Saturday, January 9, 2016

Ice Sculpture Festival

For years in a row now the city of Zwolle has hosted the Ice Sculpture Festival and for years in a row now I wanted to go but never got around to it. The Ice Sculpture Festival, or 'IJsbeelden Festival' as it's called in Dutch, is exactly what it sounds like: an exhibition of ice sculptures.

So this year I finally got to go and was immediately sorry for all the years I didn't. It was spectacular.

You pretty much walk into a huge cooling cell  (very cold, so dress appropriately) and in there the most beautiful ice displays are set up for you to be in awe over.

You, my blogsy people are in luck, because I decided to take you all with me and show you some of the highlights in this post.

The exhibition was set up as a trip around the world where you visited the various continents and their culture or sights were represented by the sculptures in ice and snow.

So without further ado, let's step into the cold and enjoy the show!




















It's kind of ironic I went to see these ice sculptures in a week where the north of my country was pretty much literally covered in ice. We had ice rains for several days and traffic came to a semi hold. Schools were closed, public transport didn't go and there were many accidents with cars that had the audicity to face the weather. On the good side a lot of people also enjoyed skating right in the middle of the streets, so it wasn't all bad. ;-)

Here on the island we had two days of ice, but it wasn't nearly as bad as in some places on the main land. Luckily all the ice is leared up now and the day I went to see the sculptures was like spring, but I found it funny to go seek out ice after a short period of icy days was just finished.

I hope you enjoyed looking at the beautiful sculptures and if you ever get a chance to see ice sculptures in real life, please do so, you'll be glad you did!

Have a wonderful and artsy weekend.