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Carnival of Barranquilla · Swimming with stingrays · Community Tourism Map · The sea of seven colors · Deserted beaches in Providence · “Floating” on treetops ·

2023/07/22

National holiday of the Kingdom of Belgium

Belgium, country of northwestern Europe. It is one of the smallest and most densely populated European countries, and it has been, since its independence in 1830, a representative democracy headed by a hereditary constitutional monarch. Initially, Belgium had a unitary form of government. In the 1980s and ’90s, however, steps were taken to turn Belgium into a federal state with powers shared among the regions of Flanders, Wallonia, and the Brussels-Capital Region. Culturally, Belgium is a heterogeneous country straddling the border between the Romance and Germanic language families of western Europe. With the exception of a small German-speaking population in the eastern part of the country, Belgium is divided between a French-speaking people, collectively called Walloons (approximately one-third of the total population), who are concentrated in the five southern provinces (Hainaut, Namur, Liège, Walloon Brabant, and Luxembourg), and Flemings, a Flemish- (Dutch-) speaking people (more than one-half of the total population), who are concentrated in the five northern and northeastern provinces (West Flanders, East Flanders [West-Vlaanderen, Oost-Vlaanderen], Flemish Brabant, Antwerp, and Limburg). Just north of the boundary between Walloon Brabant (Brabant Walloon) and Flemish (Vlaams) Brabant lies the officially bilingual but majority French-speaking Brussels-Capital Region, with approximately one-tenth of the total population. (See also Fleming and Walloon.)Belgium and the political entities that preceded it have been rich with historical and cultural associations, from the Gothic grandeur of its medieval university and commercial cities and its small, castle-dominated towns on steep-bluffed winding rivers, through its broad traditions in painting and music that marked one of the high points of the northern Renaissance in the 16th century, to its contributions to the arts of the 20th century and its maintenance of the folk cultures of past eras. The Belgian landscape has been a major European battleground for centuries, notably in modern times during the Battle of Waterloo (1815) and the 20th century’s two world wars. Given its area and population, Belgium today is one of the most heavily industrialized and urbanized countries in Europe. It is a member of the Benelux Economic Union (with the Netherlands and Luxembourg), the European Union (EU), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—organizations that all have headquarters in or near the capital city of Brussels. Land The country has a total of 860 miles (1,385 km) of land boundaries with neighbours; it is bounded by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, and France to the south. Belgium also has some 40 miles (60 km) of shoreline on the North Sea. Relief, drainage, and soils Belgium generally is a low-lying country, with a broad coastal plain extending in a southeasterly direction from the North Sea and the Netherlands and rising gradually into the Ardennes hills and forests of the southeast, where a maximum elevation of 2,277 feet (694 metres) is reached at Botrange. The main physical regions are the Ardennes and the Ardennes foothills; Côtes Lorraines (Belgian Lorraine), the intrusion of the Paris Basin in the south; and the Anglo-Belgian Basin in the north, comprising the Central Plateaus, the plain of Flanders, and the Kempenland (French: Campine). The Ardennes region is part of the Hercynian orogenic belt of mountain ranges, which reaches from western Ireland into Germany and was formed roughly 300 to 400 million years ago, during the Paleozoic Era. The Ardennes is a plateau cut deeply by the Meuse