In this day and age, where life is a constant run around, a nice relaxing holiday is always what the doctor orders to de-stress. Rosie Khdir unwinds in the Belgian town of Spa.

Spa is famously known as the Ville d’Eaux, meaning “the town of waters” due to its site at the hot healing springs. The spring were popular worldwide but it was during the 16th Century that a sort of tourism grew, and brought with it the likes of Christine of Sweden, Charles II of England, Peter the Great, Joseph II, Giacomo Meyerbeer and Victor Hugo.

This town may be small but it is steeped in history from back to when the Romans ruled Europe right up to the First World War, when it was occupied by the German Army. The town today shows its history through its architecture and quirky museums, such as the Museum of and Folklore and Musée de la Lain, which is concerned with the history of wool processing.

In Spa you will find bustling street markets, churches, the beautiful 19th Century Leopold II Gallery and of course “Les Thermes de Spa” (see image).

The spa was renovated recently and now has around 8600 square feet of hot swimming pools, with water temperatures of 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Visitors can spend a few hours or a full day relaxing in the bells of water, geysers, bubbles seats and cannons that help you unwind and tone up. The water that comes from the “Clementine” spring is filled with natural minerals that are great for your skin and are thought to have powerful healing properties.

If you fancy putting a more racy spin on your holiday you can try your hand at the Casino of Spa, which is the oldest in the world, dating back to 1763. Spa is also home to Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, which hosts the Belgian Formula One Grand Prix every year.

To top it all off Spa will also host the finish of Stage 2 of the 2010 Tour de France on July 5th.

If you want to experience both the thrilling and relaxing attraction of Spa, you can get the Belgium easily with P&O Ferries. There is a Hull – Zeebrugge route, or alternatively via Dover to Calais from where it is just a short drive along the E40 to the Belgian border. Prices start at just £30 for a car and up to nine people.

Image credit: Belgapixel

Tags: Belgium, History, Lifestyle, P&O Ferries by Rosie Khdir
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Yes it’s that time of year again, when all the beautiful people of Hollywood grace the south coast of France. Rosie Khdir anticipates many wonderful films, elegant gowns and gleaming smiles at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Today marks the beginning of the 63rd Cannes Film Festival where films of every calibre, language and style are shown to an excited star studded audience.

Jean Cocteau once said of the event:

“The Festival is an apolitical no-man’s-land, a microcosm of what the world would be like if people could contact each other directly and speak the same language.”

This history of the festival dates back to September 1946, when it stood as the first international cultural event of the post-war period. The festival is a non-profit organization and is managed by a Board of Directors.

Every year a guest President of the Jury of selected and this year it is visionary cinematographer Tim Burton. He was chosen based on his innovative work in merging traditional acting and new technologies – for example in his recent hit Alice in Wonderland – and for his unique film signature.

Burton will be joined by Kate Beckinsale and Benicio Del Toro, who will help him decide the winner of the Palme d’Or, the prestigious top prize of the festival, out of a group of 18 films all the way from Hollywood to Thailand.

The film that will launch the event this year is Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe (sans tights). Do not fear all of you who aren’t lucky enough to have a ticket to the festival; Robin Hood comes to UK cinemas on Friday 14th May.

Other highly anticipated films – that unfortunately won’t grace cinema screen until a bit later in the year – include Wall Street – Money Never Sleep starring Michael Douglas, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger directed by Woody Allen, Hanna starring Cate Blanchett and Biutiful starring Javier Bardem.

So if you fancy going to the south of France to soak up some rays and spot some celebs then P&O Ferries can help you get there: a crossing from Dover to Calais in a car with up to nine people starts from just £30.

Image credit: tangi_bertin

Tags: France, History, P&O Ferries by Rosie Khdir
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Nestled in the in the heart of the mysterious medieval Mont Saint Michel, lies La Mère Poulard. Rosie Khdir discovers the charming history and delicious gastronomy behind this famous French restaurant and hotel.

It was back in 1888, when Annette and Victor Poulard opened their inn at Mont Saint Michel. The Island had been closed to the world during the years of the French Revolution in 1789 when it stood as a prison.

Annette’s two loves, other than her loyal husband Victor of course, were cooking and Mont Saint Michel, and after opening their Inn on the island, she fast became a culinary star. She had around seven hundred delicious recipes that earned her the nickname Mère Poulard, title of honour which distinguishes talents female chefs.

Of all her dishes, the most famous was her omelet which is now famous the world over. Guests today can still enjoy her glorious recipes in the Hotel of Mère Poulard. The restaurant adjoins the Omelet room where her famous dish is cooked over a wood fire, just as it was in times gone by, in the great fireplace.

Dinners can also taste the many other delightful dishes, from Normandy foie gras, salt meadow lamb from Mont Saint Michel, Brittany lobster, farm-raised poultry, vegetables of the season and the traditional Mère Poulard desserts and sweets.

The fame and popularity of Mère Poulard is displayed throughout the hotel with paintings and autographs from its famous visitors. Celebrities such as Claude Monet, Rita Hayworth, Woody Allen, Glenn Glose, Juliette Binoche, Arthur Rubinstein, Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent passed through Poulard’s doors.

