Last week K. was counting the days until the weekend because she was looking forward to doing some hiking again in Wengen, a small village in the Berner Oberland mountains. Today, now that we are back, I completely understand the reason for 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 were walking on the rim of a mountain more than 2000 meters above sea level, with some astonishing landscapes, but at the same time you found 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 my phone's camera.

Today we enjoyed a lovely day visiting the Gruyère 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 cable car to discover the magnificent panorama and take pictures from the summit. From there, you can observe the Moléson mountain, as shown in this picture I took just when we arrived in Gruyères, visible in the top left corner.

Normally I publish pictures from European cities or landscapes in this photoblog, but this time I decided to upload a nice butterfly photo I captured earlier 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 brings you to a small island called Mainau. K. always wanted to visit this place because she had studied at the school on this island, which had a gorgeous greenhouse full of butterflies. Indeed, once you enter the place, you find plenty of '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 though I had visited Paris quite a few times in recent years, this was the first time I climbed the Eiffel Tower. Once you cover the 674 steps needed to get to the second level, you are rewarded with a really nice view of the Champ de 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 liked the most was the one showing the Champ de Mars with people scattered admiring the amazing iron structure designed by Gustave Eiffel, erected in 1889. I will always 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 nearby 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.

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