Eire 2008: Lusk & Swords Castle

Monday: driving back to Dublin ;-)

Eire 2008: Ardgillan Castle & Skerries

Monday: to the Irish sea where there are great views, places and people!
Visit Skerries Mills visitor centre for a great tour of the mills and great sandwiches (flower for the bread is from the mills! yummmm!)!

Eire 2008: Drogheda

Saturday, Sunday, Monday: a great place to stay!

Eire 2008: Monasterboice

Sunday: best high crosses of Ireland!

Eire 2008: Hill of Slane & Mellifont Abbey

Sunday: great ruins! http://www.mythicalireland.com/ancientsites/slane/index.html (loads of info on the other sites too!)

Eire 2008: Knowth & Newgrange

Sunday: the places to visit in the boyne Valley! Impressive!

Eire 2008: Trim

Saturday: an impressive Norman Castle and refreshing Irish rain ;-)

Eire 2008: The Hill of Tara

Saturday. Such a special place!

Eire 2008: Dublin

Thursday night, Friday, Monday night and Tuesday

Museum of Playing Cards (Turnhout, 19-9-2008)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

Turnhout is a small city in the north of Belgium very close to the Dutch border. It has been a centre for the production of playing cards for some ages now so obviously there is a museum about them too.

The museum is in an old playing card factory so they have loads of really cool machines including one that works on steam power. Very impressive stuff!
There's a lot of fun information about playing cards and their history but mind: it's all Dutch!

There is a room for special exhibits and the current one is about Tarock/Tarot. There are some very fine sets to be seen in this exhibit! And you get to learn about the history of Tarot cards which is quite interesting.
You can visit this exhibit un till 30-11-2008.

More info: http://www.turnhout.be/speelkaartmuseum/
There's a nice shop in the museum too where you can buy all kinds of sets of playing cards. You can get a special entrance fee which includes a set of cards and a visit to the museum!

Summer Festivals II

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

There's more!

11-7-2008: Guldenontsporing, Brussels

A very special concert for this regional holiday: Dez Mona, one of our favourite Belgian bands, played a concert with Go_tell (a gospel choir) in the parliament of Brussels. Wow³!
I hope they do something like this again next year!


2-8-2008: Lokerse Feesten

A night of Punk!

- Buzzcocks (UK)
Their music sounds a lot cooler than they look! Ah well, Punks get older too but they still rock ;-)

- The New York Dolls (USA)
Great to finally see this very influential band. Something between Blues/Rock and Punk. The lead singer still looks cool btw ;-)

- Sex Pistols (UK, well originally anyway)
ANARCHY!!!! Punk as a commercial and sell-able product but we don't care ;-)
Very enjoyable!


14-8-2008: Pukkelpop

So much to see, so little time!

We heard some and hardly saw: Amy Macdonald, Soko, The Tings Tings

Nice Enough: Serj Tankian, Ian Brown

Great stuff:
- Little Dragon (check video)
- Circ Isnietsch (a cool theatre-circus act, check site)
- Tricky (So cool! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricky)
- Roisin Murphy (Always great)
- The Killers (So many terrific songs!)

Brilliant:
Editors (Just go and see a concert you'll see what I mean)
Mercury Rev (Finally!)


23-8-2008: Maanrock, Mechelen

The Tellers: a terrific Belgian band. Check http://www.thetellers.be/

Dead Souls: former Joy Division coverband, great songs of their own now!

The Germans: Belgian band, I was very impressed! Check http://www.thegermans.be/