Many politicians such as Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt and Georges Clemenceau visited, as well as numerous royals from the UK and Japan.

Today the hotel is every bit as popular and provides guests with a cosy room with beautiful views of the island and delicious traditional French food. If you wish to learn the secrets of Mère Poulard’s dishes you can even enroll in the cooking school of Mont Saint Michel.

For more details on reservations visit the official Mère Poulard website.

With P&O Ferries you can get a crossing from Dover to Calais in a car with up to nine people starting from just £30 – it’s then just a short drive to Mont Saint Michel.

Tags: France, History, Lifestyle, P&O Ferries by Rosie Khdir
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When they say that good things come in small packages, they must have been talking about these little museums in Antwerp. Rosie Khdirexplores…

With all the amazing museums in Antwerp it is sometimes easy to forget the little hidden gems that don’t get as much publicity. This blog looks as the smaller places that are definitely worth a look.

Newspaper museum

This is a museum that hosts a collection of contemporary and older newspapers from 126 countries. It is divided into four sections: the history of writing, the origin of printing, the history of newspapers and the life and work of Abraham Verhoeven.

Mineral museum

This museum holds a fascinating collection of fossils and minerals from over a million years gone by. It is privately owned and has been operated by volunteers for more than 30 years. If you have a real interest in history or geology this place is the perfect little afternoon visit.

Stampe and Vertongen aviation museum

The Stampe and Vertongen aviation museum shows a collection of Jean Stampe’s military airplanes are on display alongside Hitler’s infamous V1, or Vergeltungswaffe Einz, which serves as a chilling reminder of how Antwerp was hit during the Second World War. This museum is ironically situated overlooking the runway of Antwerp – Deurne airport, in a beautiful peaceful garden.

Eugeen Van Mieghem Museum

This museum is a little gem. Its displays the works of Eugeen Van Mieghem (1875-1930) a Belgian artist who was famous for his depictions of life at the waterfront, an example of which you can see above. The museum holds 150 of his works, as well as pieces by other by Antwerp artists and is a delight for art lovers.

You can get there easily with P&O Ferries using the Hull – Zeebrugge route, or alternatively via Dover to Calais from where it is just a short drive along the E40 to the Belgian border. Prices start at just £30 for a car and up to nine people.

Image via Wikimedia

Tags: Belgium, History, Lifestyle, P&O Ferries by Rosie Khdir
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This Friday the whole of Amsterdam will turn orange, and by that I don’t mean every inhabitant will get an awful spray tan, I mean it will be Queen’s Day! Rosie Khdir discovers the traditions of this royal celebration.

On April 30th 2010 the Dutch will celebrate Queen’s Day, a national holiday which has been taking place on this day since 1949. The history of this event goes back to 1885 when the Liberal Union intended it as a day of national unity for the Netherlands.

This began with the celebration of the birthday of Princess Wilhelmina on 31 August 1885, and it was called Princess’ Day until her Coronation in 1890.

In September 1948 Queen Juliana ascended to the throne and from 1949 onwards her birthday, 30th April, was known as Queen’s Day. When her daughter and current Queen, Beatrix succeeded her in 1980, she decided to keep the celebration in April, as a tribute to her mother – and because her own birthday is in January when weather tends to prohibit outdoor celebrations.

Every year, since her Coronation, Queen Beatrix has visited cities and town around Holland, where she is shown regional versions of traditional Dutch dances and demonstrations of old crafts. This year she will be visiting Wemeldinge and Middleburg.

All over the country millions of people will celebrate in the streets adorned in clothes and costumes of orange in honour of the Dutch royal family, the House of Orange. It’s not just the clothes, it’s the food, the drink and the decorations, it’s like the whole of Holland has been tangoed!

Traditional flea markets line the city streets and boats filled with orange people fill the canals. In recent years it has become more of an open-air celebration and outdoor concerts are not uncommon. Amsterdam is always one of the busiest places during this holiday and can attract up to 800,000 visitors who party in the public squares and in bars.

If you would like to celebrate with the Dutch this weekend, don’t forget that Amsterdam is just a short drive from the International port of Rotterdam which is serviced by P&O Ferries’ Hull – Rotterdam route.

Image courtesy of Holland.com

Tags: History, Lifestyle, Netherlands, P&O Ferries by Rosie Khdir
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We Brits are renowned for our fondness for a good pint and where better to experience said pint than in Southern Belgium, a region famous for its exquisite array of beers. Rosie Khdir explores one of the most popular Walloon beers.

Drinking beer in the Walloon region isn’t just about relaxing after a hard day or getting sloshed with your mates, its brewing customs are steeped in history and are still greatly valued today.

In the southern Walloon region of Belgian where you can still see the hop crop growing wild, is where you find some of the finest beers in the country. There are many breweries scattered around the region but perhaps one of the most famous, internationally, is the Abbey of Leffe near the town of Dinant.