River and its tributaries. Its higher points contain peat bogs and have poor drainage; these uplands are unsuitable as cropland. A large depression, known east of the Meuse River as the Famenne and west of it as the Fagne, separates the Ardennes from the geologically and topographically complex foothills to the north. The principal feature of the area is the Condroz, a plateau more than 1,100 feet (335 metres) in elevation comprising a succession of valleys hollowed out of the limestone between sandstone crests. Its northern boundary is the Sambre-Meuse valley, which traverses Belgium from south-southwest to northeast. Situated south of the Ardennes and cut off from the rest of the country, Côtes Lorraines is a series of hills with north-facing scarps. About half of it remains wooded; in the south lies a small region of iron ore deposits. A region of sand and clay soils lying between 150 and 650 feet (45 and 200 metres) in elevation, the Central Plateaus cover northern Hainaut, Walloon Brabant, southern Flemish Brabant, and the Hesbaye plateau region of Liège. The area is dissected by the Dender, Senne, Dijle, and other rivers that enter the Schelde (Escaut) River; it is bounded to the east by the Herve Plateau. The Brussels region lies within the Central Plateaus. Bordering the North Sea from France to the Schelde is the low-lying plain of Flanders, which has two main sections. Maritime Flanders, extending inland for about 5 to 10 miles (8 to 16 km), is a region of newly formed and reclaimed land (polders) protected by a line of dunes and dikes and having largely clay soils. Interior Flanders comprises most of East and West Flanders and has sand-silt or sand soils. At an elevation of about 80 to 300 feet (25 to 90 metres), it is drained by the Leie, Schelde, and Dender rivers flowing northeastward to the Schelde estuary. Several shipping canals interlace the landscape and connect the river systems. Lying between about 160 and 330 feet (50 and 100 metres) in elevation, the Kempenland contains pastureland and is the site of a number of industrial enterprises; it forms an irregular watershed of plateau and plain between the extensive Schelde and Meuse drainage systems. Climate of Belgium Belgium has a temperate, maritime climate predominantly influenced by air masses from the Atlantic. Rapid and frequent alternation of different air masses separated by fronts gives Belgium considerable variability in weather. Frontal conditions moving from the west produce heavy and frequent rainfall, averaging 30 to 40 inches (750 to 1,000 mm) a year. Winters are damp and cool with frequent fogs; summers are rather mild. The annual mean temperature is around 50 °F (10 °C). Brussels, which is roughly in the middle of the country, has a mean minimum temperature of just below 32 °F (0 °C) in January and a mean maximum of about 71 °F (22 °C) in July. Regional climatic differences are determined by elevation and distance inland. Farther inland, maritime influences become weaker, and the climate becomes more continental, characterized by greater seasonal extremes of temperature. The Ardennes region, the highest and farthest inland, is the coldest. In winter, frost occurs on about 120 days, snow falls on 30 to 35 days, and January mean minimum temperatures are lower than elsewhere. In summer, the elevation counteracts the effect of distance inland, and July mean maximum temperatures are the lowest in the country. Because of the topography, the region has the highest rainfall in Belgium. In contrast, the Flanders region enjoys generally higher temperatures throughout the year. There are fewer than 60 days of frost and fewer than 15 of snow. On the seacoast these figures are reduced to below 50 and 10, respectively. There are a few hot days, especially on the coast, where the annual rainfall is the lowest in the country. More … Score: https://www.britannica.com/place/Belgium  

