Paris, France

As intended, Christmas is spent in Paris, the city of Romance. We found a host from CS that gave us his whole apartment because he was back to his province to celebrate Christmas, so we got the whole place to ourselves.

Apart from the beauty of Paris, they do not actually publicly celebrate Christmas, there wasn’t a count down or party in the city. I should have known better because everyone in Europe celebrates it with their family.

We attended mass at the Notre Dame. The mass is celebrated in English, French and Spanish. The first time I could understand the mass in 3 different languages in Europe. J The choir was fantastic, it seems like all of them are from the opera. This is a picture of Notre Dame.
Then we met with Yingwen and Marcus (the scandalous couple) at the Eiffel Tower. That is the first time I see the tower. It was huge and at that moment, the only thing that struck me was it was so touristic. I heard about so many things about the Eiffle Tower, some told me that it is really romantic, and some told me that the place around that stinks, and I felt neither of those feelings. Apart from the tourists, it is really nice and I wouldn’t mind leaving in Paris for a long time. Then at night, we made a walk down Champs Elysees, which is supposed to be like our Orchard Road. Apart from the nice lights decoration, there is nothing exciting about that place. Ok, maybe with the amount of shops that the girls can spend endless time there.
Then, we visited Disney Land. Is my 4th Disney land in December for 3 years in a row, I seriously wonder if next year, I will be in Florida to complete my round the world Disney Land tour. But anyways, this would be one of the better Disney Lands that I have been to, probably is because I only waited for less than 20minutes for the space mountain. And there are a lot more rides that I got a chance to take, and I think the waiting time was really fast.
Met up with Edwin and his girlfriend and we visited The Lourve. The architecture was sophisticated and modernized. So you imagine what you saw for Davinci Code to be exactly what it is.
Took a picture of Mona Lisa smile, the picture that so many people goes into Lourve for.
And the famous sculpture of Venus de Milo.
Among all these attractions, the one that really steal the show was this modern art that captures the wildest imaginations of every human beings. Have you watched Ratatouille? Saw the shop with all the rats. And is interesting how they advertise rat poison. =p Met up with Imran and he currently has his own business in Paris. He is just so inspiring because he learnt French and now he is working as a translator. He cooked a great meal for us, pasta goreng. =)
Then there was the famous church on top of a hill, Sacre Coeur. We reached there at 12. And the lights went off. =( but it still look good. Then of course we can’t miss the famous Moulin Rouge.
I’m looking forward for my next visit to Paris already. It has just become one of my top 5 cities in Europe.

Merry Xmas!!! Ho Ho Ho!!!

Kiruna, Sweden

The northern part of Sweden in Kiruna was supposed to be the highlight of my Sweden trip. But murphy’s law happened with us. First, we didn’t manage to meet our operator for dog sled and 2nd, the northern light didn’t appear. Oh well, life goes on. =(

Visited the famous ice-hotel, where you really get to stay in it. And the price is so high, near 1k just to stay one night. Ridiculous!!!
Then you have some really good ice sculptures inside. This is a sculpture of a face.
This is a window in the ice. So cool right…
This is a typical bed in the ice hotel.
This is where the original ice bar comes from.
This is my host from Kiruna. She is Sandra, and she is so lovely. She was sick but she still come to the airport to pick us up. And she is a really good snowboarder, and her house is a cool house, other than having the bathroom in the basement when she stay on the 3rd storey.
This is the neighbourhood that I stay in.
Some Xmas decorations for in Sweden.
Finally, I did some dog-sleding. It was a different experience, but it was rather good. The dogs are born to run, the rate they run is so fast. And they feed on meat.

Oslo, Norway

One day is more than enough to visit Oslo. There is nothing spectacular other than experiencing the extreme cold conditions. =p

Of course there are some nice tourist attractions, and one of my personal favourite is Frogen Park where there are many statues which are sculptured with no clothes, because the sculptor wanted it to be timeless, and of course it causes much controversies during the time when the park was constructed.

And for the first time in my life, I see the pond turn into ice and in the evenings people for there with their skates to ice skate. Nothing surprising because people always say that the Norwegian are born with a pair of skis on the legs.

Then there is the Slottet Castle which houses the King of Norway.
Another impressive attraction would be Akershus Festning which is a fortress. It was impressive mainly because there is very little tourists there as this is winter time, you see very tourist everywhere. =) But guess what, this is my 3rd time in Europe meeting people Singaporeans. I met Shawn in the fort together with his girlfriend. How small can this world be.
Then I stayed with Andre, my neighbour in Otago, New Zealand. He was so hospitable and helped me with every bit of settling down. He cooked a great meal for me and showed me his PWC office in Oslo. Somehow, I think I would fancy the opportunity to be an auditor. Lolx.

And I'm so happy that I finally got to see Munch's famous drawing "The Scream" in the museum. Even though the one I saw on internet was so much nicer, but it was really good. Can you believe it? Seeing a painting which was stolen the most times in recent history.

Then Dyanne brought me to SkiJump. A ski resort which is used in the Olympics. The scenery was awesome, but we were relly freezing our arse off there.

