Snapshots

In June 1999 I was at a conference in Florence, Italy. Didn't even manage to do any significant amount of sightseeing, just took a few pictures while rushing through the city during lunch break.

In July 2002 a meeting took me to Ljubljana in Slovenia. Since I had never been in Slovenia, I added a weekend vacation to the trip. One of the things Slovenia is well known for are its caves. So I went to visit a couple of them. The best experience was the Krizna Jama tour, since that one is in a cave system that consists of a number of connected underwater lakes. (A very good web page with great panorama pictures about that cave can be found at this site.)
You can visit the cave with a tour guide and paddle about a mile along the underground lakes (feeling a bit like a Gollum-wannabe most of the time). The cave has no electric lighting or other touristy trappings, so you get to see the cave 'in the raw'. It is also not particularly crowded (about 300 people visit the cave per year). When I was there (at noon on a Saturday in summer), I was the only one doing the tour, so I had a private tour with my personal guide and the whole cave system for more than three hours just for myself.
After that I was at Skocjanske Jame, which is a bit more touristical. Basically it's just two big caverns. The first one is reasonably nice, but the real attraction is the second one. It's an enormously large cave which you enter at about middle height, with a river running through a gorge deep below you and the ceiling high above. If Krizna Jama feels like Gollum's place from 'The Hobbit', this one automatically triggers the response "It's Moria!", especially since there's a small bridge at the smallest part of the cave that takes you to the other side. Fortunately I didn't remember the exact words, otherwise it would have been very hard to resist the temptation to stand in the middle of the bridge, stop the other tourists from passing and shout "You cannot pass, I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass." (Although there's probably a tourist every other day who actually does that...)
Afterwards I went to the Rakov Skocjan area, which is a nice area to wander around, with natural bridges, small caves formed by the Rak river through which you can walk along the river shore, lush green vegetation, just a nice place to finish a 'cave themed day'.

Legoland Germany opened in May 2002 and I had nothing much to do in August, so I went there for a day. The main attraction for me where various buildings from Berlin, which were built from Lego bricks and a lot of other Lego sculptures.

The pictures from this trip and some remarks about how Lego differs from Disney can be found here.

I finally got around to making the seaplane sightseeing flight over Berlin. Here are some pictures.

These two pictures are only marginally connected by the fact that they show buildings that are about 20 miles from Paris in different directions. The picture to the left shows Phantom Manor in Disneyland Paris, while the one to the right shows a church in Auvers-sur-Oise, of which Van Gogh once made a painting. More about this trip to places close to Paris can be found here.

Later that year, in June, I had a project meeting in Bilbao, which I managed to combine with a bit of sightseeing (thanks to the odd pricing schemes of the airlines). Bilbao itself is rather nice. While it has a great tourist attraction (the Guggenheim Museum), the attraction is quite new and Bilbao is also away from the sea, so Bilbao is not a typical 'tourist city', but a normal 'working city', which is something I prefer.

The Guggenheim Museum is impressive, but as it is often the case with modern museums, there's always a competition for the viewers attention between the museum and the art displayed in and around it. In this case, the museum is probably winning, although the flower covered 'puppy' outside comes a close second.

Another thing that I like about Bilbao is the large number of good restaurants. Which is especially good since I happened to have my birthday during the trip, which is more fun to celebrate with a good dinner...

There was also a short side trip to Puente Colgante a 'transporter bridge', which is a couple of metro stops from Bilbao. A transporter bridge is a rather strange cross between a bridge and a ferry (and in my opinion just manages to incorporate the negative aspects of both). It's a high bridge crossing the Nervion, but you don't cross the river over the bridge, but hanging down from the bridge is a gondola, which 'ferries' passengers and cars over the river at a height of about 10 feet.

The idea? To see the world's largest animal. The destination? Iceland. The planning? Nearly absent.

For no very good reason, except for the usual "it seemed like a good idea", I decided that I would like to go on a big whale watching tour to see a blue whale. There is a company in Iceland that has fast ship that does whale watching tours looking for the large whales, so I took their tour. And I did see a blue whale! (As well as other whales and dolphins.) More about this short vacation is here.

This is not exactly travel related, since the 'travel' involved only five stations on the subway, but there was a nice exhibition of sand sculptures here in Berlin, and here are a couple of pictures from that event.

Towards the end of 2003 I flew south for the winter. I spent my vacation in Australia (more specifically in Sydney and Tasmania) and in New Zealand. It probably was the longest vacation I ever did (even though the trip to San Francisco / Las Vegas / Alaska / British Columbia back in 1991 may have had a similar length) and without any doubt it was the vacation with the most activities on the way. As a side effect, the description of the vacation is quite a bit longer than previous travel descriptions.

To read about the vacation, start by clicking here.

No travels for quite some time now. But at least there is another exhibiton of sand sculptures in Berlin, so there is a bit of an update to this site with some new pictures here.

During a very short vacation in Denmark (only a couple of days) I visited Legoland in Billund. Some pictures can be found here.

A quick visit to Dublin in October. Didn't take many pictures there (the main attractions are pubs and bookshops, both of which are for enjoying, not for photographing...), but I did like the Spire. Basically it's just a metal pole about 400 feet tall. There are some markings at the base and some lights near the top, but unless you stand right next to it, it's just a metal needle, stuck into the city, pinning the city to the ground like a butterfly. Or maybe it's Cori Celesti, the hub around which the world turns metaphorically. Or someone went to Seattle and said "That is a Space Needle? I'll show you what a space needle looks like!". Whatever. Anyway, it's abstract, it's cool, it's daring. Here's a view of it as seen from the shopping street.

I've only been to Athens once before, and that was about 14 years ago, and I only had a day for sightseeing, so I didn't do anything special and just revisited the standard places, starting with the Acropolis. Not much of a travelogue this time, even though there would be a story to tell, but a number of pictures from the trip are here.

I had never been to Japan before (well, except for a couple of hours wait on Singapore airport on the way to Australia, which don't rally count, I've never been in Asia at all), so there were lots of preconceived notions and stereotypes when I went to Tokio for ten days.

Most of what I read and heard turned out to be only slightly true and I did enjoy the trip quite a lot. More about it can be found here.

After being quite some distance away, this one is a lot closer to home. As in 2003 and 2004, there was an exhibition of sand sculptures in Berlin. Some pictures from this can be found here.

In July, I visited Geneva. Which has a water jet. And little else. But at least it also has ships going across the lake. More about this (and an odd drawing) here.

