooting more photos.
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All in all I'm pretty satisfied with the images, and can't wait to visit Amphi Festival again next year. Last year we slept over at the house of Daniel's friend Madita, but this year we decided to sleep over at Daniel's home and drive back and forth to the festival (about an hour's drive). Next year, however, I'm definitely opting for an air-conditioned hotel room, because sleeping on a sticky and crappy airbed after a long day of walking around in severe heat wasn't too good for my mood.
Every year, the gardens of castle "de Haar" are home to the Elf Fantasy Fair. This annual 2-day cosplay event is the place to see -and be seen- for fans of all sorts of fantasy role-play. Daniel, my apprentice Bas, and myself decided to go check it out and make some nice photo's.
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After a long day of shuffling through the gardens, my feet are killing me and my face has got some serious sunburn; but it was all worth it. I've seen a lot of hot babes with kick-ass costumes, and I can't wait for the next edition; which is in September.
Two weeks ago, I attended the Amphi Festival in Köln, Germany. After two days of nonstop standing, walking, drinking rather pricy cola (€ 4,- per 0.5l bottle) and eating fairly decent pizza; I was broken, exhausted and wasted to the bone. But it was all worth it! I even managed to shoot some videos