German weekend getaway

Sometimes you just need to get away. Raise your hand if you know the feeling.

Well, lately I’ve had that feeling, a lot! I know I shouldn’t complain, my last trip was in November, and the next two are planned for March, but stil, I had, had it! Winter in Belgium has been really wet, and barely no sun. 

Don’t be mistaken, I usually love winter. Give me good snowy day any day, but that’s not what we’ve been having. Nope, we had rain, and rain, and cloudy days, and rain… 





So what to do? I roamed all the sites to get cheap plane tickets, anywhere sunny, but that didn’t work out. They were either not in my travel budget, or on the dates I could go. (work, blergh, right?) Anyway, my dad came with a perfect solution, he found an amazing deal on a wellness hotel in Germany, just under three hours from home. Lindner Sport & Aktiv Hotel Kranichhöhe in Much (I hadn’t heard from it either, don’t worry!) Let’s go!  

So, I started a blog, and then didn’t write on it for over a year. Yay me.

Anyway, I’ve recently done an amazing trip, and I thought, why not try again?

So, take two!

I’ve been to Iceland. 

Yes, Iceland!

A lot of people were surprised by this choice of destination, but let me tell you why I fell in love with this country rather quickly.

I was telling on of my colleagues about an article I had read in a travel magazine with some breathtaking pictures, and she said, well I’ve wanted to go there for years, we should go. So when I found a nice deal on flights, we didn’t hesitate and booked our trip!

Let me tell you why I fell in love with this country rather quickly, by sharing my top 5 sights that I visited.

1. Þingvellir
   It’s the national park that has the rift between the Eurasian and the American plate.   

              Walking between the cracks is so weirdly creepy. The earth is literally splitting in two here.

2. Geysir

Well, who would not be amazed by hot water sprouting into the air? Every 10-15 minutes the Strokkur geyser comes to live sprouting water as high as 30 meters! It’s not just that though, the whole geo-thermal area is impressive. Water is just bubbling from the ground, boiling hot. The only downside? It kind of smells like rotten eggs.

3. Seljalandsfoss

Iceland is full of beautiful waterfalls, no doubt about it. I have never seen so many waterfalls in my life, but this one was extra special, because you can walk behind it! How cool is that?!
We hadn’t even planned to go there, but we were driving and Syl saw it at the side of the road, and decided to stop. A delightful surprise on our road trip, aren’t those the best?

4. The lava fields

I feel like I have no proper picture for this, or at least not one that does it justice, so I’ll try to describe it as best as I can.
Iceland is basically made out of volcanoes and lava, you can see it everywhere, and it overwhelmed me more than once. One particular moment was when we driving past mount Hekla (the latest eruption is from 2000, and it erupts every ten years, give or take… scary) and you could just see all the bits and pieces of lava rock that had been thrown around everywhere, and it just hit me. This island is just one big active volcano, and it can erupt at anytime. It made me feel very small and human.
Another moment was when were driving to Jökulsárlón and passed the Katla. Another volcano that is long overdue. The last eruption is from 1918, and it usually erupt twice every hundred year, again, scary! I try not to think too much about the fact that it hasn’t erupted in almost a hundred years, and it’s basically a disaster waiting to happen, but as we were driving past it, and you can just see how the lava had flowed from the crater and down to the sea level, it makes you think. Since it has been almost hundred years, everything is overgrown with moss, which makes it almost feels like you’re on another planet.

5. Jökulsárlón 

This is the farthest west we got, but I’m so glad we did, although its a little bittersweet. The big glacier Vatnajokull is melting, and the lagoon that got created because of it, is only seventy years old. The glacier is literally breaking of, and bits and pieces of thousand year old ice (that has this weird bluefish color) floats towards the sea. Beautiful, breathtaking, and a little sad.

Of course there's much more to Iceland then those 5 places, and I've only seen a little part of the island, but what I saw impressed me so much. I'll definitely be going back there in the future, hopefully for more then a week!

