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My friend the elephant! (and more!!)
My friend the elephant! (and more!!)
You can read all that is new on my new domain freecarnation.com –
Lately: My friend the giant, Ocean life (an underwater adventure) & Baby Love.
Be sure to check it out and like on my new domain!
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Follow up: Anguilla! Take me to paradise.
It was february 2013… Ferry ride on the caribbean sea.. Waves crashing into the rocks…
It’s Part 2! Read it by clicking on this link.
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Looking back: MAY
Hey you dear followers! Time goes by so fast doesn’t it?
Click here to go to the new domain to see all that happend past month on the blog:
The travel diaries, UNESCO’s pont du Gard, a trip to New York, granny’s big adventure and so much more!
Love, Mariska
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The moving truck.
Lately: Project A43 (my home) | Granny’s great adventure part 2 | One year after NYC
now on the new domain: freecarnation.com
[in WordPress Reader click on links directly]
P.S. Follow me through Facebook, Bloglovin & twitter!
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Blog moved to new domain
Dear readers, you can find the new blog on www.freecarnation.com
You can also follow the blog via:
★ Bloglovin’
★ Facebook
★ Twitter
I’ll see you on the other side!
-Mariska
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A43
Apartment A43, just a place where I work on my blog, read my books, watch all episodes of Friends and cook my meals. This is my home, for now, you know.. Wanderlust.
“Home is wherever I’m with you.”
“…she made her home in between the pages of books.”
-Maggie Stiefvater
The dining table is a place where all good things happen. It’s where we eat our meals, drink our wine by candlelight, discuss with friends, display our flowers.. Take a look at my table’s personal diary.
A place of memories.. Photo albums of my childhood in the Netherlands and grandmother’s clock.
“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
-Gabriel García Márquez
Soon CoralynxBlog will be found under the name Free Carnation and move to free carnation.com
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One year after NYC
Before leaving our ‘home’ in the caribbean in may 2013, boyfriend and I decided to go to New York City and take it easy before going on a new adventure. These are just a few of many photographs. If there is one thing I have learned in the city: Oh my, it is photogenic!
In any other place on earth, what would I have done on a cloudy afternoon? A good book and some good food. So in the city of extremes.. I took my boyfriend to one of the largest public libraries in the world and try some real New York bagels! I like to see as many famous places as possible when I am visiting somewhere new, without looking too much like a tourist. The Nikon camera doesn’t work in my favor!
One of the most precious memories of the city I have of the Brooklyn bridge. I have always wanted to go see it, as I have seen it on the tellie so many times.. But I couldn’t have imagined the beauty of the lines and colors that make this bridge so unique.
As you can see on the picture above, the One World Trade Center or “Freedom Tower” as I’ve got to know it, was still in full construction. This tower and an other building, forming together the 1WTC, are build next to the September 11 Memorial.
It is so fun to take the subway to the city center and enjoy some good people-watching!
This view on the skyline and it’s Empire State Building is taken from the top of Rockefeller Center, seeing the sun set on the city is a have-to.
One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.
-Tom Wolfe
From your blog-ster:
Thank you for reading another one of my posts. Soon CoralynxBlog will be moving to a new domain and change it’s identity. Soon this blog will be named Free Carnation.
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Granny’s Great Adventure, part I
May 9th 2014, the day my grandmother (or ‘oma’ in dutch) stept foot in an airplane for the very first time in her life. She turned eighty earlier this year and my mom decided to treat her on a once-in-a-lifetime-experience. For oma anyway.
Oma dedicated her life raising her eight children and taking care of her husband. Life has been hard I can imagine for this incredible lady. My mother felt it was time for her to take a well-deserved vacation in the south of France. At my place!
So I was happy to pick them up at the airport (where I took these photo’s) and show oma where I live for the first time. She had never been in any of the places I have lived, because I always live abroad. Oma had a great time discovering all the new things in her trip, like the architecture, the scenery and the culture.
We took a “train” ride through the old city center of Montpellier. There was a dutch voice on the tape for oma so she learned about the history of the city.
