We love street art and Brooklyn is one of the best NY neighborhoods to find these beautiful treasures that color up buildings and walls and make you feel as if you are walking around in a wonderful outdoor museum of modern art. Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Bushwick neighborhoods have been famous for street art for years! Even though other areas of New York, such as Harlem and the Bronx also have a lot of cool spots to visit, we decided to mainly hunt for the treasures of this form of art in Brooklyn.
Williamsburg
When walking through Williamsburg we used the smartphone app Brooklyn Street art that we had downloaded in advance. It allows you to navigate easily on a Google maps sort of plan and it gives you the information on the mural and the artist. Very easy to use!
Eduardo Kobra: It actually was my 10-year-old that told me about this incredible artist. They had spoken about him in school in arts class. We therefore decided to visit his most famous New York piece of street art during our stay. The art work in Brooklyn, #Fight for Street Art, is a portrait of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat by Kobra.
Address: Bedford avenue and Notrh 9th Street in Williamsburg.
Jorit Agoch and Leticia Mandragora wall on North 10th Street:
Several murals on North 10th Street in direction of Union Avenue:
Mural of three rats by ROA on Havemeyer Street:
Murals on Roebling Street:
From Williamsburg, we took the subway L line to Bushwick and got off at the station Montrose avenue.
Bushwick
We had lunch in a nice vegan diner called Champs Diner where they serve really tasty and healthy bowls. Address: 197, Meserole Street.
For Bushwick, we took a really cool guided street art tour with the company New York Off Road as they offer tours in French, which is the first language of our children. The tour was excellent and we finished it off by making our own street art guided by a local NY street artist! She explained us how to spray and helped us make a real cool painting which is now our favorite NY family trip souvenir that we brought home with us.
Bushwick is really incredible when it comes to the number of art works per square meter 😊. It has an industrial area where the factories that still operate from there allow the artists to paint the walls, which results in beautiful art works all around you. We didn’t know where to look since there were so many! There were even beautiful art works on the trucks passing by.
Our tour guide explained us a lot about the different signatures of different artists like for instance one of the artists always portrays figures with specific decorated eyes etc. Really amazing!
In Bushwick we have seen art works of many artists, amongst others: DonRmix, Calangoss, Marka27, Never, Dasic Fernandez, Iena Cruz, Kermen, Lexi Bella, Danielle, Mastrion, Fin Dac, Phetus88, Jerkface, Jorit Agoch and Resa Piece.
Have a look to get an idea:
Madison Square Garden
During our recent trip to NY we decided to take our kids see some sports games. Sports take up a big place in American culture and they make a whole show out of every game.
I had myself been to the Madison Square Garden to see a NY Rangers game when I was younger, and I had good memories of that, so for me it was for sure that I wanted to take my kids there as well to soak up the atmosphere during a game. This time, it would be basketball in the Garden, and Ice hockey at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
NY Islanders game at Barclays Center in Brooklyn:
The Barclays Center is a very well organized beautiful stadium. There are restaurants everywhere and before the game, you can choose whether you would like to eat hotdogs, hamburgers, tacos and so on. We took not so expensive tickets to see an NHL ice hockey game. We paid 20 dollars per ticket, and were seated quite high up, but still with a very good view of the playing field! If you have small children with sensitive ears, remember to bring them plugs as the music and sound of the commercial breaks and animation are quite loud. Our children had never seen an ice-hockey game before and they liked it! For us, it was the game of the NY Islanders against the Toronto Maple Leafs, and one thing we noticed is that the Islander fans and the Maple Leafs fans are just seated next to each other and encourage their favorite team without anyone arguing. In Europe during soccer games for instance the fans are often in separated sections to avoid problems. Here, this did not seem necessary at all and there was a nice atmosphere during the whole game!
Once you get back out there is a taxi stand right across the street if you wanted to go home by cab.
NY Knicks game at Madison Square Garden:
Madison Square Garden is centrally located in Manhattan. We took relatively expensive tickets to be sure the kids would be able to see, but in the end, I realized we could have taken a bit less expensive, because we felt like we had VIP seats. The kids were all happy about that of course 😊. We were seated quite high up, but right in front so the view was really good. The website of Ticketmaster allows you to look at the view you will have of the game beforehand which is quite convenient if you don’t know the stadium that well. I just didn’t realize we would have sort of VIP seats with screens and everything 😉. Once you are there, remember not to wait too long to buy your food if you want to eat there, since it can sell out quickly.
We saw the Knicks vs Orlando, and it was a good game! However, I guess we didn’t bring luck for the NY sports teams when we were there as both the Islanders, and the Knicks lost. Better luck next time I hope!
