Martinique

What a holiday. While in Germany the temperatures were cold and around 0 degrees, we spend 12 days on the little French Island Martinique in the Caribbean. 3rd January we flew via Paris to Fort de France, the Capital of Martinique. During our time on the island we had a little Citroen C3 as rental car to discover the Island, what we really did. Exactly 1301 km on that small island, quite a lot I would say but it was worth it.
You can split the Island in the dryer South with most of the beaches and the North which is more natural and greener, especially on the East Coast. We had a lovely holiday flat in the South called Domaine de l'Anse Ramier which was amazing. High above the ocean on a little hill with great views. It took 15 Minutes to walk to the (private) beach, all through a litte forrest. We stayed here for the complete time and discovered the Island.
The South-West of the Island between Trois Ilets and Le Diamant was our favourite part. 3-4 nice little towns which looked very original and had beautiful beaches with lots of locals. Here I took several photos at sunset. Especially Petite Anse was nice.
There are 2 great beaches, one in the very South and one in the very North. The one is the South called Grand Anse des Salines and is how a Caribbean beach should look like. Palms - Beach - Water... But it can get very crowed. But for sunset noone was there, great for pictures. The other beach in the North is called Anse Couleuvre. It is a little harder to reach on a very steep and narrow street (paved!). But if you reach it you find a great beach with lava sand and a lot less people.
Also worth to visit is the peninsula called La Caravelle. Especially the viewpoint at the lighhouse (30 minute walk from the parking of Chateau Dubuc) is amazing.
The North is dominated by a big (inactive) Vulcano. Sadly the weather was not that stable to hike to the top but we did some other hikes in the rainforrest, espcially the one at the North Coast from Le Precheur to Grand Riviere is amazing (we did only a part)
The capital Fort de France is more of a working town. The center is nice, especially the market, but other than that half a day was enough for a visit.
11 days were just enough to visit everything but we could have easily spend some more days.
Enjoy the pictures.

Bulgaria - Sofia and Plovdiv

Exacly four years ago I went to Bulgaria for the first time to visit some very good friends of me. Now this year I did exactly the same. Between Christmas and and New Year I spent 5 days in Bulgaria.

Again (like 4 years ago) I used my Lufthansa miles to fly to Sofia. Sadly the first days the weather was very foggy. The first day we spend in Sofia and visited the sights of the capital. Most important to mention is the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. The city center was still very nice decorated from Chirstmas and very colorful. Other than that Sofia seemed a lot more westernized than 4 years ago. Back then I could hardly read anything (cyrillic) - that has changed now, as well as a lot of fency stores and malls were build.

After the day in Sofia we took a 2-day trip to Plovdiv with the very nice old town. Most famous here is the old Roman Amphitheatre. Sadly the fog was really bad as you can see on the pictures.  On the way back we took a little detour to visit one of the little mountain villages called Koprivshtitsa famous for its countryside architecture.

The last day the weather was the complete opposite - sunny. Due to the warm weather snow conditions were very bad so instead of skiing we went winter hiking. Sofia lies at the bottom of the Vitosha mountain. We took the cable car to the top station, from there we hiked in 2 hours through the snow to the very top at more than 2200m to a little hut. The views and the weather were amazing. Vitosha used to be a small ski resort. Most of the lifts were closed years ago only one is open and operating.

The next day I was already flying back to get home for New Years eve. It was already dark when I landed in Stuttgart. Even though it was just 6pm there were fireworks everywhere and it was really nice to watch it from the sky. Now I have 2 1/2 days to prepare for the next holiday in the Caribbean :).
Enjoy the pictures from Bulgaria.