Even now, I find it hard to believe that I actually did that. It is so far removed from previous travel experience that it has an almost dreamlike quality. But I did get to the South Pole and I enjoyed being in the Antarctica more than any other place I have ever been to.

I also went to see the penguins on Magdalena Island in Chile and the Torres del Paine National Park, which are both very impressive sights, but, compared to being on the ice, just minor moments.

More about the best journey of my life (and I don't think that I will ever have a more exciting trip) and many pictures can be found here.

While not even remotely as exciting as going to Antarctica, April 2006 had me visiting northern Italy. Didn't have much time for sightseeing, but a couple of pictures can be found here anyway.

Building sand sculptures are becoming a regular event in Berlin. As in the preceeding years, I went and took a look. So here are some pictures from 2006.

Towards the end of 2006, I went to Romania for a week. Most of it was for a project meeting, but I did manage to add a few vacation days and go sightseeing in Bucharest and do some walking in the Carpathian Mountains, specifically the Bucegi Mountains. A number of pictures from that trip can be found here.

In January 2007, I ended up in the north of Italy again, but this time in an area I hadn't visited before, specifically the Bolzano / Bozen area in South Tyrol. I didn't have that much time for sightseeing, but I managed to do a bit of walking on the plateau above Bolzano / Bozen and also went to some mountains in the Dolomites. Pictures from that trip can be found here.

In March 2007, I went to Qaanaaq in northern Greenland to spend some time on the sea ice and look at icebergs. I did two one-week sledge tours with an Inuit hunter, spend a week in Qaanaaq and walked amidst the icebergs just outside the town. Also did some more iceberg watching in Ilulissat, which was sort of 'on the way' to Qaanaaq.

It was a sort of a 'follow up' trip to the South Pole trip. Back then I learned that I am really fond of icy landscapes and Greenland has some very impressive ones to offer.

The (fairly lengthy) write-up of the Qaanaaq trip can be found here.

In June 2007 I was back in Geneva again. Once again, the planned rafting trip on the Arve failed to happen. Once again, I noticed that there's not much to do in Geneva on a spare day. It's pretty much a leisure town. Great food and nice for sitting in a cafe and watching the scenery, but not a good place to actually do things interesting enough to write about.

But there are some nice details to the city, like the artful 'TV-set' on a childrens playground somewhere or the fact that some of the phone distribution boxes (or whatever they are) aren't just ugly grey boxes, but often painted. For example as an old radio.

Another sand sculpture exhibition in Berlin. As in the preceeding years, I went and took a look. So here are some pictures from 2007.

Tropical beaches? Cocktails by the pool? Not an iceberg in sight?

Not one of my typical vacations, but in July 2007 I went to visit the northern part of Brazil and stayed a couple of days in the beach village of Jericoacoara before trying a day trip to Ubajara National Park and spending some time in Fortaleza. The trip told me pretty much what I knew already: I am not much of a beach person. But I like to travel and visit places I haven't seen before, even if they don't match my 'usual preferences'.

So here are some pictures and remarks about the trip.

Well, visiting a cave in Brazil somehow didn't work out. But luckily I went to Hungary in October 2007, which has lots of caves. So, in additon to seeing Budapest and the countryside, I did spend some time seeing the Aggtelek mountains from below. More about that here.

About two years after standing at the South Pole, I stood essentially at the same spot, just upside down and (as seen from the South Pole) about 12000 kilometers below. Or, to put it in simpler terms, I went to the North Pole.

The trip itself was somewhat easier, since the North Pole is a lot closer to civilization than its counterpart. To make up for that, I skied the last couple of kilometers (just a small distance, five kilometers or so) to the Pole and also spent the night in a tent at the Pole.

I also spent a couple of days in Svalbard (Spitsbergen) afterwards and did a couple of small trips: a dog-sledding tour, a snowmobile tour and some crawling around in a glacier.

More about the vacation can be found here.

Less than a month after visiting the North Pole, I was once again in a frozen environment, though closer to home. I went to Italy to stay at the hotel with the highest altitude in the Alps (at 3212 meters, about 10500ft). I didn't have much of a plan after that, so I just travelled around Trentino-Alto Adige for the rest of the week.

There's not much to tell about the trip, but a short description and a couple of pictures are here.

When I was in Hungary for the first time (half a year earlier), I visited some caves. I liked that a lot, so on my second trip to Hungary I went to two "extreme" cave tours (and to a much more accessible cave). Too bad that caves don't photograph well with 'normal' equipment - it's not really an environment suitable for snapshots. But at least a couple of pictures and a description of the cave tours are here.

Another sand sculpture exhibition in Berlin. As in the preceeding years, I went and took a look. After a while, they are starting to look kinde of same-ish. So, without much commentary, here are some pictures from 2008.

A month after visiting some caves in Hungary, I had some spare time in Romania, so it seemed like a good idea to visit some caves there (mainly the Ice Cave and the Bear Cave). The weather in Bucharest was quite hot in July, but unfortunately the weather out in the countryside wasn't that great, so driving to the caves (which are quite some distance away from the capital) was a bit of a mixed experience. More about the trip and the caves is here.

Back to Brazil, even though only for a couple of days. The main attraction this time (after spending a short time in São Luís) was the national park of Lençóis Maranhenses. It's a bit of a 'convenience desert'. It looks pretty much like a desert, if you just look flat over the top of the dunes, but between the dunes are small (rainwater) pools, so you can always go for a quick swim. More pictures here.

After visiting caves in Hungary and Romania this year, it seemed sort of appropriate to looks for some caves during a short visit to France as well. Even though it was off-season, there were still some caves that had regular 'visiting hours' and since it was off-season, I was the only visitor at both caves, so I got my own guided tours there. Pictures from the caves (and of Lyon and some of the places nearby) are here.

Much sooner than expected, I was back in Brazil. I had only been there three months earlier. This time, it was a fairly sandless visit. I didn't have any time for beaches or the dunes of Lençóis Maranhenses.
But I did manage to do some walking around in Fortaleza and São Luís and, more interestingly, I also visited the cave in the Ubajara National Park, something I had tried to do without success the previous year. So, a bit unexpectedly, I added another cave visit to a year that had a surprising number of them. A short summary of the trip and pictures can be found here.

About two years after travelling as a passenger on a dog sled over sea ice, I was on another dog sled on sea ice, but this time I was in control. (Well, as much control as you can have as a novice over a team of ten experienced dogs.) This time the scenery was in northern Canada, at the northern end of the Yukon Territory, driving the dog sled from Herschel Island to Aklavik.

