Last week Lisette and myself visited Lisbon for four days. We’ve been to Portugal many times but only spend a couple of single days in Lisbon. This was a chance for us to really explore the city and find out what it’s all about. We stayed in Hotel Britania which was excellent. Should you ever want to visit Lisbon we highly recommend this hotel. We walked a lot, visited the different sights including the oceanarium on the world expo terrain. We also grabbed some great dinners with great seafood.
All in all we had a great time! After four days my parents drove-up to pick us up. They now have a smaller house in the Algarve (south of Portugal) where we will stay for almost 2 weeks. First we visited with some friends in Sintra and then drove down. As we speak we are here in the Algarve enjoying the sun and just relaxing. Well, besides a lot of shopping and eating out!
Below is a selection of the pictures from around Lisbon. It’s a great city to take photographs with spectacular colors and great sights.
…we will be on our way to sunny Portugal to enjoy a 2 week vacation. Our plane leaves Brussels at 17.00 hrs so we should be in Lisbon for dinner tonight. During the vacation I will try to upload some pictures to keep everyone posted. You can also keep an eye on my Mobypicture page or on the Flickr stream to the right on the page as I will be posting pictures there from my mobile phone during the vacation (one or two a day).
That’s it! Next time you see a post here we will be on Lisbon time!
Today is my birthday! I turned a big 32 today. The years are starting to count…but I do feel young as ever. This morning Lisette surprised me with a cow bar. That might need some explanation… You see in The Netherlands we have a candy bar called ‘koetjesreep’ which translated means cow bar. It’s something I really liked ever since I was young. And it’s not even real chocolate but a ‘cocoa fantasy’ but still very good and I like it very much. Well, she surprised me with 12 of these when I woke up, but as I walked throughout our house today I found more and more everywhere. So far I’ve found 60 in total! Lisette just called me and said there should be more…so there will be an expedition to search for more later today.
My parents called me this morning and sang happy birthday for my together with my nieces who are visiting there. It was a great feeling. Then my friend and collegue Ronnie called me and sang to me as well. So it’s been a great birthday so far!
After my last purchase of gear for my camera I must admit I got a bit greedy. I noticed all these nice little gimmicks that I wanted in addition to what I got before. As I often do I figured I would wait and think about it before I made the decision. After all, these were spur of the moment things. Well, I thought about it and right before we go on vacation this Saturday I decided to get the following:
We are going to Portugal like we did many times before. However, this time is different. We first fly to Lisbon and stay there for four days. We’ve been to the city a couple of times and liked it during the day trips. So we decided a longer stay should be even better. We are staying in Heritage Hotel Britania which is a nice boutique art deco hotel in the Lisbon historic center. It should be a great base to explore the city. After the four days of Lisbon we go down to the Algarve (Carvoeiro) and stay at my parents house to enjoy some days of beach, sun and fun.
Back to the goodies I picked-up. After hearing good things about the Canon 50mm lens from Bram and checking out the results other photographers had with the lens on Flickr I was sold. This should be a great lens for both portraits and day and night shots which are saturated with color. I can’t wait to try it out in Lisbon. The battery grip gives me room for two batteries (which I already have) and extends the grip which should be good because I have big hands. It’s also great for Lisette when she goes to Africa because two batteries of course means twice the shooting time. The Gorillapod is something I discovered through Vincent. He has a small one and I love the build, weight and versatility. Hopefully I can put it to good use.
I must admit I did pick-up something else tonight (damn this internet shopping!). I got a Sony Ericsson C702. I currently own an old Nokia which I use when I go out and about and don’t need e-mail and other gimmicks but it’s getting pretty dated. I have been looking around for another rugged phone. I like the idea of the Sonim XP1 but I’m not THAT rugged (or a contractor either). So I went with the C702 which sports 3G wireless internet, a 3.2 megapixel Cybershot camera, GPS (and Google maps!) and some other neat features while being water and dust resistant. It should make a great companion next to my iPhone which I’m stil waiting for to be delivered (T-mobile does not equal Deutsche grundlichheid).
So with the new camera gear and the new phone I should be all set for vacation time! You can be sure I will show off the results here.
Beginning of this year I had a problem with one of my backup drives…it was wiped out for some reason I’ve never really got to grasp. I ran recovery tools for two or three days just to get all the data back. Most of it was recovered, but a lot of it was a big big mess. Just imagine pulling everything out of your closet and throwing it on the floor. That’s wat is was like.
It wasn’t a big problem for my documents because those I could search with spotlight or Google Desktop. However, all my digital pictures from 2001 to 2007 were in the same pile. Not a good thing. I’ve been working on it bit by bit for the last couple of months and finally I wrapped it up today. Lesson learned: make sure you have back-ups of your back-ups…
Now they made the commercial Courage for the olympics and they hit the feeling spot on. It’s inspiring and moving and brand building all at the same time. Check out the genius below:
Yesterday I ordered some new toys for my camera. First off I got a wide angle lens. I wanted one for a long time because it gives me a good chance to improve on pictures inside. I have some clients who want good shots for their websites of rooms and expositions. This lens will help me do that.
To carry everything aroud I also ordered this backpack. It has plenty of room for my photo gear and let’s me also take my 17-inch Macbook Pro with me. Nice! I also picked-up an extra battery and an 8GB memory card.
Yep, that’s right! It looks like a new design. The pink design I had before was just interim design until I found something new. Yesterday I noticed this team on Smashing Magazine and liked it straight away. I wanted something clean but fun for my personal blog. Something a little less business like and more fun. Well, this is it! I hope you like it. I’ve also updated the Wordpress backoffice to 2.6. That was long overdue because I hadn’t updated in ages and ages!
So there you go, something new to look at. If only I could keep writing on my blog at a regular interval…
Who am I? That's a pretty big question for such a small space. Check out my about page to read where I come from, check my LinkedIn profile to see what I did and that should give you a pretty good overview.