2023/07/21

This is Belgium !

This is Belgium in all it's aspects. Culture, economy, tourism, history, education, ....

2023/07/20

Independence day of the Republic of Colombia

Colombia, officially Republic of Colombia, Spanish República de Colombia, country of northwestern South America. Its 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of coast to the north are bathed by the waters of the Caribbean Sea, and its 800 miles (1,300 km) of coast to the west are washed by the Pacific Ocean. The country is bordered by Panama, which divides the two bodies of water, on the northwest, Venezuela and Brazil on the east, and Peru and Ecuador on the south. It is more than twice the size of France and includes the San Andrés y Providencia archipelago, located off the Nicaraguan coast in the Caribbean, some 400 miles (650 km) northwest of the Colombian mainland. The population is largely concentrated in the mountainous interior, where Bogotá, the national capital, is situated on a high plateau in the northern Andes Mountains. The only American nation that is named for Christopher Columbus, the “discoverer” of the New World, Colombia presents a remarkable study in contrasts, in both its geography and its society. The lofty snow-tipped peaks of the country’s interior cordilleras tower high above equatorial forests and savannas where surviving Indian groups still follow the lifeways and traditions of their ancestors. In the cooler mountains, at intermediate elevations, modern cities are juxtaposed with traditional rural landscapes where mestizo farmers cultivate their small plots of coffee, corn (maize), and other crops. The more accessible Atlantic lowlands, dominated by large livestock haciendas and a tri-ethnic population, have a distinctively different character.Colombia strongly reflects its history as a colony of Spain. It is often referred to as the most Roman Catholic of the South American countries, and most of its people are proud of the relative purity of their Spanish language. Its population is heavily mestizo (of mixed European and Indian descent) with substantial minorities of European and African ancestry. The economy is traditionally based on agriculture, particularly coffee and fruit production, but industries and services are increasing in importance. Colombia is the most populous nation of Spanish-speaking South America. More than one-third of its inhabitants live in the six largest metropolitan areas, of which Bogotá is the largest. The nation’s political instability has been historically tied to the unequal distribution of wealth, and the illicit trade in drugs (mainly cocaine) remains a major disruptive factor in Colombian life. Land - Relief Few countries boast such striking physical variety as does Colombia. Its broken, rugged topography, together with its location near the Equator, creates an extraordinary diversity of climates, vegetation, soils, and crops. The Andean cordillera, one of the world’s great mountain ranges, dominates the landscape of the western part of the country, where most of the people live. North of the border with Ecuador the cordillera flares out into three distinct parallel ranges. Two great river valleys, those of the Magdalena and the Cauca, separate them and provide avenues of penetration from the Atlantic coastal lowlands into the heart of the country. Volcanic activity in the geologic past blocked the middle course of the Cauca River to form a great lake that once filled the western inter-Andean trough for some 120 miles (190 km) south of Cartago. The river eventually broke through the dam to leave the level floor of the Cauca valley at some 3,000 feet (900 metres) above sea level; today it is one of the nation’s most productive agricultural areas. The Colombian cordilleras belong to the northern portion of the great Andean mountain system, which extends along the Pacific coast of South America. The Andes are among the world’s most youthful mountain ranges and among the highest. The geologic history of this northern sector is less well