The sun disappeared behind a thick cluster of clouds that afternoon. Which was a pity because we were showing oma where my boy works, on the beach.
Relaxing on our balcony on the end of the day :)
On day two we took oma to a place called Saint Jean du Gard, where there is this old train station and these old trains that took us through the beautiful mountains..
Oh, and there was this stand with funny straw-hats! ;) All excited I took oma to the hat stand to try on a few, it was great fun!
Stay tuned for part 2!
Mariska
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Metamorphose
As promised: I am easing you into the new blog.. There is still a lot for me to work on on the new address but I already have the design down. To make the change as easy as possible for you I already changed to the new colors on this blog. It’s like a look into the future!
Stay tuned.
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Works of art at The MET
This week’s thedailypost Photo Challenge theme is ‘art’. In honor of this theme (who doesn’t love art, in any kind of form) I am sharing some photo’s I took last year in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. 
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Rebirth
Hey you dear followers, I wanted to keep you up to date on some changes I am making on the blog. Changes I hope will be improvements and will help me to gain more followers.
Design
In the next couple of weeks or even months the blog may change it’s looks a little. I am trying to self-host my blog, and this might have it’s effects on the blog-design.
Name
To reach a bigger audience I will change the domain of my blog. Something snappier and easier to remember. I am going to try to keep the CoralynxBlog.com domain existent and will ease you into all the changes so you will not be lost.
Errors
I will try my best to make this changes as smooth as possible and hope there aren’t going to be any problems within the website. If you notice any errors (like links to other content that don’t function anymore) please let me know.
Thank you so much for understanding and for all your support in the last couple of months, let’s dream big!
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Anguilla, caribbean paradise
Hey you guys! For this week’s the travel diaries I am sharing a bunch of very sun kissed photographs I took in the Caribbean, where I lived for about two years. Let’s daydream about the summer holidays!
In october 2011 me and F moved to the French-Dutch island Saint Martin, a little piece of paradise. When my parents came to spend their holidays we took a day-trip to another tropical island only a twenty-five minutes ferry ride away: Anguilla.
In the morning we left Saint Martin’s Anse Marcel bay to go to the ferry docks in Marigot, the island’s capital. Saint Martin is a very diverse island where you can find as many deserted beaches as traffic jams. Time to leave paradox-island for a day to come to peace in Anguilla.
Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory, that means that when we rented a car upon arrival we had to drive on the left side of the road, something to get used to!
We discovered this little secluded beach by accident, isn’t it just like in the movies? White sand, turquoise water, palm trees growing vertically over the beach, a soft ocean breeze and then there’s the smell of fried chicken and baby back ribs on the barbecue!
These hammocks were the cherry on top! Snoozing after lunch -and- waking up in this scenery..
Rendez-vous bay was actually the first beach we had come across on Anguilla. It seems like an endless coastline decorated with sand and blue.
Wouldn’t you want to live here?
And then there was Limestone bay. Perfect for some sunbathing and having fun in the waves.
Like, leave a comment and stay tuned for part II !
Mariska.
If you liked this “the travel diaries” entry.. You would like this too:
Aruna, the coming of day, temple of dawn
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On the move: Airport méditerranée
Airports are so interesting! There are always people with incredible stories, ceilings with interesting lighting, overpriced parking.. ;)
These photographs are entries for the Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge: On the move.
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Signs
So at the beginning of this week I challenged myself again to go out and take photos of a certain theme: this week was in the sign of.. Signs! Here is what I have come up with!
Ohh wouldn’t this first picture be great for this week’s daily post challenge “On the move” ?
I fell in love with this cute whale car-wash sign I drove by, I had to take a U-turn and capture it!
There is so much going on in airports! That’s where I got my official pictures for the “On the Move” challenge which I will share with you in the upcoming week.
Reader’s entry:
by Klaus from inPhobos
Thank you to those participating and even those thinking about participating.
Remember, just shoot!
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An adventurous meal
After spending a week in crowded Bangkok, boyfriend and I took a train from Hualamphong Station to stop in several cities and villages on our way to the south. This turned out to be the best decision ever. We discovered places we have never heard of, not knowing if there would be any place for us to sleep.
