I have mentioned the event in several other articles, so you can guess I am enthusiastic about Beaufort on the Belgian coast.
Every 3 years, international artists are commissioned to create a sculpture on that year’s theme, with the sea and the coast in mind. In addition to new work, work from previous editions is also present at the event.
Sometimes we go to the Netherlands to visit family and friends, making it easy to have a detour and enjoy this great event.
In the Netherlands, we lived 5 miles from the Belgium border. Crossing the border really meant crossing a frontier, despite that small distance.
As soon as you are in the neighbourhood of the border you can see that the street is different (ask any professional cyclist – Belgian cobblestone roads are famous), the houses are built with materials we don’t use in the Netherlands and on a back road it even shows that nature looks different. In the Netherlands everything is clean-cut, Belgium is cozier.
For Tom and me, Antwerp was closer than Amsterdam, so if we wanted to sniff some culture we usually went there. What to see in Antwerp? There is a lot of variety and the terraces are great!
Isn’t it a pity that we tend to forget how to play? What do you think about playing on the beach for grown-ups? I can assure you that it is fun!
Years ago my former colleagues and I went to a beach house once a year to get creative inspiration.
We were all creative souls and we gave ourselves assignments to develop our creative skills even further. There I discovered again what fun it is to play on the beach.
In 2023 sculptor Juan Muñoz would have turned 70. He died way too young, obviously, at the age of 48. Yet he leaves behind an impressive number of sculptures and drawings with enormous expressive power.
It is not entirely coincidental that Tom and I have seen much of his work in Spain. We are both fans!
To commemorate him, there were exhibitions of his work in various places in Spain in 2022/2023. Although the best-known of his works were on display in several of them, the exhibitions were very diverse, each with a different emphasis on a particular period.
Most tourists visit Amsterdam or the Randstad region when they go to the Netherlands. There is nothing wrong with that because both the city and the area have a lot to show.
Personally, I don’t like crowds much myself, so when I still lived in the Netherlands I usually went to other parts of the country.
I have always found the Hoge Veluwe National Park and the Kröller-Müller Museum worth visiting. In every season, although we were longer inside the museum in the winter and spent more time outdoors in the summer.