understood than that of the central and southern parts. It is clear, however, that the entire cordillera has been thrust up through the subduction of the crumpled eastern margin of the Nazca Plate and, to the north, the Caribbean Plate under the more rigid but lighter South American Plate, which has been forced westward by the spreading Atlantic seafloor. These tectonic forces, similar to those found elsewhere around the Pacific Rim, continue to operate, as is evidenced by the high frequency of often destructive earthquakes. At the Pasto Massif, near the Ecuadoran border, the mountains divide into the Cordillera Occidental (“Western Range”), which runs parallel to the Pacific coast, and the Cordillera Central (“Central Range”), which, with its numerous volcanoes, forms the backbone of the system in Colombia and runs generally southwest to northeast. At the Great Colombian Massif of the Cordillera Central, near the San Agustín Archeological Park, the Cordillera Oriental (“Eastern Range”) branches off in a more decidedly northeasterly direction.Of the three ranges, the nonvolcanic Cordillera Occidental, which forms the barrier between the Cauca valley and the rain-drenched Pacific coast, is the lowest and least populated. Two passes at elevations less than 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) between Cali and Buenaventura on the Pacific coast mark the lowest depressions in the range. Elsewhere the crest is much higher, reaching 12,992 feet (3,960 metres) at Mount Paramillo in the department of Antioquia. From there the Cordillera Occidental fingers north into the three distinct serranías of Abibe, San Jerónimo, and Ayapel, forested ranges that drop gradually toward the piedmont plains of the Caribbean littoral. A lesser topographic feature on the Pacific coast is the Baudó Mountains, separated from the Cordillera Occidental by the valley of the Atrato River, which empties into the Caribbean Gulf of Urabá; the Baudó Mountains represent a southward extension of the Isthmus of Panama. The Cordillera Central is the highest of the Andean ranges of Colombia, rising to an average height of 10,000 feet (3,000 metres). It is a continuation of the Ecuadoran volcanic structure. Crystalline rocks are exposed at several places on its flanks and are the foci of localized gold and silver deposits. Sandstones and shales of the Paleogene and Neogene periods (about 65 to 2.6 million years ago) are also a part of the older basement that has been capped by ash and lava derived from some 20 volcanoes of the Quaternary Period (the past 2.6 million years). Several of the latter reach well into the zone of permanent snow, above 15,000 feet (4,600 metres). The highest are Mount Huila (18,865 feet [5,750 metres]), southeast of Cali, and the Ruiz-Tolima complex (some 17,700 feet [5,400 metres]) between Manizales and Ibagué. The fertile ash from their eruptions has produced the high, cool plateaus of Nariño department and the often steep slopes to the north that support much of Colombia’s coffee production. In November 1985 Mount Ruíz erupted, melting the snow and ice that covered it and sending great mudflows downslope, destroying the city of Armero and killing more than 25,000 in one of the country’s greatest catastrophes. North of Mount Ruíz, near Sonsón in the department of Antioquia, the volcanic Cordillera Central gives way to the deeply weathered, granitic Antioquia batholith (an exposed granitic intrusion), a tableland averaging some 8,000 feet (2,500 metres) above sea level. It is divided into two parts by the deep transverse cleft of the Porce River, which occupies the U-shaped valley in which is situated the expanding metropolis of Medellín, Colombia’s second city. The batholith contains gold-bearing quartz veins, which were the source of the placer gravels that gave rise to an active colonial mining economy. Beyond Antioquia the lower, remote San Lucas Mountains extend northward toward the confluence of the Magdalena and Cauca rivers. More … Score: https://www.britannica.com/place/Colombia

