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.

Winter in Meersburg

It is snowing at the lake and is turning Meersburg into a "winter wonderland" - well if the sun is shining what did not happen a lot. Mostly it was snowing this weekend. There are almost no tourists here right now, and the streets are emtpy and most of the restaurants closed. Quite a difference to summer time when it is very busy here.  My camera is on the way to get cleaned just before the winter holidays. These are some of the last shots.

India

Well, best would have been to just to fly to Agra, see Taj Mahal and back. Ok I am sure there are nice places in India, maybe Goa or the South, but Delhi is the worst city I have ever been. Such a dirty place. When I got out of the Airplane I had the smell of eggs in my nose. The SMOG was unbelievable. You could hardly see 100m. And Agra or Jaipur were not really better. The whole time you could see the sun as a little red dot at the sky.
Lets start from the beginning. I arrived well at Delhi and found myself a Taxi what couldn't find the hotel and charged the double price of the usual cost. Then I was dropped at the wrong place, at least in a 20 Minute walking distance... Like in Nepal I joined a Tour, this one called "Golden Triangle" going to Agra and Jaipur. Everything went well, but after the clean air in Nepal it was just horrible. The sights were nice, but honestly, Taj Mahal is nice, but for me the Hagia Sophia or Blue Mosque in Istanbul do deserve a lot more to be a "New Worldwonder".  Well at least I have all 7 now :). And that was the reason why I came to India. The rest of the sights were ok but not that impressive for me, but that was maybe because I just wanted to get away from all that dirt and Smog. I visited Agra Fort, Jaipur Fort, Fatehpur Sikri....

But yeah I am sure, there are some parts in India as well.
What I liked was the food. The curry is really good. And I didn't have any problems with my stomach :)












After that week I was just happy to get back to Germany.

Nepal - Part3

From the Basecamp it took 4 days to get back into civilization. To describe the first day only one word is needed: downhill. Well it started with the sunrise but it sadly was a little cloudy still one or two nice pictures came out. But afterwards almost 2000m down from 4200m to 2200m... to a place called Bamoboo. We had to go back the same way we came up. More and more clouds moved in and it started to rain (in the basecamp it was snowing, but we were to low for snow). Luckyly we were going towards the good weather :).


Until Chomrong where we had lunch the next day, the path was exactly the same, but from Chomrong we went South-East to get to one of the highlights - the Jhinu Hot springs. That was amazing. By the river in the valley two little pools were filled with warm water - lovely. Also a family of monkeys was playing very close. The last 2 days (Pothana and Phedi) you could feel that you were not far from the civilization. The Lodges were quite nice and had good food. Also a lot of agriculture (rice) which was a nice contrast to the mountains.


And finally back into the dirty and noisy life of Pokhara - for me sadly just 1 afternoon (Pokhara is not that bad, just a shock after all the nature) . I had to rush to see at least a little bit of the Pewa lake. A lot of locals were at the shores, try to rent boats or fishing. In the evening our group had the last beer at the Bee Bar. They had German Footbal on television - it was snowing in late Oktober... Good that I was far far away ;)


The next morning I took a Taxi to the airport. After a very intense security check (A look and the question: "Do you have a knife") and the run to the Airplane (I run faster than some Japanese...) I had a nice seat in the Yeti Airlines - Jetstream propeller plane and an amazing 20 Minute flight back to Kathmandu. A couple of hours later I was again in an Airplane, now with Air India (after a stupid security check that delayed the plane for 1hour). This flight was also amazing, the picture from the Airplane shows the Annapurna Area. Fishtail is the mountain to the right, the Mountains left are Annapurna South in the Front and Annapurna 1 very left. The view was just great, and then a nice sunset... and suddenly I was in India. But this will be the next blog entry.