Dog sledding turned out to be a lot of fun, especially if someone (ie. the dogs) has expert knowledge in doing it. The only problem with the trip was that visiting Vancouver (which I like) seemed a bit boring afterwards...

Much more about that trip can be found here.

In May, I got to visit Paris. But since it was only a short trip and I mostly just walked around, there's not much to show or write about. I did, however, manage to visit the 'Grande Arche' at La Defénse, which houses a small computer museum with a lot of old home computers, but also a Cray X-MP, though, unfortunately, not as a bench for public use.

Time to visit another sand sculpture exhibition in Berlin. As in the preceeding years, I went and took a look. After all those years, they are starting to look kinde of same-ish. although there were a couple of nice ones on display this year. Some pictures, without much commentary, here.

Exactly nine years after having a sightseeing flight in a biplane, I was in a biplane again. This time, it was much smaller (just a two seater) Stampe SV-4. And this time there was no roof above me, since this was an open plane. I also got to wear a rather goofy looking leather helmet with goggles. Some background conerning that flight as well as some pictures are here.

Only three weeks later, I was sitting again in an open biplane, this time in a seventy year old Tiger Moth. More about the flight and some images are here.

To follow up the two biplane flights, I did a sightseeing flight with another (sort of) old flying machine, a Zeppelin (even though the actual Zeppelin was a modern one, it still looked like being from a different era). And after that, I did some driving around with an utterly useless (but fun) car, a Caterham Seven. More about the flight and the driving can be found here.

Heading south of the equator again, I ended up in Mozambique. Not a typical vacation for me, since the place is a bit too warm for me. And I also stayed (for the vacation part of the trip) in an expensive resort, which was a first for me and, while nice, wasn't all that exciting. (Which, I realize, is the point of having a relaxing vacation, but still...) More about the trip is here.

While there have been a number of sand sculpture exhibitions in Berlin, in December 2009 there was also an exhibition of ice sculptures. Some pictures of them are here.

After not having been to London for quite some time, I did more touristic things this time than I used to do when I was visiting there more regularly. So in addition to re-visiting the London Eye, I also managed to visit Battersea Park and Greenwich, which I had never visited before. More about the trip is here.

Traveling on a dog sled is fun. I liked it the previous year and I wanted to do it again. But going to Canada for just a week is a bit pointless, since you spend more time go to Dawson City and back than you spend dogsledding, so I added a week of snowmobiling to the trip. Which turned out to be much harder than expected (I only had been on snowmobile day trips before and didn't know how to handle a snowmobile off-trail in deep snow), but also fun. But the best part was still the dogsledding on the Yukon River.

Much more about that trip can be found here.

After only two months, I found myself back in the UK. After some time near Norwich (where I did go on a rope climbing course), I went to Wales for the first time and visited Portmeirion and the Snowdonia Range before finishing the trip in Windsor. Some pictures from that trip are here.

On my 50th birthday, I was looking for something interesting to do and chartered two balloons to invide a couple of friends for a sightseeing flight south of Berlin. Since the date was (obviously) fixed, we had to take the weather conditions as they were on that day, which were less favourable than hoped for, but sufficiently good to allow the trip to take place.
Pictures and some text regarding that trip are here.

And once again there was a sand sculpture exhibition in Berlin. The location had moved again (almost back to where it had started) and while sculptures once again looked pretty much like the one from previous years, there were a couple of nice exceptions. Some pictures can be seen here.

Another activity that does not really count as travel, but was fun to do nonetheless. As a birthday present, I got a 'stunt course' or 'action weekend' where I got to do such things as choreographed fighting, a fire stunt, a car stunt and some abseiling. More about this can be found here.

Since I didn't do any real travel for quite some time, I took a couple of days of vacation and went to Lofoten Islands in Norway. Didn't do any interesting activities there, just looking at the landscape while walking and driving around. It was pretty much an off-season visit, too late for the busy summer season, too early for winter activities, so the pace was fairly relaxed. Some (repetitive) description and pictures can be found here.

Went to Turin in February 2011, but I didn't have any spare time to do anything touristic. But I flew to Turin two days early, so I had some time to travel to Pragelato and do some cross country skiing.

Pragelato was the site for the ski jumping and cross country skiing competitions of the 2006 winter Olympics. I can't ski, but luckily, Pragelato not only has the 'Olympic cross country route', but also a 'Tourist route', which was a nice flat track going evenly along one side of a river and back on the other side of the river. Nice, easy and scenic, with sun, blue skies and very few tourists. So I wasn't blocking the way for anyone and there was also a wide prepared area beside the actual trail, so I could stumble around there and wasn't blocking the real track for those who actually could ski. So it was an ideal situation for me and I more or less doubled the total distance I have ever travelled on skis.

After spending my main vacation for two years going dog sledding in Canada, it felt like it was time for a change. So I went dog sledding in Svalbard instead. And since there wasn't any sufficiently long dog sledding trip, I did two trips this year. Plus two snow mobile tours, just to provide some balance.

I did get to see all sorts of weather conditions, northern lights, some wildlife (reindeer, arctic foxes, ptarmigan, seal, though no polar bear), many dogs, a lot of scenery (though Tempelfjorden might get repetitive if you visit it on three of four tours) and spent some nights in an old sailing ship in the ice.

A detailed account of the Svalbard trip can be found here.

I didn't have much free time in southern France, but I managed to do some walking in the mountains along a Planétaire walk, visit a cave, do some more walking (with a lot of rain) to see a natural arch, and then do some quick visits to Monaco and Nice to round it off. Add some good eating and it sums up to quite a pleasant trip of of which a description and pictures are here.

I was in London in September 2011. Didn't do much sightseeing, but I had a lifecast of my face taken and turned into a plastercast. Some pictures of that are here.

I didn't have that much spare time when I visited Los Angeles (just three days of vacation), but I tried to do as much as possible. So I went flying in a biplane (including some minor aerobatics and flying the plane myself for a bit), went whale watching (seeing lots of dolphins and also a blue whale, as well as some sea lions and pelicans), 'flew' in a vertical wind tunnel and also went ziplining in the mountains. Just to fill in the empty spaces in my schedule, I also visited Universal Studios, went to a concert at the Wiltern and went to an exhibition at the LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and also the California Science Center and the Griffith Observatory.

So it was quite a busy trip, of which a detailed account and pictures can be found here.