At night, Dyanne cooked a great meal of curry and stir fried vegetables. And her dessert was absolutely mouth-watering. Is so nice to always eat familiar food, and of course food that is cooked by fellow Singaporeans. =p
Andre was invited to the dinner together with Magnus – Dyanne’s bf. He is really nice and charming, I think that’s how he got the chic. Just not to complicate matters, I'm standing beside Magnus and Dyanne is standing beside Andre.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The city where the impossible becomes possible and the infamous becomes famous. The Dutch believes that they are free people in their own right, therefore they are the first country to allow same sex marriage, to legalized marijuana and other drugs, and legalized prostitution.

This is one of the many coffeeshop. Being a good boy, I didn’t go into any of the coffeeshops. Even though in life, everything, whether is good or bad, you should try once, but this time, I’m really too lazy to try. =p Then there is the Red Light District. It was something that I expected because I have seen similar ones in Hamburg, but this time it has more. And the girls wear lesser and exposed more. This place is more of a tourist attraction than anything. But having said that, ome of the girls are absolutely gorgeous, and sometimes, these tourists are preyed upon, and I think is pretty hard to resist. Lolx. I also visited Van Gogh Museum, and his art is really different from the rest of the art pieces that I have seen thus far. He draw simple and normal live drawing in dotted and lines fashion. He clearly brings out the expression of the people or object that he is drawing. And obviously, he only became famous after he kicked the bucket. I also visited Anne Frank’s house. Her story touches so many people in the world after the war. And to see what she actually go through during her hideout during the war makes me feel how fortunate I already am. The queue to visit this house is always very long, but it pays to be early, because there wasn’t any queue first thing in the morning.
Rembrandt’s famous portrait, the ‘Night Watch’ was turned into statues in this part of Amsterdam.
Then there is the famous sex museum that shows how sex was done and perceived from ancient times to modern times. Quite interesting I must say, but knowing fantastic.
Since young, I always want to see the Windmill of Holland, as I have seen it so many times on the TV and I finally got to see one in Amsterdam. It is not easy to find the windmills in Amsterdam, even the locals do not even know, but thank god, my host found it for me. The national flower – Tulip has so many varieties here. And are all selling for so cheap. There is a big market selling flowers. The tulips are really pretty.
They even have DIY kit for planting your own marijuana.
One of the most amazing thing that I did in Amsterdam and in Europe is to stay in an exotic place, and here, I stayed in a boat house. There are not many boat houses in Amsterdam, and I got to stay here. It was quite cool to stay on the boat, and it was really cool how stable it was, even though there are boats passing by every time. This is my beloved host, Binnie, who was so nice to show me around all the places in Amsterdam, and constantly stuffing me so much Tradition Dutch food. Amsterdam is below sea level, but the entire land was raised, and on the northern side, most of the parts are reclaimed. There are canals everywhere around Amsterdam, and boats can get you almost everywhere in Amsterdam, because all the canals are connected, However, there is no public transport in the canal. But one thing that is for sure, there are so much more tourist in the canal than on the land. =p

This is the typical nice canal plus city view of Amsterdam.
And this is the clock tower. =)
Amsterdam is not officially my top 3 favourite spot in Europe thus far. I Am sterdam.

Belfast, Northern Ireland

The city that built Titanic. Belfast is like the Frankfurt of Germany. A city’s city. With many industrial buildings, and cater more for the business people. But at the same time it has so much history. The history of Northern Ireland with the United Kingdom as well as Ireland. I felt that I know almost the whole story Ireland.

When you walk down to the east of the city, you will find murals in Falls Road and Shankill Road.
This is mural is to commemorate the pride of the Irish.
This mural is to pledge Northern Ireland allegiance to United Kingdom.
And what do you think this is? The Commando in the Irish Battalion. =)
A view of the recognizable city center with the city hall and the Belfast eye.
The same picture taken at night – a city sidewalk dress in holiday style, in the air there is a feeling of Christmas. Ireland has long been war torn over the religion as much of the people in the Northern Ireland belong to the Protestant and the rest of the Irish are Catholic. So there is a war between the Protestant and Catholic. The church has lotsa power over the people in Ireland. In Republic of Ireland, you can expect almost 100% Catholism, but in the Northern Ireland, there is a division of Catholic and Protestant where rightfully should be Protestant as much of the countries in United Kingdom belong to Protestant. My host was extremely nice even though she had a chest infection. She cooked curry for me on the first night and Irish stew for me on the 2nd night. This is the Irish stew. Her cooking was so good, and she is one of the few that knows how to speak Irish fluently and she graduated from Trinity College with a degree in Irish. Her dream is to save up some money and head south to learn tradition Irish cooking. She is so nice that she even wanted to drive me to the bus station in the middle of the night, but at the end, she was just to sick to do it, so she called the cab and paid for it to drive me the bus station. Absolutely lovely. The street that I stayed in used to be the street where George Best (former Man U player and one of the best player in the world) stayed in. So it was so cool to see the street that George Best grew up in.
I got some time to watch the full 3 episodes of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Well, I watch 3 of it before, but I never did complete them, because I fell asleep in all the 3 shows in the cinema. Oppss…but now I finally knowing the whole story of the movie. And I just love Kiera Knightly, she is just too hard to resist.