During our holiday in the snow this year, I saw all the cute little kids moving around on their skis and I realized we had come a long way. Our children are now 10 and 8, and both love to ski, but this hasn’t been the case right from the beginning 😊.
We were those parents too, that carried around all the equipment and the small child at the same time. We have been to locations where the meeting point was quite far from our apartment and waking up the kids, preparing them, getting all their stuff together and motivating them to go out in the cold wasn’t always a piece of cake.
We have had them in classes where everyone spoke another language than theirs. We have had our little one finally explaining us after 2 days of skiing that his shoes were actually too small. We have had our five-year-old skiing down the slope by himself, leaving his ski class behind to search for his parents (luckily the teacher caught up with him!) and we have had our little one ‘forgotten’ by the teacher in a restaurant until another restaurant client decided to call his parents… And no, the sun doesn’t always shine… Group ski class is every day, also when it snows and also when temperatures drop to minus 10. And those photos will not end up on Facebook and Instagram… Everyone only posts the photos of the sunny days.
I remember that plenty of times when I had left them at their little beginner ski class, and I finally got back to get my own skis, ready to hit the first slope of the day, the teacher called me to say my child was crying and I had to take all the equipment off again, to go and collect him.
But, keep your hopes up 😊 They eventually grow out of all of that and become more independent. They will prepare themselves in the morning, and not necessarily wave at you when they pass you on the slopes.
This year, I was watching those cute little 3-year olds following their teacher in a queue, while I was waiting for my eldest son to get back from his off-track class with the ski school. He was skiing off-track for 2 hours and they ended up getting back by bus. Awesome! He said 😊.
When we go skiing now, they all have to wait for me. I’m the worst skier in my family, but I know why… I was so busy getting them on skis that I kind of didn’t have the time to learn it properly myself… I can ski, but they have definitely out-skied me by now…
Chronological order of my son’s ‘skiing career’ 😊:
Have you ever looked at travel lists on the internet? Top 10 must see places, top 100 of places to see in your life, most extraordinary places in the world?
Well, there is one that I visited, twice!
It is the ‘Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval’ and it is located in Hauterives in the Drome area in the South of France.
Facteur Cheval was a postman. He actually never left his town and never went on holiday. But he did create a palace, in his backyard, inspired by travels around the world! The result is absolutely amazing, as well as his story. Facteur Cheval was in fact inspired by other people that travelled and learned about the entire world by the postcards and magazines he delivered to people’s mailboxes. A Swiss Chalet, an Indian Palace. He saw all the images and was able to re-create them in his backyard with the stones he picked up during his daily post round in the area.
The result of 33 years of building is incredible!
He was considered an idiot by his neighbours and he was laughed at. But now, years later, Facteur Cheval is booming business to a small town in the Drome. They are currently even making a movie about him with French actors Jacques Gamblin and Laetitia Casta, who will be playing the role of Ms Cheval!
To see it is to believe it. I don’t think I realized how big this construction was until I first got there. Back then, we were a couple without kids, and years later we decided to take them there. There are stairs to get on top of the building, pass ways to get inside and benches around the construction to contemplate the work of art.
It is quite amazing because we travel to create memories and to learn things, but in the end, Facteur Cheval never went anywhere but was already a world traveler back in 1912 when he finished his piece of art.
Facteur Cheval teaches you and your children a lot of things.
- Dream Big
- Believe in yourself! Even when others don’t.
- The world has a lot of extraordinary places, if you can’t visit them, imagine them!
A walk on the beach in the Netherlands always makes me happy. It clears your head and the surroundings are beautiful. The kids can run in the wind, jump off the dunes and they can play the ‘does the wave wet my shoes or not game’. But still, to make them contribute to a beach cleanup gives them a whole other level of understanding, and if you do a cleanup every once in a while, when you walk in nature, it may just teach them to be responsible themselves later on.
They will transform it into a treasure hunt, and they may oblige you to finally bring a treasure or two home with you (we are the proud owners of a very rusty boat propellor), but it does really teach them something valuable, and they do realize it is ridiculous what people leave in nature… Straws, bottles, plastic bags, bags with dog poo (seriously if you clean up your dog’s poo, and put it in a plastic bag, why do you leave it on the beach afterwards?). We also found a whole box of medicines, and finally, a lost Iphone that we brought back to the beach bar hoping it would then be reunited with its owner.
The children seemed a bit more aware of the trash problem and I think that in summer, when we spend even more time on the beach, they will run after their empty cookie wrapping in case the wind picks it up. Or at least, I hope so!
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