2023/07/20

Visit Colombia, the most welcoming place on earth

Colombia is the most welcoming place on earth, In Colombia, “check-in” means “welcome”, and “check-out” means “come back soon”. Here, greetings are made up of smiles, open doors and over a thousand of rhythms everywhere you go.

2023/07/19

France.fr - Unexpected France by those who make it what it is

Unexpected and full of exuberant life, France is even more than you could ... "The Morozov Collection" Exhibition at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.

2023/07/16

Welcome to Montenegro!

When was the last time you did something for the first time? Have you ever drunk water directly from the river? Or had an adrenaline rush from zip-lining over the deepest canyon in Europe?

2023/07/15

Bastille Day of the French Republic

France, officially French Republic, French France or République Française, country of northwestern Europe. Historically and culturally among the most important nations in the Western world, France has also played a highly significant role in international affairs, with former colonies in every corner of the globe. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, the Alps and the Pyrenees, France has long provided a geographic, economic, and linguistic bridge joining northern and southern Europe. It is Europe’s most important agricultural producer and one of the world’s leading industrial powers. France is among the globe’s oldest nations, the product of an alliance of duchies and principalities under a single ruler in the Middle Ages. Today, as in that era, central authority is vested in the state, even though a measure of autonomy has been granted to the country’s régions in recent decades. The French people look to the state as the primary guardian of liberty, and the state in turn provides a generous program of amenities for its citizens, from free education to health care and pension plans. Even so, this centralist tendency is often at odds with another long-standing theme of the French nation: the insistence on the supremacy of the individual. On this matter historian Jules Michelet remarked, “England is an empire, Germany is a nation, a race, France is a person.” Statesman Charles de Gaulle, too, famously complained, “Only peril can bring the French together. One can’t impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 kinds of cheese.”This tendency toward individualism joins with a pluralist outlook and a great interest in the larger world. Even though its imperialist stage was driven by the impulse to civilize that world according to French standards (la mission civilisatrice), the French still note approvingly the words of writer Gustave Flaubert: I am no more modern than I am ancient, no more French than Chinese; and the idea of la patrie, the fatherland—that is, the obligation to live on a bit of earth coloured red or blue on a map, and to detest the other bits coloured green or black—has always seemed to me narrow, restricted, and ferociously stupid. At once universal and particular, French culture has spread far and greatly influenced the development of art and science, particularly anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. France has also been influential in government and civil affairs, giving the world important democratic ideals in the age of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and inspiring the growth of reformist and even revolutionary movements for generations. The present Fifth Republic has, however, enjoyed notable stability since its promulgation on September 28, 1958, marked by a tremendous growth in private initiative and the rise of centrist politics. Although France has engaged in long-running disputes with other European powers (and, from time to time, with the United States, its longtime ally), it emerged as a leading member in the European Union (EU) and its predecessors. From 1966 to 1995 France did not participate in the integrated military structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), retaining full control over its own air, ground, and naval forces; beginning in 1995, however, France was represented on the NATO Military Committee, and in 2009 French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that the country would rejoin the organization’s military command. As one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—together with the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, and China—France has the right to veto decisions put to the council. The capital and by far the most important city of France is Paris, one of the world’s preeminent cultural and commercial centres. A majestic city known as the ville lumière, or “city of light,” Paris has often been remade, most famously in the mid-19th century under the command of Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussman, who was committed to Napoleon III’s vision of a modern city free of the choleric swamps and congested alleys of old, with broad avenues and a regular plan. Paris is now a sprawling metropolis, one of Europe’s largest conurbations, but its historic heart can still be traversed in an evening’s walk. Confident that their city stood at the very centre of the world, Parisians were once given to referring to their country as having two parts, Paris and le désert, the wasteland beyond it. Metropolitan Paris has now extended far beyond its ancient suburbs into the countryside, however, and nearly every French town and village now numbers a retiree or two driven from the city by the high cost of living, so that, in a sense, Paris has come to embrace the desert and the desert Paris. Among France’s other major cities are Lyon, located along an ancient Rhône valley trade route linking the North Sea and the Mediterranean; Marseille, a multiethnic port on the Mediterranean founded as an entrepôt for Greek and Carthaginian traders in the 6th century bce; Nantes, an industrial centre and deepwater harbour along the Atlantic coast; and Bordeaux, located in southwestern France along the Garonne River. Land of France France lies near the western end of the great Eurasian landmass, largely between latitudes 42° and 51° N. Roughly hexagonal in outline, its continental territory is bordered on the northeast by Belgium and Luxembourg, on the east by Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, on the south by the Mediterranean Sea, Spain, and Andorra, on the west by the Bay of Biscay, and on the northwest by the English Channel (La Manche). To the north, France faces southeastern England across the narrow Strait of Dover (Pas de Calais). Monaco is an independent enclave on the south coast, while the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean is treated as an integral part of the country. Relief The French landscape, for the most part, is composed of relatively low-lying plains, plateaus, and older mountain blocks, or massifs. This pattern clearly predominates over that of the younger, high ranges, such as the Alps and the Pyrenees. The diversity of the land is typical of Continental Europe. Three main geologic regions are distinguishable: the skeletal remains of ancient mountains that make up the Hercynian massifs; the northern and western plains; and the higher young fold mountains in the south and southeast, including the Alps and the Pyrenees, with their attendant narrow plains. Much of the detailed relief can be attributed geologically to the varying differences in the resistance of rocks to erosion. A great deal of the present landscape detail is due to glaciation during the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago). France lay outside the range of the great ice sheets that descended upon the northern part of Europe, so the direct sculpting of the land by ice was restricted to the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Vosges, Corsica, and the highest summits of the Massif Central. Just outside these glacial areas, in what are known as periglacial lands, repeated freezing and thawing of unprotected surfaces modified slopes by the movement of waste sheets (formed of shattered bedrock), producing very much the landscape that exists today. Pleistocene periglacial action generated the sheets of the fine windblown limon, or loess, that is the basis of the most fertile lowland soils, and it possibly also created the Landes, a sandy plain in southwestern France. The development of river terraces (flat, raised surfaces alongside valleys) was another characteristic of periglacial action. More …. Score: https://www.britannica.com/place/France

2023/07/14

VISIT FRANCE - A Cinematic Travel Video

There are some trips that are all around fantastic experiences and then there are some that develop into truly meaningful ones. My trip to southern France fell into the latter for so many reasons. One of those, was because it was my first time traveling solo internationally.

2023/07/13