About a month after visiting London, there was another trip to the UK, this time to the Windsor area. It was a short trip, so I didn't get around much, but at least managed to visit the Legoland there (with lots of Lego animals, real and imaginary) and have a walk in the Windsor Great Park (with a few real animals there as well). Also managed to visit Windsor Castle. A bit more about the trip and the corresponding pictures can be found here.

I didn't expect that I ever would visit that continent again, but in November 2011 I returned to Antarctica.

This time I didn't go to the South Pole, but headed to the edge of Antarctica to camp near a colony of Emperor Penguins. And since travel to and from Antarctica is always a bit unpredictable, I also did see more of southern Chile than I had originally planned. And, just to make the trip more interesting, I also visited Easter Island.

A summary of the trip and a lot of pictures can be found here.

Early 2012 I was in Italy twice (in Torino in January and in Catania in February). I didn't do much but walking around for a bit (the specific plans I had failed due to the weather conditions), so there are just a few pictures and a short summary here.

March 2012 found me back in the Yukon again. And once again on a dog sled. And while this by now almost seems like 'business as usual', a few things had changed since I was the last time in Canada, only two years earlier. But being out on the snow with a group of nice and eager dogs pulling is always fun. Some text about the trip (and the usual pictures of dogs and snow - but this time also with 'action shots' of me on the sled) can be found here.

I had a weekend to spend in the area around Lyon and went to the Gorges de l'Ardèche for some kayaking, passing through the Pont d'Arc, a natural rock bridge. I also went to visit two tourist caves and a number of small waterfalls. Pictures and a short description can be found here.

I only had a weekend off in Belgium, but I did manage to get around quite a lot (even though this meant spending a large part of the weekend just driving around).

After some kayaking on Lesse River, I also managed to do some ziplining in a quarry near Dinant. And I did see some car racing at the Spa-Francorchamps race course before visiting an exhibition of sand sculptures at Blankenberge. Pictures and a bit of descriptive text can be found here.

No vacation pictures this time, but something closer to home. There is an abandoned amusement park in Berlin and they are offering guided tours of the area. As the place has been unused for more of a decade now, quite a lot has been vandalized and destroyed, but some of the attractions are still standing. Some images of rusty and run down rollercoasters and other rides can be found here.

While Greece is mostly known for its beaches and its history, I tried to do something more contemporary and somewhat less 'laid back', although, in a quite literal sense, I spend some time 'hanging around' - namely, I went canyoning.

And, since I had another weekend to spend, I also went rafting on Lousios/Alfeios River. And, since you can't avoid historic sites completely, I also visited Ancient Olympia. Pictures and more details about the trip are here.

I went caving in the Grotte de Courtouphle in France. While I had been on cave tours before (even outside of the 'show cave' parts), those have been mainly walking tours with a bit of crawling around and scrambling over rocks. This tour was a bit trickier, since it involved a fair amount of rappeling in the dark. Which was fun at first, but then I slipped and hurt myself. Nothing serious, but it did put a damper on the rest of the trip. More about the cave visit can be found here.

Another trip to Canada, although this was pretty much outside of any season that had interesting tourist activities, so most of the time was spent walking around in Montréal and Ottawa as well as some walking around in the woods. Hence, a summary about nothing of much interest can be found here.

At the beginning of Spring 2013, I was in Madrid. And while I had expected warm and sunny weather in central Spain at that time of the year, I ended up snow shoeing in rather foggy weather in the mountains north of the city. But the weather in the city itself was different, so when I got around to posing with a dolphin at the Madrid zoo, it was all bright and sunny, as can be seen here.

In April 2013 it was time for the main vacation of the year - driving a dog sled all the way from Inuvik to Herschel Island and back. A full two weeks of dogsledding in the Arctic wilderness. But on this trip, things didn't quite work out the way I was hoping they would. Being there in a phase of bad weather contributed to the problems, but even then there's a difference between sitting out a blizzard for three days in a cabin or with seven people in a single tent without an outer fly.

So I didn't make it to Herschel Island. And there also wasn't as much dog sledding as I had hoped. But on the other hand, there were a couple of nice days as well and I did get to see Tuktoyaktuk. And, as it is sometimes the case, a near-disaster story makes a better trip report than one that's filled with only happy days.

I spent a weekend at Lake Garda in Italy and did a canyoning tour there. It was fun to do and it included abseil sections as well as natural 'water slides'. I also did a quad tour, which was nice as well. To round off the trip, there were also visits to the cites of Torino and Como. Photos of the time in northern Italy can be found here.

While the main attractions of Oxford are the University colleges, the museums and other historical sites and not so much "things to do", there is some things that can be done in the area. Most of the popular ones involve sitting in a pub somewhere, but there are also outdoor activities. The most traditional one is probably punting, but I also managed to do some flying in a motor glider and some rounds on a kart track located in a former greyhound racing track. More about this short trip to Oxford is found here.

I didn't have to travel much for this (as it was just a subway ride away), but I did spend an interesting afternoon learning how to climb a tree. Or, to be more specific, how to attach a rope to the tree and then climb that rope. More about this here.

Another UK trip in September 2013, this time heading to the Bournemouth area, with a short stop at some stones near the road. And while I was at the coast anyway, it seemed like a good idea to try some kayaking and coasteering. Whether this really was a good idea can be seen here.

Only had one spare day when visiting Paris in October 2013 and I used most of it to visit a theme park north of the city. And, of course, also to have a look at the Eiffel Tower. More about that day can be found here.

Art collections aren't the things I usually seek out when I'm in a place where I have never been before, but (without any particular reason) when I visited Lithuania, I spent a surprising amount of time to look at massive stone and metal sculptures. Luckily, I also found some time to just walk around in the woods and generally enjoy the scenery. Details are here.

I had never been to China before (the only Asian country I have been to is Japan - and that was almost a decade ago), so traveling to China was a new experience, even though, as far as mainland China is concerned, I just had about an evening for some sightseeing in Shenzhen. But I had some more time in Hong Kong, so most of the photos that I took (and can be found here) are from Hong Kong.

After Vilnius, Shenzhen and Hong Kong, I also visited London in November 2013 (it was a busy month). Not much to tell about this trip, but I visited the Globe Theatre on a guided tour and put some pictures here.

My main vacation in 2014 was another dogsledding trip, but this time not in Canada, but in Sweden. It was the longest dogsledding trip I ever had (more than 500 km travelled on the sled) and so far the most relaxed one.

