on the eastern side of newfoundland, on the bonavista peninsula, one can find the historic town of trinity.

closeby we really enjoyed the skerwink trail, a really beautiful trail along the skerwink rocks with great views on cliffs.

another very beautiful place we stayed at was crow head, a small peninsula close to twillingate. we stayed in the artist cabin, a wonderful slightly remote wilderness cabin located at the rough shore. getting there takes a couple of minutes on a gravel road from crow head, and it has a really great view:

the cabin lies on some hiking paths, where you can enjoy a lot of nature and great views on the surrounding islands and crow head itself:

located on the same peninsula is the long point lighthouse.

the area features a lot of interesting hiking trails. we particularly enjoyed the french beach, where we even managed to see an iceberg in the far distance:

from gros morne we continued north. we visited port au choix, where tourist season unfortunately had ended and the interpretative center was closed:

we also visited the early viking settlement in l'anse aux meadows:

and took a not too close look at the burnt cape ecological reserve, right next (in raleigh to which we were staying. around that time, the moose hunt was officially started and we saw some moose leftovers hanging around here and there. children swings are apparently a useful thing to disembowel dead moose; next to the place where we stayed, we found some leftovers at a swing together with a moose head:

the gros morne national park is an impressive national park in the west of newfoundland. it features lots of interesting geology, a lot of nature and many great views. we explored the tablelands, broom point and the nearby wonderful steve's trail (a real gem!), the western brook point, the town cow head (where we stayed), and the arches provincial park slightly north of gros morne.

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.

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:

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 ;-)

we spent part of this weekend in zermatt.

on friday, we took the cable cars up to the top of the klein matterhorn, up to 3880 meters above sea level. it’s an amazing trip! unfortunately, we weren’t very lucky with the weather, and from a certain high on we were essentially covered in clouds. there also was kind of a snowstorm going on, which made it quite unconfortable on the outside:

(we didn’t walk up to the summit; without a ski mask it was not that much fun walking through the essentially horizontally flying snow…)

on the other hand, we walked a bit through illuminated glacier:

here are two photos from the trip down:

at least, it was possible to see something from there, even though we couldn’t see the matterhorn at all. but well, on the second day we got a glimpse. there were still some clouds around (and the klein matterhorn was covered by them a lot of the time), but this time we went up the gornergrat to around 3100 meters above sea level. up there, we had some really great views!

later, when travelling back, instead of taking the direct route via visp and zurich, we decided to follow the glacier express trail a bit by taking the matterhorn-gotthard bahn from visp via göschenen to andermatt, and then proceeded home from there. the last photos above are from that trip.