Month: February 2009

Travel (or Cruise) to Knit

I admit I’m a bit influenced by my Dear Quilting Wife, but I keep repeating my only prediction for 2009 and beyond: The Future is: Back to Knitting.

Now I can connect knitting with travel, since I found the Blog Textile Travel: They advocate Travel to Knit!

First I thought “How on earth can textile be an excuse for traveling?” Stupid thought, I concluded, when I remembered that DW used to organize bus tours to various Quilt Exhibitions across Europe successfully for a couple of years, and that I even traveled with her to one in Barcelona, which was actually my first and only visit of Barcelona.

Via Textile Travel I found out in August 2009 there is a cruise scheduled in the Mediterranean by the Holland America Line (Yes originally a Dutch firm, presently with its seat in the Dutch Antilles) for yarn aficionados like knitters and crocheters. Here is the Travel plan and Registration From. So they also Cruise to Knit!

From there to the site of one of the Cruise Guides Knot Just Knitting by Prudence Mapstone who has an amazing creativity and who Travels by Knitting if you look at her Workshops and Tours for 2009….

But you can also reverse the caption in Knit to travel. If you consider how much the tiny pieces of textile they call a bikini cost you as opposed when you knit or crochet it yourself:-)

Prudence could also inspire you to knit and to travel and leave your knitting as an enrichment of the landscape:

dimitri_medium
Photo by Christl Rijkeboer

Another fiber artist, but now a Dutch lady who is intrigued by Human Hair, Christl Rijkeboer, could inspire you to keep yourself warm when traveling with this bivouac.

Hah and in between I found a Down Under Guerrilla Knittin Lady Blog: Grrl + Dog Lol.

Wedding of the Week (2): The Happy Valentine's Bride

Happy Valentine's Bride In Haagsche Suites 01 P1030855The Bride’s Maid testing the bath

It happens that in stead of arriving tired and full of adrenaline after the wedding to stay with us for the honeymoon, the bride and /or the groom stay with us the previous day and start the big day with hairdresser, make up, and so on and so fort.

3279217721_f9fc59a2bb_b20090214 Happy Valentine's Bride In Haagsche Suites 02 P1030863Make up galore

The inner circle of wedding guests arrives and they depart together to the wedding, come back for dressing up for the reception and come back sometimes for the dinner or for the party to dress up again.

20090214 Happy Valentine's Bride In Haagsche Suites 11 IMG_9368A Mimosa (Champagne with Orange Juice) toast

Our Valentine’s bride did it a bit different. She stayed with us with a friend and her daughter on Friday and left without her man to meet him in church in front of the altar.

20090214 Happy Valentine's Bride In Haagsche Suites 07 P1030877AIsn’t she gorgeous?

Very romantic and a bit old fashioned. In my days the groom used to collect the bride at her parents’ house and they would go with the wedding escort to the wedding.

20090214 Happy Valentine's Bride In Haagsche Suites 04 P1030869“Yes I do have something Blue”

However our bride was not alone. Thirteen of her friends, the photographer, a cameraman with video and the make up artist were all part of the escort.

20090214 Happy Valentine's Bride In Haagsche Suites 18 P1030892Ultimate Woman Power!
20090214 Happy Valentine's Bride In Haagsche Suites 23 IMG_9390AI Love it !

That’s why I’m a Happy Hotelier!

Off to receive the newly wed couple.

You can find more photos at Flickr if you wish.

Paris (2): The undiscovered Panhard Levassor X73 Cabriolet

At Retromobile in Paris there are many historic cars on show to be auctioned during the show by Bonhams.
Lot no. 141 the Panhard Levassor X73 Cabriolet was undiscovered, because it had been several decades in storage. It is amazing to see a car with such patina. The storage coverage dust stil in tact.

It fetched €37,950.- in the auction.

To compare: Lot number 138 A, 1931 Panhard et Levassor 3½-Litre SS Special Saloon Chassis no. 80141 Engine no. 80141 was not sold (offer With Reserve) and was estimated at €80,000 – 100,000.

Bonhams’ notes:

Panhard et Levassor’s Type X73 first appeared in 1934. Designated ‘CS Special’, it superseded the 2½-litre 6CS model. The Type X73 was powered by a six-cylinder sleeve valve engine with a capacity of 2,861cc, which was rated at 16CV for taxation purposes. Its larger engine made the X73 a better performer than its predecessor, the top speed going up from 125 to 135km/h (84mph). After September 1934, the range was updated with more modern styling and the X73 continued in production until June 1938.

