another gem can be found next to deer lake: the newfoundland insectarium. you can see many beautiful butterflies, local and non-local insects, a beehive, tarantulas, and much more. here's a selection of some butterflies:

this year we visited canada for another time, this time concentrating on it's east. we began with exploring newfoundland. some very beautiful places can be found on the port-au-port peninsula, in particular the hidden falls in sheaves cove and cape st. george. also, the peninsula houses felix cove, which we had to pay a short visit :)

in late may, we (again) visited val bregaglia for another very nice vacation. the weather was great, except on monday when it snowed. we stayed once more in vicosoprano. we did some hiking from soglio to castasegna, and from castasegna to chiavenna:

we also visited the mountain diavolezza close to pontresina. it was pretty warm up there, despite all the snow, though not as hot as at the base station.

in april, we visited the beatushöhlen near interlaken, a stalactite cave where you can walk through.

this year, we also visisted oslo. we were lucky, and the weather was superb! sun all the time, it was really beautiful.

we did some excursions, namely to ulvøya in the south-east part of oslo, …

… to nesoddtangen, …

… and to the norsk folkemuseum on bygdøy.

finally, some shots of tjuvholmen by night:

it finally started snowing. well, already two days ago. but today, for the first time, it was sunny again! (and we started moving the snow away from the balcony and the pathways so the cats won’t take a dump there…)

this is how it looks like from out of a cat tree:

once during the last days of december, a great fog panorama presented itself to us. the fog was close, but didn’t reach us yet:

after more than two years, we returned to the beautiful val bregaglia for vacation. again, we were staying in hotel helvetia in vicosoprano on the swiss side of the valley.

we stayed during the first of the two “chestnut weeks”, dedicated to edible chestnuts which are growing all over the valley. except on the day we arrived on and the first half day, the weather was really good!

we visited sils and chiavenna:

we again visited the chestnut forest in castasegna:

and we walked another part of the via panoramica, this time from soglio, and then descending to stampa:

also, again, we enjoyed some great culinary specialities. in particular, we enjoyed several meals (again) at hotel corona, where we also had the opportunity to meet the goats producing the milk for the wonderful goat cheese, which is part of our favorite tomato goat cheese salad. also the different pasta and meat dishes we had were fantastic. yeah well. if it wouldn’t be so far from here (5-6 hours by public transport, depending on how often you want to change trains), i’d guess we’d go there more often ;-)

last weekend, we visisted the zoo in zürich. we met with some friends and enjoyed a wonderful sunny day!