last week, we were in vacation in val bregaglia, a valley half belonging to graubünden, switzerland and sondrio, italy. we were staying in vicosoprano on the swiss side.

most of the time, we had fabulous weather, except two rainy days and one pretty cloudy day.

via bregaglia.

the first hike we did was going by postauto up the maloja pass to maloja village, walking from there to the giant’s kettles nearby and from there to the belvedere tower, and then down the pass towards the san gaudenzio ruin and finally until casaccia, from where we continued by postauto.

this is the first leg of the via bregaglia route. this leg is really nice, with some glimpses over the valley (for example, at belvedere tower, and above casaccia, where you have a good view on the albignia lake dam), a lot of forests and shade, and nice rivers. parts of it go quite steep downhill, but even for untrained beginners as us, it was quite manageable.

via panoramica.

the second bigger hike we did was the via panoramica (the yellow path there) from the power plant löbbia towards northwest of vicosoprano, from where we descended back down to vicosoprano. near the power plant, we saw a sign forbidding arnie to walk on the water:

whyever they put up that sign… crossing the bridge from the löbbia stop to the other side of the water basin, one enters the via panoramica and can continue to roticcio and from there on to eventually soglio. we left the path somewhere northwest of vicosoprano. (if you have a map, it’s the leftmost path leaving the via panoramica descending downwards to vicosoprano.) this is a really beautiful hike, with lots of nice overviews over the valley and on the mountains.

albignia.

another day, we took up the cable car to the albignia lake dam. one can also hike all the way up or down, but i think that one is a bit over our capabilities… so instead, we enjoyed the little tiny cable car. on the top, one could still find patches of snow, and one has a beautiful panorama both over the valley and over the lake.

unfortunately, on that day, it was pretty cloudy, so we decided to not hike to the albignia hut (that’s something we’ll do next time…), but take the cable car back down and hike from there back to vicosoprano:

soglio.

one day, we took the postauto up to soglio, a cute mountain town:

afterwards, we returned by postauto to promontogno and had dinner there.

castasegna.

another trip we did was to visit castasegna. they have a beautiful chestnut exploration path, which shows how chestnuts are planted, harvested and dried. also with a chance to buy honey from around there at a self-service stand.

back in town, we bought some drinks and met a nice cat with wonderful blue eyes.

chiavenna.

after being in castasegna, we visited chiavenna, the largest town in val bregaglia, ending the valley at the italian side. we had dinner there, but unfortunately, the restaurant we chose didn’t start serving dinner before 19:00, and the last postauto left short after 20:00…

hotel helvetia.

in vicosoprano, we stayed in hotel helvetia, a former hotel west of the city. while parts of it are used for offices, the other part is rented as holiday flats. it is equiped with a simple kitchen for self-catering, and without much luxury features everything one needs to have a good week there. and in case one is too lazy to cook for oneselves, there are two hotels with restaurants in town, for example hotel corona, where we had three excellent dinners.

a couple of weeks ago, the meadow behind our house was freshly mowed, and our cats were playing. it was beautiful weather, and i grabbed my camera to watch them playing a bit:

it’s still less than a year since we first saw some little kitten, and some months less before they joined us at our place – one of them, miukumauku, at our home, and the other two at our neighbours’. last weekend, on the day we returned from tyrol, it was the not-anymore-kitten’s first birthday!

(it was not so simple to get all three of them into one picture and make them look at the camera. in fact, they never did that when i was ready to take a picture. so i ended up looking for shots where they were not half busy eating or presenting their butts, but somehow looking nice.)

we don’t think they actually noticed that this day was somewhat special for them, but then, who cares if there’s food and good weather:

so we watched them play for some time, trying to catch each other, crawling through the grass, looking for food, etc.

finally, here’s a nice portrait shot of miukumauku:

in the previous weeks, i forgot to upload some cat photos twice. some of the photos turned out really nice, so i don’t want to withhold them:

the first occasion was on march 30th, where we caught two of our cats sitting inside drying sheets:

(“look how cute we are. you surely won’t mind that we leave some hair on the freshly washed sheets, don’t you?”)

the second occasion was on may 1st, when we were outside and our cats were playing on the meadow. well, miukumauku was playing, and the other was just following me around:

while we now had snow for quite a while, most of the time it was either good weather, or we were home. so some days ago we were quite happy that four things coincided: the weather was great, we were home, the little cats were playing outside, and we noticed and joined them with my camera :) so here are some photos of miukumauku and her friends enjoying winter. and two photos of pantone.

despite the not so great weather forecast, the sun came out this morning and bathed my surroundings in beautiful sunlight. i grabbed my camera, put on my winter gear, and went on a nice long walk. i essentially walked around the area from the first half of our easter walk, with the difference that this time, everything was covered in snow.

something very beautiful with snow is the effect when snow randomly falls off from trees. the effect is best with sunlight:

some more impressions:

anyway, shortly after arriving back home, the sun was again covered by clouds and the landscape bathed in grey. by now, it’s snowing again.

yesterday, when the weather was surprisingly beautiful, we were outside. me, mostly hanging around with my telephoto lens, watching the kittens play, hide, and explore.

later, on the inside, i took some photos of the older cats as well, while they were waiting for food:

they had to wait a bit longer. first, we did some cooking: a vegetarian zürcher geschnetzeltes (based on dinki) with rösti. won’t be the last time we had that :)

last week, i was in castro urdiales, a small costal town in northern spain. there, two conferences were held, namely the third workshop on mathematical cryptology and the third international conference on symbolic computation and cryptography. i attended both conferences and stayed a little longer over the weekend. after the first impressions i’ve uploaded last weekend, after arriving in castro, i gathered some more photos during this weekend. these were all taken in the city boundaries of castro urdiales, most of them close to the coast. castro is a really beautiful place, mainly crowded by spanish and french tourists and people living there (well, and conference attendants). the weather is pretty neat, especially for someone who doesn’t like heat too much as i do. also, swimming in the atlantic ocean is just great. it’s definitely a nice place to visit!