A cafe near the Opera metro station in Paris named Footsie (a play on words on FTSE, the London stock exchange) has screens above their bar with the prices of their drinks. The clever thing about this place is that the screen refreshes every four minutes, and the prices go up and down, depending on demand. Customers at the bar are gazing at the screens looking for bargains. More »

Last weekend we went to Disneyland Paris. It was the third time we went there in October during the Halloween period, but it seems that every year the Halloween decorations get more elaborate. The returning theme is that the park has been taken over by ‘pumpkin men’ that want to paint everything orange. This year these orange men had ‘built’ a huge contruction attached to Big Thunder Mountain. Check out the photos More »

From 17 to 24 September we went to Hurghada in Egypt to dive. It was our first diving trip after getting our PADI Open Water certificates here in the Netherlands in July. We made two dives a day for five days with Colona Divers, a Scandinavian dive center, and saw giant morays, a sea turtle, stingrays and millions of colorful reef fish and corals. More »

At Disneyland Paris there is a counter service restaurant on Main Street that is called “Victoria’s Home Style Restaurant”. The building and interior design is beautiful, but there isn’t much ‘home style’ about the cooking. It serves the same factory-sealed salads and pre-made hamburgers and simple hot dogs as all the other counter service restaurant in the park! Even the French (!) bread is rubbery and dry. Why is it that after 13 years Disney still can’t get the food right at their European theme park? More »