Have you ever been or are you planning to go there sometime soon? Let me know!

Budapest

Hi!

Since I love it so much (and I might not do it much the next few months, I’m saving for a few big trips), I decided my first post should be about travelling.

I’ve been to Budapest a few weeks ago, and wow! I have no other word for it. Wow! What a beautiful city. I wanted to go to Budapest for years, ever since I saw a documentary about the famous thermal baths a few years ago, and this year I finally convinced my best friend to come with me.

I’ll start with where we slept. We booked a bed & breakfast through booking.com, House Beletage. Such a great little hotel style B&B. It was a nice mixture of Ikea furniture (I love Ikea), and vintage influences. Also some personal touches, which was lovely.

We did some sightseeing with a hop on hop off bus (we were such tourists), which was okay. We saw a lot, even if it was full of obnoxious tourists, especially the night tour was impressive. I loved the architecture in Budapest. Such beautiful buildings. Usually in a city you have a nice building here, a church there, another good looking building a few blocks further, but Budapest was just full of them!

The thermal baths. Oh, where do I start? 

Palatinus beach

We went to the Széchenyi baths first, which are lovely. Since they’re the most famous baths, they’re also the most pricey, and full of tourist, but you just have to do them. You can get massages and pedicures as well there, although I would recommend booking them early, since we got there in the afternoon, and the pedicure was already fully booked. The day after that we went to the Palatinus beach on the Margaret Island.  This complex had 11 pools, of which two were thermal baths. I honestly think I liked this one better than Széchenyi. It was much quieter, not as many tourists, and the vibe was just much more relaxed. We had a lovely lunch there as well (if you go to Hungary or Budapest, try the cucumber salad! It’s delicious), and spent the whole day tanning and relaxing. 

We had lovely lunches and dinners in local restaurants, but if I want to tell you about one, it’s Kazimir. It’s located at the Kazinczy Utca. (Utca means street. I learned some Hungarian when I was there.) It’s a street full of nice looking restaurants, but we went to Kazimir since a colleague of mine recommended it. I had the farmers breaded chicken breast with parsley potatoes and a cucumber salad(!!). It was like a little party in my mouth! I also tasted some local wine (which was cheaper then water, can you believe that?), it was okay, but kind of dry, and I prefer the sweeter kind.

All by all, I can only tell you Budapest is amazing. I think it must have been a very rich city once upon a time, but all faded glory now. It has the most glorious buildings I have ever seen, sadly most of them could really use some renovation works. All of them are beautiful, but the renovated ones are just breathtaking.

Have you ever been to Budapest? Or is it on your to do list? It should be. Let me know!

Love, Joyce

Introductions

How do I start this? I have honestly no idea.

I’ve always loved writing, but lately I haven’t been doing it as much as I’d like, so I figured, let’s start a blog. I have no idea what this blog will center around, apart from the obvious, my life. Do I like to write about beauty and make-up? Do I like to write about movies? Travelling? All of them combined? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see (or read) how this turns out.

First, let me give a short introduction of myself.

Hi! ( I should have started with that) My name is Joyce, I’m 24, and I live in this teeny, tiny country named Belgium (you might have heard of us, we’re that country famous for waffles and beer, also French fries. They’re not French!) I work in a nursery home, and I’m studying to become a professional make-up artist. I have a passion for musicals, good books, and travelling, And an unhealthy addiction to everything Disney related. When I’m procrastinating, I enjoy binge watching TV shows (currently I’m very into Game of Thrones and Bones). Let me tell you, I’m very excited about Netflix coming to Belgium at the end of the year.

As said above, I’m from Belgium, hence I speak Dutch, so English isn’t my native language. If you see any mistakes, please feel free to point them out to me. I can only do my best to learn to improve, and I can only learn if someone points out my grammatical errors.

I hope you’ll enjoy whatever I have to say on here.

Love, Joyce