Conveuropean

Last week K. was counting the days until the weekend because she was looking forward to do some hiking again in Wengen, a small village in the Berner Oberland mountains. Today when we are back I completely understand the reason of her excitement: It’s indeed one of the most beautiful parts of Switzerland, offering some breathtaking views of the Bernese mountains. For the first hiking trail, we parked in Lauterbrunnen, took a train to Wengen, got in the cable car to Männlichen and from there we walked all the way to Kleine Scheidegg. This trail was particularly surreal because you are walking in the rim of a mountain more than 2000 meters above the sea level, with some astonishing landscapes, but at the same time you find on your way cows pasturing, always joined by the sound of their typical Swiss bells tinkling. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me but I tried to capture one of those moments with the camera of my phone.

Today we enjoyed a lovely day visiting the Gruyere district of Switzerland, doing plenty of interesting activities and eating some really good food. We started our visit getting to the town of Gruyères. This ancient town has a couple of interesting attractions including the Castle, the Town fortifications and an unusual museum: the HR Giger, where you can visit some of the exhibitions created by this Swiss artist who won an oscar for his work in the movie Aliens. We also drove to Moléson-sur-Gruyères where you can take both a funicular and a cablecar to discover the magnificent panorama and takes pictures from the summit you can observe the Moléson mountain on this picture I took just when we arrived to Gruyères, on the left top corner.

Normally I publish in this photoblog pictures from European cities or landscapes, but this time I decided to upload a nice butterfly photo I captured earlier on today. We decided to visit Konstanz in Germany and it turned out to be a very nice city with an old well preserved city center (luckily the allied bombs during WWII didn’t touch it). From there you can take a boat that bring you to a small island called Mainau. K. always wanted to visit this place because she had studied in the school this island had a gorgeous greenhouse full of butterflies and indeed once you enter to his place you find plenty of those 'Schmetterlinge' flying all over the place, sucking up juice from orange slices and hopping from flower to flower. So my dear K. here is a butterfly picture for you!.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to visit again the city of light and even if I had visited Paris quite a few times during the last years this is the first time I climbed the Eiffel Tower. Once you cover the 674 steps needed to get to the second level, you get rewarded with a really nice view of the Champ the Mars on one side and The Palais de Chaillot and the Gardens of the Trocadéro on the other. I took this opportunity to take some aerial pictures and one of the views I like the most was the one showing the champ of mars with people scattered admiring the amazing iron structure designed by Gustaf Eiffel, erected in 1889. I always will remember the amazement I felt when I saw the structure for the first time.

One of the plans K. wanted to do for a long time was to visit and walk in the black forest in Germany. Basel is located in northern Switzerland, so Freiburg and the small towns in this region of the country are located nearby. Yesterday we booked our economic smart car and headed north to Titisee. Even if the town was a bit too touristy for our taste, it has a nice lake where you can rent a small electric boat and explore around. Additionally it has some good hiking paths to visit small towns near by walking through the forest. While we were walking through one of these paths we had the opportunity to see the lake through this frame made of leaves where I took this shot.

Next page