Suske and Wiske museum AND Robotland...

 Dear Blog...

Happy Easter!! =)

... yes, we do have holidays too.. the easter holidays! (We're nearly at the end though.....)

... yes, we did some amazing stuff! 

1) We went to see the Super Mario Bros movie! (just on it's openingday (5th of April) (and it was smashingly GOOD).. and it did also hit me right into the feels! :) (oooh.. the nostalgia..)

2) We went swimming @de treffer (Wargem) a pool at about an halfhour drive.. 

3) We went to ROBOTland... at Essen...!! AND MANY MORE things.. 

See website @ https://robotland.tv/ 

And what a blast this turned out to be :D.. We worked, pulled, twitched, poked with so much tools and/or robot(parts) and got quite experienced with working tools, operating equipments and so on.. 

I quite enjoyed the 'lunapark' feeling of some of the 'gizmo's'.. and tried to grab with the robotic arm all sort of wooden blocks to get myself a small tower.. but it turned out quite difficult!

We even handled the buttons and levers of a big crane! and tried to catch a duck with a small crane :)

A lot of simulations.. to fly a plane, to ride a train.. and even a boat! :)

We even did a search for the name of the robot!.. It turned out to be... ROBBIE off course :)

It was quite pricy, but nevertheless, we spent a whole day over there! We started at opening hour (10u) and stayed till 4u! It was a big room with lots of buttons to experiment with or to handle.. :) and in the end it was also really educational!

Then afterwards.. I surprised the peeps with a huge surprise.. we went to a hotel.. and in style with the porgrame: (the mole).. the others had to find out where our next visit (the day after) would be ... 

(the children got in the morning some books.. - of suske and wiske) in the end Michael did fount out where we were going to.. 

We went for a nice stay at hotel Jerom.. And what a hotel that was!!!

https://hoteljerom.com/nl/ ... I want to go back.. allready!

It had a nice bed for the kids.. with a big ladder :D

The next day we did a very tasteful (yummie) breakfast at the hotel, a bit of hiking at 'the kalmthoutse heide'.. And we spent the afternoon at the SUSKE and WISKE museum!! (in Amerika this lovely duo is called Willy and Wanda)

ON WIKI: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suske_en_Wiske 

What a blast from the past this is... I'm a small fan of the comics.. and own over 100 stories by S&W.. but the last years I didn't buy more.. cos they are quite pricey these days.. and they have been locked away in boxes for about 4 years now.. due to renovation of the house and having no good closet to put hem in with all the respect they need.. 

The entrance fee to the museum was quite allright! With my teacher card it was about 5 euros! 

One thing... you have to reserve your visit.. cos it's a very unique experience and there are just a couple more people who can attend the 'strip tour'.. 

And how original was it really?! I loved every minute of it.. a lot of doing, working, thinking,moving.. you name it.. the 2 hours just fly by so quickly.. 

Also the visit to the writer/creator/drawer of the comics house just next to the museum was quite moving.. you could really feel the work that went into the comics..

The writer 'Willy Vandersteen' died in 1990 at the age of 77.. When I was just 4 years old, almost 5.. a legend died that day..

YES.. good times! I enjoyed it very much... especially the museum cos back in 2009, we did a roadtrip and went to Kalmthout .. and only photographed the museum on the outside and didn't go in that time.. (i have no clue why we did that..) not even did we visited the 'heide'.. 

==> see? :P .. https://sara-keiko.blogspot.com/2009/08/

But now.. nearly 14 years later.. we finally managed to get to the suske en wiske museum AND went for a walk in the famous 'Kalmthoutse heide'.. :)

We did the 'libelle' walk.. and this is about 4.7km long.. there were so much more walks, sometimes smaller, sometimes much longer.. this was just about right with the kids! The signposts were really clear! We even went up the watchtower and were amazed with so much calm nature.. and with a pinch of lovely weather, we just had a great morning :D

==> https://grensparkkalmthoutseheide.com/

What is it? 

The Kalmthout Heath (Dutch: Kalmthoutse Heide) is one of the oldest and largest nature reserves of Flanders,^[1] bordering the Netherlands and part of the Dutch-Belgian cross-border park De Zoom – Kalmthoutse Heide.^[2] It used to be part of a vastly larger European heath landscape. Its name stems from its location: the Belgian municipality Kalmthout.^[1]

It has been protected as a landscape since 1941, and officially became a state reserve (Dutch: staatsreservaat) in 1964 due to a petition of over 100,000 signatures.^[3]

Geography

The heath is an infiltration area located in a cover sand region, in the north of the province of Antwerp. Its relief consists mainly of clay sediments from the Early Pleistocene Kempen Formation. Dunes formed during the Preboreal and the Boreal epochs. At least some of the heath's larger dune systems were still active up until at least the 1990s. In these dune systems, dune-forms (featuring dry podzols or undifferentiated soils) such as parabolic dunes and longitudinal dunes alternate with vast deflation planes (featuring wet podzols) with multiple moorland pools. All of the soils are sandy, transported by saltation. Its water is low in minerals and profoundly acid.^[4]

(source - wikipedia)

So yes.. when am i going back?

Hopefully not in 14 years from now.. and a lot sooner!

Blink* .. The end.. 

xxxKeiko