October 24th 2010. Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand.
This morning we left Hua-Hin, a beach-side town popular with those living in Bangkok for weekend getaways. Seeing the Gulf of Thailand for the first time I was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t the turquoise water I had seen on the television watching documentaries about tourism in Thailand. But Hua Hin had this tranquil feel about it. Wide sandy beaches, where we had walked at sunset, a nice ocean breeze.. Nothing to complain about.
Again we took a train heading south. Ninety kilometers (56 miles) in three hours cost us forty Baht per person ($1,20). Riding a train in Thailand is an experience itself. Every five minutes a nice lady or gentleman will walk through the railcar with drinks, snacks or hot meals. Rice and sauces, all separately stored in little plastic bags, are kept warm in coolers and served in palm leaves.
Prachuap Khiri Khan is a fishing port with magnificent curving bays and steep mountaintops. We are here in the off-season but I don’t think there are ever many tourists here. I haven’t seen any hotels or restaurants and bars for that matter. We have found one Guesthouse, a beautiful traditional Thai home with big rooms and wooden floors and a lovely hostess: Maggie.
Because there are almost no tourists here, the rooms are very cheap. We want to stay for at least a few days here to save up some money for the more expensive places. We are traveling on a very tight budget so we can stay in Asia as long as possible. That is why we don’t eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels. We stay in so called Guesthouses where locals rent out their spare rooms and we eat from food carts in the streets.
Maggie’s neighbor has a food cart in her garden with enough patio-furniture so all of her friends and family can eat there in exchange for a few Baht. She made a roof of corrugated iron and plastic, there is no menu, just the products she could find that morning at the local market. The woman has only one burner and one wok, wherein she prepares all foods.
We, and all others, seem to be welcomed as if we are family. It was hard to communicate because in this town no-one speaks English but after a few minutes of monkey-language we got her to understand our wishes for dinner: Thai chicken curry!
In Bangkok I had savored this tasty dish, spicy but just enough, and loved it. Of course in Bangkok they are used to having foreigners tasting their specialties and mellow the curry down a bit. In Prachuap, they don’t.
It took the neighbor only two minutes to make our bowls of curry with rice and serve our diet cokes. So we began the adventure that is called -Thai cuisine-. After one one bite I noticed that this wasn’t the yellow curry, or even the green version that is a bit spicier but this was the Red Curry that makes many Thai recipes “Thai Spicy”. After bite three our cokes were no longer. At bite four we asked for a pitcher of ice-water.
Boyfriend is so spice-intolerent that he doesn’t even eat mustard, so you can imagine what a nightmare this was for him. His face turned red, his eyes all moist.. The ladies at the table next to us seemed to enjoy his discomfort. They started laughing and yelling stuff in what was to us, gibberish. We apologized to the neighbor and payed for two other plates: Omelets on white rice.
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If you liked this post you’d probably like:
Aruna, the coming of day, temple of Dawn
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le Pont du Gard
The impressive ‘Gard Bridge’ is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) long and was build by the Romans to transport water from a fresh water spring in Uzès to the city Nîmes.
The river you can see in the picture above is the “Gard”, it originates in Cévennes and mouths into the “Rhône” river.
On the left bank of the rivers you can spot three enormous olive trees with a great history. They have been planted in the year 908 in Spain, in 1985 the three olive trees have been moved to continue their story with a view on the Pont du Gard.
1985 is also the year that the bridge has been added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites.
Before visiting I never noticed it was on our 5€ bills all along!
P.S. You still have until upcoming weekend to enter the ‘signs’ Photo Challenge.
Keep up to date with my blog and get news on upcoming posts via Coralynx’ Facebook page.
If you liked this post you’ll probably like:
Rooftops of Arles
Back from the Ardèche
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Coralynx’ Photo Challenge: Signs
This monday it is time to announce a new Challenge! I challenge you and myself to provoke creativity and to look at the world around you in another way then usually. Look at the signs. That’s the theme most of you voted for in the poll.
Signs are everywhere.
