Day 16: Stay at Home or In the Garden: Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight

The winter came back and brought us snow again. It was cold all the daylong.

During the afternoon the sun came from time to time trough until finally in the evening another spectacular sunset remembered that tomorrow a new day with more sun will bring us the spring and the HOPE again.

In Matthew 16:2b–3, Jesus says:

When it is evening, you say, “It will be fair weather; for the sky is red.”
And in the morning, “It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.”

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Day 14: Stay at Home or In the Garden: Swiss Alps

View from Restaurant Bühlberg by Lenk of the Swiss Alps….it was only 4 weeks ago.

When everything will be over, we will travel again and we will enjoy every second! 🙂

Cretan Summer 2018

Souvenirs of our beloved Crete

Respect for Nature and Cretan Flowers

Crete has an amazing flora, rich in variety with over 2,000 different kinds of flowers; of them at least 150 plants and wild herbs are endemic, which means that they do not exist in any other place in the world. An incredible variety of orchids are spread all over the island, different colors, sizes and many of them with sweet smelling scent.

The fabulous spring, with all the colors is like the garden of the paradise and when the sun burns the flowers in lower altitudes in the mountain and in the gorges we can find many many flowers all year round.

Arriving on Crete we immediately can smell the scent of this island covered with aromatic  herbs and plants. No wonder that Cretan food is so goo!

Respect the flowers, don’t pick up orchids an other rare flowers; take a picture instead the flowers will be preserved and your souvenir will stay longer! Thanks!

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Iceland in Winter: Golden Circle

 

Winter days in Iceland are quite short, but it does not mean that it isn’t possible to stop to admire the most important sites along the golden circle. A time schedule would be very helpful in this case so that you know how to manage the time. This country is so beautiful it makes it really difficult not to stop for longer time at this awesome sights.

We were there only one week before the shortest day and the light began to come through at about 09:30, and the dark came just before 17:00.

Between the first light and the sun rise we could calculate about 1 1/2 hours and the same was for the sunset. We got real the best weather for this trip!

The sunny hours are something like a very long sunrise and a very long sunset; this means…WOW… golden hours all the day long!

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The first place to visite was the enchanted þingvellir (Thingvellir) national park. The Þingvellir area is part of a fissure zone running through Iceland, being situated on the tectonic plate boundaries of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In winter we got the chance to see the frozen lake and the Öxarárfoss waterfall

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We continued our trip in the direction of the Geysirs

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Some more time for a quick lunch around this steamy geothermal area. From here in only a few minutes we reached the majestic Gullfoss waterfall.

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The final stop in a natural hot-sprig just before heading in direction of Hella for dinner and a good sleep.

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Iceland in Winter: From the Sky

We’ve been for a few days in Iceland again! Last time we’ve visited Iceland it was in early September and we were so amazed that we found we have to go there.

So we were lucky to find flights for a reasonable time and we could visit our great friend in Reykjavik again and then start our 3 days tour before heading home.

The arrival by plane was breathtaking: many volcanoes covered snow and the Svartsengi geothermal power plant could be admired.

What for an incredible view! We could not wait to start our trip.

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Gran Canaria: Roque Nublo. Mood: Looking Down to the Sunny South

 

Before starting our hiking to the natural monument of the Roque Nublo, we stopped for a while wondering the light spectacle of the sun playing with the clouds. It was late in the afternoon and some rays found their way under the clouds. The golden light unlighted the South while on the top the clouds were playing with the wind.

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Gran Canaria: Roque Nublo. Mood: Reaching the Clouds

 

We were lucky to enjoy a second hiking to the Roque Nublo this time just before the sunset with a cap of dark clouds after letting behind us the sunny southern part of the island.  Strong winds and a the end light rain made this hike more adventurous and the landscape dreamy!

In the next days I will present you some of the pictures taken in this short hour, but intensive hour!

Gran Canaria: Roque Nublo

A few days of holidays and vacations need to enjoyed as much as possible and for us this means let everything behind us, take a break from our jobs explore, explore and explore.

This time the wing blew us to Gran Canaria, only a week, but a very intensive week spent on traveling around with our rental car, make a few short hiking tours, sit at the sun enjoying a coffee or a meal and visiting Las Palmas as well as other cities and villages.

We rented a flat in near Santa Brigida as this is a quite central place from where we had the possibility to reach all places of the island in a reasonable time, have dinner on the way or in Las Palmas and be home for a resting sleep.

The first day we planned to reach the Roque Nublo by the roads GC-15 and  GC-600 and follow on of the trail to the natural Monument of the Roque Nublo  and later to a small lake in the south.

After a night of rain, we found the best weather and a T-Shirt was more then enough even in January! The water in a big puddle inspired us to an unusual picture of this iconic place and holes in the rock made a great frame for the Roque Nublo.

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Click  on the trail to see details and enter Wikiloc

 

Post submission for  the weekly photo challenge: “silence”