Unlike previous trips, which were mostly tent-based, this one used huts, houses and hostels. Which reduced the 'out there in the wild' feeling a bit, but allowed for a certain amount of comfort and enabled us to spend more time dogsledding.

In addition to spending a lot of time with dogs, I also visited two fairly unusual hotel rooms and also ended up on a horse (which is not necessarily one of my favourite places. A trip description and lots of pictures (most of them showing snow, sun and dogs) are here.

Less then a month after dogsledding in Sweden, I was in a somewhat warmer climate and spent some time in São Paulo.

Although I didn't spend much time in the city São Paulo itself, I stayed in the state of São Paulo and visited Ilhabela, an island a couple of kilometers off the coast for some beach visits, waterfalls and walking and also Campos do Jordão, the highest city in Brazil for some quad driving, walking and other tourist stuff. More about that here.

I was in southern France in May 2014 and spend some days just walking around in various places - Sophia-Antipolis, Gourdon and the Loup River gorge, Antibes and the island Porquerolles. No real stories to tell, but some pictures are here.

There weren't any larger trips in Summer 2014, so I decided to do a short weekend trip to spend the night in a tree bed close to the easternmost point of Germany. Pictures from the tree bed (basically a small tree house without any walls), as well as from some airplane museums on the way, can be seen here.

While I had been to the 'Ends of the Earth', by visiting the South Pole and the North Pole, I had never been at the 'Middle of the Earth' (speaking of the surface, not of the 'Center of the Earth' - and not to be confused with 'Middle-Earth'). I did cross the Equator a couple of times, but I never actually stood on it.

But on this trip to Macapá I managed to change that.

I didn't go to Brazil just to stand on the Equator. I also stayed in a somewhat odd hotel in the rain forest, held a caiman, caught a piranha, spent some time with river dolphins and, to add a bit of culture, took a guided tour of an opera house. More details and pictures are here.

I tried to visit the Ice Hotel in Quebec a couple of years ago, but it was a warm winter and they closed the hotel a week early - which was the week when in was in Quebec City. I did do some other sightseeing back then, but seeing the ice hotel remained something I wanted to do.

This time I went there at the start of the season, just to be sure that it was open. I also used the trip to Canada to go ice canyoning. Pictures of the ice hotel suites and me rappeling down a frozen waterfall are here.

I was in Paris in February 2015 and added a day of vacation to visit the recently renovated zoo. They have an interesting concept of grouping animals by 'biozones', so I tried to see how that would work in a zoo. My experience of it can be found here.

As my 'main' vacation, I went dog sledding again. After being on dog sledding tours for the last six years, I thought by know I knew what I was doing and booked a two week trip in Finland that would have ten days of dog sledding.

But it didn't go quite as expected and, after crashing a sled, the trip ended halfway through. So instead of dog sledding, I spent most of the second week of my vacation sightseeing in Helsinki and Tallinn. The events of the trip and pictures are here.

I went to Brazil again and spent some doing ziplining on the longest zipline in the country, which is almost two kilometers long. After that I went to Iguaçu to see the waterfalls there and also included a daytrip to see the waterfalls from the Argentinian side as well. More about this trip and lots and lots of pictures of waterfalls can be found here.

On my first visit to Portugal, I went to Aveiro in the northern part of the country and visited the ruin of a convent, which is now used by storks as a nesting place, an enduro bike race, an abandoned pulp factory and a few other places. I also did a lot of walking and went canyoning in Gerês National Park as well. More about this trip and some waterfall picture (though less than on the recent Brazil trip above) are here.

I didn't do any real travelling during the summer, but I did do a couple of things that were interesting and didn't fit anywhere else, so I put them all on one page. I rode a mechanical bull (badly) in a 'Western Town', went to a 'Cabin Pressure' fan convention and drove with a car on the river Rhine. More details about this, as well as pictures and also some short videos are here.

It was pretty much a coincidence that I was in São Paulo in the week when the Formula 1 race in Interlagos took place. But as I was in the area anyway, I thought "Why not?", bought a ticket and watched the race and the events surrounding it. After that, I want to a place near Porto Alegre for some rappelling and ziplining. Including a 50 meter abseil from a steel frame and two down a waterfall. More about the Brazil trip can be found here.

I hadn't been to Lisbon before, so I did what I sometimes do when I get to new places without a plan: I just walk around and have a look. So no big activities in Lisbon, just a couple of pictures of tourist sites, a couple of museum, aquarium and zoo visits and two boat tours on the River Tagus. So this time, from Lisbon, there are more pictures than stories here.

In March 2016 I spent two weeks in Finnish Lapland, visiting places like Saariselkä, Kakslauttanen and Kilopää. I did some cross-country skiing, snowmobiling and sledding (well, tobogganing), slept in a glass igloo, rode a horse and watched ATSX (All Terrain Skate Cross).

The sky was overcast for most of the time, so I didn't get to see the Northern Lights this time. And I didn't do any dogsledding (that will have to wait another month), but otherwise I seem to have covered most of the activities that are offered in the Inari area of Finland. Some pictures and two short video clips can be found here.

A month after riding a snowmobile and a horse (though not at the same time, obviously) in Finland, it was time to get back on a dog sled. This time I went to Sweden for that, where I had a good dog sledding experience in 2014. This year, the tour started roughly where the 2014 tour turned around - at the Vindelfjällen Nature Reserve.

Most of the tour (eight days of sledding, one rest day) took place in the nature reserve, where we were mostly as far away from anything else as you can get in mainland Europe, as the nature reserve is one of the largest protected areas in Europe.

While there were a few mishaps along the way, there weren't any serious problems. And we managed to have a great dog sledding and sightseeing experience.

On the way to Swedish Lapland I spent a couple of day in Stockholm, did sightseeing and spent a night in a Jumbo Jet that was converted to a hostel.
Pictures (mostly showing dogs), stories, a few short video clips can be found here.

I didn't do any large trips in Summer 2016, but I did a couple of smaller things in Germany. Including flying in a Stampe SV4, ziplining in the Olympic Stadium in Munch and driving a Morgan car. A summary of these activities (with some pictures, but fewer than I had hoped for) is here.

Another thing I've been doing in recent years, where the individual trips don't justify separate trip reports, is to visit some 'mountain' peaks within Germany. It's not an activity that I follow with much determination. It's mostly something that I do when I get bored and look for something to do. More about that here.