The Notre-Dame Abbey as it was known when it was founded back in 1152, like many in the region, has brewed its own ale; later in 1200 it was renamed Leffe Abbey. Back then, brewing beer wasn’t a matter of plying the masses with a boozy delight it was actually brewed by monasteries for sanitary reasons.

Deadly diseases like Typhoid were spread through contaminated water, and as people didn’t have the tools to test the water, the sterilisation process used in brewing beers was the best way to prevent contamination.

This Abbey has experienced a fair few knocks in its time including a bout of the plague, which killed the Abbot and seven monks back in 1460 and a flood which virtually destroyed the building.

In 1466 Charles the Bold took hold of the city of Dinant after a rumour was spread there about his mother. His forces ransacked the Leffe Abbey and burnt it to the ground. It has been ravaged by Hungarians and in 1796 was ordered to become state property during the French revolution.

After many years of troubles, the Leffe Abbey still stands in Dinant. In 1937 it became a listed historical building. To this day it still makes those famous and delicious Blonde, Brown and Triple beers.

Visitors can take guided tours of the Abbey and uncover more about its past, discover the tradition of brewing and the pouring ritual of Leffe. For more details visit Abbaye-de-leffe.be.

If you want to experience the taste of a finely brewed Leffe in its home environment, you can get there easily with P&O Ferries using the Hull – Zeebrugge route, or alternatively via Dover to Calais from where it is just a short drive along the E40 to the Belgian border. Prices start at just £30 for a car and up to nine people.

Image credit: [puamelia]

Tags: Belgium, France, History, Lifestyle, P&O Ferries by Rosie Khdir
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Just across the Channel in the Belgian capital of Brussels, lies an exhibition that looks at the Symbolism in Belgium, a poetic and sometimes darker form of visual art. Rosie Khdir explores the origins of the 19th century movement.

From the end of March until 27th June 2010, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels is holding an exhibition called Symbolism in Belgium.

The exhibition includes over two hundred pieces and is based around original research done by its curator, Michel Draguet. The 2005 essay by Draguet, entitled ‘Le Symbolisme en Belgique’ explores the developments of the symbolist movement and how is contributed to the creation of the surrealist movement in Belgium.

Visitors can wander through the galleries of paintings and sketches by the likes of Rops, Spilliaert, Delville and Minne and discover the rich panorama of artistic creation at the turn of the century.

You can discover the relationships between the movement and its influences such as the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, decorative arts and Art Nouveau, which Brussels has since become the capital of.

Symbolic art work takes on many forms from portrait and landscape, to religion and dreams and emphasis in this particular exhibition is placed upon the movement’s relationship with literature.

Some particularly stunning artworks to look out for are Jean Delville’s The Angel of Splendours 1984 (pictured above), and The Tour of Hours or The Hours, 1890 by Xavier Mellery.

If you want to explore the symbolic art of Belgium, you can get there easily with P&O Ferries using the Hull – Zeebrugge route, or alternatively via Dover to Calais from where it is just a short drive along the E40 to the Belgian border. Prices start at just £30 for a car and up to nine people.

Image: The Angel of Splendours, Jean Delville

Tags: Belgium, History, Lifestyle, P&O Ferries by Rosie Khdir
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After traversing its waves since 1987 you would think that P&O Ferries knows the name of that stretch of water between Dover and Calais. It seems that The EU however has other ideas. John Hillman reports.

As I walked across the Millennium Bridge one morning, over the River Thames, I felt a slight tremor underfoot and feared that the ‘wobbly bridge’ had once again fallen foul of its well documented design fault. Could this mean another year of damned closures whilst engineers attempt to make the most scenic river crossing in the world safe again?

Fortunately my concerns were somewhat eased as I glanced across to St Paul’s and saw that, far from the bridge wobbling, it was in fact London itself that shook like a detoxifying scoundrel. Oh just an earthquake then, that’s fine.

As an aside, I once experienced a similar moving sensation whilst on a P&O Ferries’ ferry from Dover to Calais; however after raising the alarm I was informed by the ship’s steward that the moving sensation was a result of us being at sea, which wobbles too, apparently.

Anyway, the quake has of course been hushed up, for its epicentre (I am reliably told) has been traced to the very spot in St Paul’s Cathedral where Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson lies entombed.

This strange turn of events remained an unexplained mystery; however after some careful research I can reveal that sources close to Her Majesty believe it to be recent machinations in Brussels that are to blame.

The realisation of the Trans-Manche Zone, by a rather Orwellian sounding group called the INTERREG Programme, means that not only has the English Channel been officially renamed the Anglo-French Pond, but most shocking of all, it has resulted in the creation of an entirely new region which merges Kent and Cornwall with Normandy and Lille, all presided over by Alain Le Vern, a French socialist president.

A French Socialist President, with dominion over Royal Tunbridge Wells? And there I was wondering why an earthquake would emanate from Lord Nelson’s tomb. Meanwhile my journalistic counterpart in Paris tells me that a strange cackling sound can be heard wafting eerily out of Napoleon’s Gallic grave, and drifting off slowly down the River Seine. Strange times indeed.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Tags: Britain, France, History, P&O Ferries by John Hillman
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