Panhard et Levassor offered a ‘Velun’ convertible on the X73 chassis. Exclusive even by Panhard’s standards, it was built in limited numbers: only one was sold in 1934, 31 in 1935, 25 in 1936 and six more in 1937. But the ‘Velun’ coachwork, built by Jansen, was different from that of the car offered here, so it seems reasonable to assume that this particular car’s is the work of another coachbuilder.

Close inspection of this car’s coachwork leads us to believe that it was produced by Meulemeester Frères, whose office was located at l’Ile Robinson, in Clichy-sur-Seine and the workshop at 7 rue Traversière. This coachbuilder exhibited for the first time at the 1927 Le Salon de l’Automobile and in 1933 offered an aerodynamic convertible on a Peugeot 301 chassis, very similar in appearance to our Panhard convertible. It is expected that further information will be available at time of sale.
Preserved in remarkably original condition, having been stored for several decades on chassis stands, this Panhard et Levassor X73 convertible evokes the typically intense feelings of nostalgia associated with such ‘barn find’ vehicles. The car affords four-seat accommodation under its folding soft-top, while the two doors are hinged at the rear as was customary at that time. In short: it represents a unique and elegant variation on a reliable and sporting chassis from that most celebrated pre-war marque, Panhard et Levassor. Deserving a high quality restoration, this rare car would make a worthy addition to any collection dedicated both to technology and aesthetics.

Lot Notice
The coachbuilder is Gangloff not Meulemeester

Real Nostalgia!

The Bonhams sale included some extraordinary results:

€3,417,500 for the Ex-Earl Howe 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalantiuq;
€2,427,500 for ‘Black Bess’ – the ex-Roland Garros Bugatti Type 13; and
€337,500 for a Citroen DS23 EFi Cabriolet.

BTW this is the third way of presentimng a slide slow…just copy and paste the embed code from Flickr..What do you think?

David Meerman Scott about Inbound Marketing

Found at the blog of a Estonian Travel blogger Aivar Ruukel who is also behind an Estonian travel organization Soomaa that organizes trips to the Soomaa National park.

Great stuff about turning around your traditional ways of marketing.

Paris (1): Retromobile

retromobile-poster

I spent a couple of days in Paris for the first time in 36 years. Last time I visited it was in February 1973, on our honeymoon. I visited it also in 1969 a year after the 1968 student revolts. For various reasons we decided to skip it ever since. In the meantime I had visited it on various business occasion, but when on business you actually don’t look at a city as you do when you spent some holidays. My conclusion now is that back in the late 60ies ans early seventies we didn’t have enough money to spent and stayed in the wrong districts. Especially the Montmartre district looks a bit seedy to stay in as it was seedy already in those days. But now we have decided that we will be back.

This time we stayed in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower (XVI), but more about that in later posts.

Paris is an excellent city for cultural travel. I believe Historic cars do belong to our cultural heritage, so traveling to see them is part of cultural travel.

Therefor I would like to tell a bit about my visit of the 34th Retromobile. According to the Historic car aficionados (several of my friends) it is a must see. One of the biggest shows in its sort in Europe.

The 2009 theme is very much on topic: New forms of Energy that are already more than one hundred years old:

Depending on the different periods, generations of inventors have imagined steam, petroleum gas, compressed air, alcohol, electricity or hybrid powered vehicles…

The twenty or so vehicles on exhibition, some which will be able to be driven all have one thing in common: they are the forerunners of clean energy vehicles of today!

2009-retromobile-a-paris-p1030602-jamais-contene-1

Among the photos I made is the Jaimais Contente (never content):

The “Jamais Contente” (1899) is the star of Rétromobile’s 2009 poster

The ”Jamais Contente” was created by the engineer Camille Jenatzy and was an electric car which was in the shape of a torpedo on wheels. The bodywork was carried out by the coachbuilder Rothschild and was made of partinium, an alloy of laminated aluminum, tungsten and magnesium.

2009-retromobile-a-paris-jamais-contente-2-p1030601

Mind you this car drove over 100 km / hr in 1899 on electricity!

It was the first French car to break the barrier of 100km/h, on 1 May 1899 in Achères (the Yvelines region, near Paris). Its characteristics were impressive: it had two electric engines which were placed at the back of the car behind its wheels, (Postel-Vinay ones), its maximum horsepower was 50kW (that is to say 67 hp), its power was provided by Fulmen batteries (80 pieces constitutingy nearly half of the vehicle’s total weight!). The “Jamais Contente” which is exhibited at Rétromobile is a replica which was made in 1992 and belongs to the Lions Club.

See for more photos of the show my Flickr set Retromoblie à Paris