We use sign language when we speak, shops use signs to draw our attention, restaurants do too. Signs are on the side of the road, in our horoscope.. Or there to inform us about the spices we can purchase on the produce market in Nice, France:
To enter this contest:
For wordpress users: Include your signs photograph in a post and use a “ping back” to this post.
For those who don’t have a wordpress blog: Upload your photo anywhere else on the internet (example: TinyPic.com) and post the URL in a comment on this post.
You have one week..
I will share my signs photographs upcoming weekend with the photographs of the contestants. Remember, it’s all about having fun and expanding horizons!
Good luck,
Please take a quick moment to fill in my Reader Survey, thank you!
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Aruna, the coming of day, temple of Dawn
October 19th 2010. Bangkok.
Today we took the riverboat to cross the Chao Praya river to visit Wat Arun, the temple of Dawn. Our guesthouse for tonight is about two blocks from the river so it should’ve been easy to locate the pier where the ferries and water-taxi’s depart.. No surprise that it took us nearly two hours to find!
Arriving at the foot of the temple from the water is amazing. From afar the towers stand tall and the shapes are not like any building I know in Europe. With every step I got closer to the temple, more and more details exposed itself to me: The guardians of the temple, the steep marches that go all the way to the top, the leaves and flowers made with ceramics that decorate every inch and corner of the construction and color it’s holy content.
We encountered a pretty young lady of the “Royal Thai Tourism Education Bangkok” who came to Wat Arun with some of her classmates to propose free tours of Wat Arun and practice her English. We declined as we already lost a lot of time walking around looking for our ferry but I was very interested in the story behind Wat Arun, this is what I remember from her story:
Aruna and his brother, Garuda, were promised to become the powerful sons of Vinata, mother of all birds, if she was patient enough to let them hatch from their eggs. However, she didn’t want to wait any longer and her curiosity made her to break one of the eggs. A flash of light radiant and red as the morning sun arose from the broken shell. It was Aruna, the coming of day, not as powerful as the sun at noon but it’s spiritual powers are thought to be stonger than those of the light of day.
Boyfriend and me posing for the Auto-shutter of our point-and-shoot. I regret not having had a “real” camera back in the days.
At the end of the day we came across a park named Saranrom Park, where I threw some left-over bread in the pond to see if there were any fish. In a few seconds my thoughts were confirmed, little fish came to the surface to snack of my egg-sandwich. A bit later these enormous koi-carps followed and to my cheerful stupefaction even turtles came swimming to eat.
Boyfriend was so impressed by the local sport we got introduced to in this park after looking it up I found out that it’s called Sepak Takraw. Takraw is the Thai word for the special woven wicker ball that is used to play. In this version of the game all players stand in a circle and kick the ball around, using feet, elbows, head, anything but their hands, without it touching the ground, in the most artistic and acrobatic way.
Got to go, time for some Thai curry and a few pitchers of water on the side!
About the travel diaries..
In some of my travels I kept a diary in honor of all my adventures, encounters and emotions along the way, they may not be forgotten.
I regret not having a DSLR on my first years of exploring the world and regret even more having lost nearly all photo’s of our (boyfriend and me) six months backpacking-trip through South-East Asia.
The travel diaries is all what is left of my ventures: bits from my scribbles, pieces of what I remember and all that’s left over from the pictures that we took.
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Back from the Ardèche
I am taking you to the Ardèche today, a region in France very popular for family vacations. I used to work here and the past few days a went back to meet up with some friends. I admit I fell of the face of the earth for about a week.. No internet, no cell-phone.. It was quite lovely to be honest. Life in the Ardèche is like going back into time when we didn’t complicate our days with modern technology.
Spring time to me means staying outside for balcony wine-drinking, hiking, lunch and barbecuing! I must admit that these are photo’s of last year but I just loved this day so much that I have to share this with you!
Happy weekend to you all!
Photo’s are entries for this week’s Spring! photo challenge.
If you like this post take a look at these:
Monument: a photo challenge
“Family Portrait”
Results: on the table challenge
Coralynx' Blog 