After a summer without much traveling, I went to the UK in September 2016. It was just a short trip, but I packed most of the summer experiences (flying an old plane, walking on top of a landmark building - although not including any cool vintage car) into four days of vacation and went on and added a second flight in a vintage plane, punting on the Cam and a theatre visit in London, watching Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart on stage. I also did a short visit in Charles Darwin's study quarters and looked at some artefacts of Scott's final Antarctic expeditions (and the rest of the museum that hosts them). So it was a busy four days. Of which some pictures and remarks are here.

I only had one free day when I visited Paris in November 2016, so I didn't manage to do much while I was there. The time was spent visiting three technology oriented museums. A fairly short report about this is here.

A week after visiting Paris, I went to northern Portugal, where I managed to get a bit more active. So, after visiting an odd house on a hill, and slept in a somewhat 'coffin shaped' house on stilts, I went rafting, ziplining across a valley and riding a small rollercoaster down a hill. A fun way to spend time in Portugal. Pictures and descriptions can be found here.

A bicycle on a racing track, a famous landmark hidden by clouds, rooms with snow carvings, not really famously beautiful looking cars, a helpful border guard and an unwanted receipt. A common theme for the trip? Not really. I was in Milano and had three days available, so I went to Monza, Zermatt and a museum near Milano. Of which more can be read here.

This was the ninth year in a row where I spent my main vacation driving a dog sled. Surprisingly, it doesn't get boring. While the weather wasn't that great this year (some nice days, but most were just white nothingness), this was the longest tour I've been on so far (covering 570 km in ten days on the sled). And while I didn't see as much of the Swedish landscape as I might have liked, just being out on the sled was still as great.

Afterwards I tried to add some more 'strange hotel visits in Sweden' (in addition to the 'UFO', the 'Jumbo Jet Flight Deck' and the "Ice Hotel"), but that hit some unexpected problems. Nothing serious, but things did not quite work out as planned... More about the dogsledding and the hotels is here.

When I was in Milano in February this year, I headed up to Monza and then to Zermatt, spending just a night at Lago Maggiore as it was conveniently on the way. On this trip to Milano, I drove up to Lago Maggiore, more specifically the town of Baveno, again and spent a couple of days there.

From there I went to a ziplining place north of the lake, went canyoning, drove a quad, rode an 'alpine coaster' and walked down (I'm lazy...) a mountain. All about this can be found here.

When there was a total solar eclipse in Germany in 1999, I went to Stuttgart to see it (and, due to cloudy skies there, ended up watching it in Karlsruhe). In 2001, I went to Zambia to see a total eclipse there. In 2017, there was a total eclipse across the USA with the eclipse path going from coast to coast. I went to Tennessee to see the eclipse from there. And while I was in Nashville, I also used the opportunity to watch a football game. Image from both events (plus some cars, a few caves and a Corvette) are here.

A short visit to Greece. I spent one evening in Athens having a 'Dinner in the Sky' at a table suspended from a crane. And then went for a weekend to Agistri, one of the smaller islands, which is about an hour by ferry from Pireus. There I went kayaking along the coast and did some snorkeling, which can be seen here.

I am not really into cars. I don't even own one (and never have). But after being a passenger in a Corvette on a racing track in Kentucky, it somehow seemed like a good idea to drive a supercar on a racing track myself. And Monza just happens to be close to Milano and there was a choice of Ferraris and Lamborghinis - so why not? (The right answer to this is: because it's expensive and over too quickly. But I ignored that.) And to have a somewhat slower day as well, I also went to Lago d'Iseo. More about that (and two museum visits) is here.

Sheep in the mist. Clouds of Doom. Passages in the dark. The empty village. Ominous owls at the station. A shadowy creature on the wall.

It all sounds a bit gloomy when written like this. But going to Northern England and Wales was also fun and included ships, trains, cars and ziplining as forms of transport. And works of art and colourful caverns. A surprising mixture of things in a fairly short trip. And more ziplining.

I tried to go mountaineering (or 'trad climbing') north of Madrid. It wasn't that good an idea to start with, and it turned out not to be something I like (or am capable of doing). But seemed to be worth trying to find out, even though the result was somewhat expected. On the next day I went for something that I knew I would like a lot, namely go ziplining (in Toledo). The whole story behind the 'trad climbing' trip and some pictures of that and ziplining are here.

I had never been to the Naples area, so I didn't try (or at least didn't try hard) to find anything strange or unusual to do. Instead, I went for the time-honoured sightseeing 'musts' (and around there, that covers a long time). So I visited Vesuvius and Pompeii and also had a quick look at Herculaneum and Sorrento. Also did some walking around in Napels. But standard tourist trails cause standard tourist experiences and pictures, which can be seen here.

While I didn't find that much to do in Naples, the area near Milano still had something new to offer, even though I've been there four times in the last thirteen months. So I went to see a (although not very) 'lost place', looked at some famous work of art and rode a snowmobile. In addition to new places, I also re-visit places I had already been to and did a few laps there. All of that can be seen here.

This was now the tenth year where I spent my main vacation on a dog sled. Like the previous two years, I went to Sweden to do that. While the plan (go far north, head for the mountains) seemed solid, we got a bit unlucky with the snow conditions and didn't get as far as planned. But the mood was good and we still managed to get some dogsledding (almost 250 km of it) done. I also stayed in two strange 'hotels' (both consisting of only one room) towards the end of the vacation. More details about what has happened are here.

The first time I went canyoning, it was in Greece. When I was in Thessaloniki in June 2018, I wanted to go canyoning again, this time near Mount Olympus. But things didn't work out this time around and the canyoning trip was cancelled, so I went "River Trekking" instead. Other stuff, like a visit to a cave, also turned out to be more complicated than expected. But some parts went really well, like the sea kayak tour, which included some snorkelling around a wreck as well. And I did do an unexpected amount of go-karting as a "filler" activity in between. More details here.

The weekend after getting back from Thessaloniki, I originally wanted to fly in a blimp for some sightseeing over Dresden. That didn't work out due to the weather (so I went quad driving instead), but the following weekend the weather was fine and I was sitting in the (small) cabin underneath a blimp, looking out at the historic sites and sights of Dresden.

As there's not much of a story to tell that goes beyond what's said in the previous paragraph, it's mostly pictures to be found here.

There weren't any real travels in Summer 2018, so I did smaller trips. I had been in Dresden to fly in a blimp (see above) and three weeks later I went to Hemmoor, near Cuxhaven, to have an underwater sightseeing trip in a small submarine.

I went to the mountains near Zermatt (Switzerland) in January 2019. I didn't do much (the biggest physical activity was a short 3 km hike along a well maintained snow path), but the weather was great, so I got quite a few pictures of the Alps at the Swiss-Italian border.

I was in Austria for a couple of days and did some driving in a somewhat oversized go-kart with lots of horsepower and a snowmobile with lots of horsepower. I also did some walking and cross-country skiing, all with less horsepower (my own) than would be appropriate. So, in the end, the energy available for activities was, on average, right... Pictures and more information are here.

Dogsledding is always difficult to plan for. A lot depends on the weather and snow conditions during and preceding the trip and many other factors that can't be controlled. This was the eleventh year were my main vacation was a dogsledding trip. And only two of these trips worked out as planned. As it doesn't matter that much where you are going as long as you're dogsledding somewhere, how good a trip is depends more on how well you can adapt it to the conditions outside than on how interesting the plan seemed.

This dogsledding trip is a good example of an original plan that didn't really work out, but where I still had the best dogs sledding trip possible. (Which is not the same as the best possible dogsledding trip, but surprisingly close to it.)

In addition, there were a couple of nights in the Jumbo Jet hostel at Arlanda airport again (one in the wheelhouse, one in the flight deck) and another night in a guesthouse in a wolf enclosure in a Swedish zoo. The story of the trip can be found here.

I only had one day available when I went to Naples, so I didn't do much sightseeing, but I went to a Cusano Mutri, a small town about 70 km away from Naples, and did a bit of ziplining along a small gorge named Conca Torta. It was a bit like a mini canyoning tour. Not a big thing, but fun to do. A couple of pictures (mostly screenshots from a GoPro) are here.

I've spent nights in various strange places - in an underwater room floating on a lake, in the cockpit of a Jumbo Jet that was converted into a hostel, in a suite in a silvermine 155 meters below the ground, in an 'UFO' hanging between a couple of trees, a glass igloo, various ice hotels (here, here and here) and some other odd places as well.

But I had never been at Skylodge, which has 'hotel rooms' hanging on the side of a cliff. So I decided that it would a good place to spend my birthday there (well, the idea was to celebrate my birthday there, but I was too exhausted to get up at midnight for that).

As the Skylodge is in Peru and only about 80 km from Machu Picchu, I visited that as well. It would have been silly to go all that way and then not see on of the 'New Seven Wonders of the World'.

More about the trip here.

In the Harz area of Germany is the "Rappbodetalsperre", which offers some interesting activities, including 'wallrunning' down a dam and ziplining across a lake. So I did those. More about this here..

The trip to Hungary suffered a bit from a large amount of plans that failed. Unexpected maintenance works, arbitrary participation restrictions, things closed for the winter season. Ultimately a lot of driving around and getting nowhere. At least it drove one point home - the east of Hungary is flat. You can literally drive all day without even seeing a hill. But I didn't really go to Hungary to learn that. But I managed to do some things - go on a horse ride in the Puszta and stay in a luxury yurt. So this time not too many exciting things to read about here.

After a trip to Hungary, where I did nothing much interesting but to sleep in a strange, tent-like structure and walk around a bit, as it was off-season and there wasn't a lot to do, I did pretty much the same in Italy, namely the Abruzzo and Rome area. At least the scenery has a lot more mountain than the east of Hungary.

This year's dogsledding tour was a bit strange. The dogsledding itself was fantastic. The weather was mostly favourable. There were some stong winds from time to time and it was a bit warmer than the dogs would have liked, nothing that created any issues. And the trail conditons were the best I ever had on a trip. A thin, soft layer of snow on top of a firm foundation.

And the trip resulted in the best dogsledding pictures of me (and a large team of dogs). We had included a specific 'photo day' and the results were spectacular.

But while the dogsledding was great, the world around us wasn't. Due to the increasing uncertainty and restrictions related to the corona virus, the mood was increasingly downcast during the trip. Nothing specific and nothing that affected us directly (except the need to modify some travel plans), but enough to turn something that could have been the best dogsledding tour ever into a more somber experience.

More about the trip (and, this time, much better pictures than usual) can be found here.

Not that much of a trip this time (with lots of travel still restricted due to Corona fears). Mostly out of boredom, I spent two nights in unusual places - an indoor camper trailer (not far from where I live, so the journey there has been about five minutes of walking) and a 'sleep pod' on board of a (stationary) freight ship in the harbour of Rostock. I also visited the Bungsberg, the highest point in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein and completed my list of visits to the highest points of all the states. Some more details about these things can be found here.

Celebrating my 60th birthday was supposed to be an easy thing.

1. Find something interesting to do for about a dozen people.
2. Make a reservation.
3. Invite guests.
4. Celebrate.

In September 2020, I had a bit of a repeat of by birthday celebration. I was having a sightseeing flight in a Zeppelin again, this time flying over Cologne instead of Lake Constance. To make that more than a weekend trip, I've made a full week of vacation out of it and added some more activities and unusual places to spend the night in. It became a busy week, including wallrunning, swinging over the edge of a building, a 100 meter abseil, ziplining, dinner in a Ferris Wheel, as well as sleeping in a portaledge attached to the side of a building, two cranes, a Trojan Horse and an observation tower. There was also the Zeppelin flight, of course. And looking at some bridges... More details about all those things and many pictures taken that week, including a lot from the area around Cologne, as seen from a Zeppelin are here.

After the trip in autumn, it took almost half a year before I was able to travel again. And instead of getting easier, things got a lot more compliated. But I managed to go to Sweden and do all the things I wanted to do there. Dogsledding, of course, but also visiting the Icehotel (again, after 24 years) and also a cool apartment next to a lighthouse. I also got to do some other things that I had planned for 2020 but didn't manage to do back then.

So while things were hardly back to normal, and it was much harder to plan ahead and anticipate the ever changing regulations than it should have been, it was a good vacation (and it made me realize how badly I needed one). More about it here.

Once again, a long gap between travels, but in August 2021 I went to Italy to visit some ziplines. One of them was near Rome and the other two were in southern Italy, roughly halfway between Naples and Bari. Especially the last two were interesting to ride and also a bit unusual, as they are between two mountain towns (Castelmezzano and Pietrapertosa) and go back and forth, so you get to ride two ziplines and then end up (more or less) where you started. More about the ziplines is here.

As travel rules kept arbitrarily changing and short vacations were still at risk of being cancelled at short notice, I did put (metaphorically) all my eggs in a basket and did a longer than usual vacation in Sweden this year. This included a snowmobile tour of places I've visited on dogsled in previous years, trying to learn cross-country skiing, driving on a snow/ice track, watching the northern lights, visiting the Ice Hotel again (but not sleeping there this year) and, of course, doing a dog sledding tour again. This time with a different tour operator than before and, unlike the previous years, this included spending two nights in a tent instead of a cabin, something I hadn't done since the trip to Herschel Island in 2013. Much more about this trip here.

Not much travel involved for this (it's only a couple of stops on a regional train), but I got to be in a vintage biplane again, specifically a Boeing Stearman. A bit (though not much) more about this is here.

In August 2021 I went to Italy to visit some ziplines. In September 2022 I did something similar, although this time in the north of Italy. I also tried (not quite successfully) to climb a Via Ferrata and stayed in a somewhat remote 'tiny house' with great views of the Dolomites and the night sky. More about the 2022 trip to Italy is here.

I went to London in November 2022 and did an abseil from the ArcelorMittal Orbit, a large sightseeing tower in the Olympic Park. Not much to say about the activity - the preceding sentence already mentions all the relevant things - but I wrote a couple of pages about it anyway.

I visisted Thessaloniki in February 2023. It was somewhat out of the main tourist period, so I didn't expect to do anything exciting there. But at least there were some things to do (albeit rather relaxed activities) and for about half of them, there are no pictures to show. It still was fun, though. And a museum turned out to be more interesting than I had expected. More about this (although with only a few pictures) is here.

I like dogsledding. I like it a lot. In fact, I've been on a dogsledding vacation (one where you drive your own sled) every year since 2009, so this is my fifteens consecutive year of driving a dog sled. So the pictures don't look that different compared to other dogsledding trips. But I've also been to the Icehotel again (for the third year in a row - but at least they build new rooms every year, so it looks different again). And also did some more cross-country skiing and even tried skijoring, which is cross-country skiing while being pulled by a dog. A long write-up of this trip is here.

When I added the previous entry, I mentioned that, this time, it was a rather "long write-up". The writing about this trip became even longer. But, as the previous entry stated, I have been on dogsledding vacations many times, so there are some things I don't need to mention again. While this trip also had a predecessor, that had been a long time ago. A lot of things changed since then.

I had been in Qaanaaq in 2007 and liked the scenery, specifically the icebergs. Back then, seeing the icebergs was a bit of a side-effect of the tour. This time, the goal was specifically to go and see the icebergs. This turned out to be more complicated than I had thought. As a result, the trip report is quite long. But it also contains many images of amazing icebergs. And absolutely no images of polar bears. Or of me using cross-country skis.

In July 2023 I travelled to England to stand on the top of a flying plane - I went wing walking. It was a strange (and windy) experience. As a sort of 'travel counterweight', I drove to Wales afterwards, where, after spending some time about 200 meters above the ground, I would spend a night about 200 meters below ground, in a slate mine. Getting to the sleeping chamber there was not an easy walk, but once there, I slept in fairly luxurious surroundings, the "Grotto" suite. More about the whole short trip is here.

This part is more about a non-experience than what actually happened. I was trying to go on a Via Ferrata in Portugal, but that tour didn't happen, so I went canyoning instead. And I also crossed a bridge. Some images from that can be found here, but, alas, no Via Ferrata pictures.

In January 2024, I went to Thessaloniki again. But the main tourist activity I did there (due to time and weather issues), was to visit the 'selfie museum'. As a result, there's not much of a trip description here, but a lot of selfies instead.

The 2024 dogsledding trip was a bit like "2023 dogsledding lite". Lots of elements were the same. A visit to the ice hotel. A dogsledding tour. A bit of cross-country skiing at the end. The dogsledding tour was a bit shorter and on easy trails. And the skiing was relaxed and done purely for fun. There are still a lot of pictures and some descriptive pages to be found here.

After travelling to Tennessee for the 2017 eclipse, I went to Texas for the 2024 eclipse. This time, it was more nerve-wracking, as the weather conditions were worse than seven years earlier, but I got lucky and was able to observe the eclipse with only minimal cloud interference. As the whole trip lasted only a week, there wasn't much else planned beyond the eclipse day, but I managed to do some cave crawling and a visit to a wooden troll as well. More about the eclipse and other things I did on the short trip are here.

In May 2024 I made a short trip to southern France. I didn't do much except for going on one zipline (well, technically two of them) and did some walking around a small island. Not much to say about the trip, so the description here isn't that long and hasn't that many pictures. Especially compared to the previous two trips.

Going to southern Italy in early June 2024 wasn't something I had planned to do this year. But I had wanted to try going on a (beginner level) Via Ferrata for some time now. And when suddenly the opportunity arose to climb one near Castelmezzano / Pietrapertosa, I decided to give it a try. I didn't quite make it to the end (as the last image to the right shows, I was exhausted after a while), but that was (kind of) planned for, as this was a Via Ferrata with multiple sections, making it possible to stop at the end of a section and not having to go the whole way. And even though it might not look that way, I did enjoy the experience. More text (and some pictures, though not as many as expected, as I dropped a camera) are here.

That was a bit silly, but I went to the Isle of Wight for my sixty-fourth birthday. Not necessarily a brilliant idea, as there wasn't anything exciting or even interesting to do on the island. But at least I got there on a hovercraft and also went to a hovercraft museum in southern England. Ultimately it was more a hovercraft related trip than a birthday journey. But as the reason for going there was already rather weak, it didn't matter much. Pictures and descriptions are here.

Just a short side activity in the summer, but in August 2024 I did a 'bridge walk' along the arcs of the highest railway bridge in Germany, the Müngstener Brücke. Not much of a story to tell about it: Was worried, did it anyway, enjoyed it. But at least there are some pictures here.

Another minor thing - I've added a fourth photograph to a series of similar photos. Conceptually, this could become a series of six photos. But that's highly unlikely, as the effort is increasing significantly for each subsequent photo. More about these pictures here.

To my surprise, the fifth picture got added a lot faster to the series than I had expected. I've added some remarks about this here as well.

On my way to Andorra, a country I've never visited before, I stopped in Figueres to visit the Teatre-Museu Dalí. All in all a fairly short trip (all in all, it took less than 24 hours), but a bit about it can be found here.

Thomas Dambo is an artist who creates large troll sculptures (mostly) out of old wooden pallets, broken off branches and twiggs. I had visited one of his trolls when I went to Austin earlier this year. While his trolls are often solitary figures, there's a whole group of them (seven trolls) in a small forest in Belgium. In December 2024 I went there to have a look.