Just a Walk in the Park

So what is wrong with this photo?

We've been able to do a bit of walking in between all of the rain on the north shore. And of course we have been lucky enough to bring tiny cameras with us to capture such beauty.

And leaving you with yet another thought to ponder
- If April does what it wants, then what does May do?

** Stay tuned tomorrow for a special guest coming out of retirement**

My Walking Tour

Last night it stopped raining, so I decided to walk home to enjoy all of the flowers and trees and the beautiful spring colours which are coming to life here in Vancouver. I actually wished I took a few more pics because there were just way too many beautiful shots for my tiny camera to take. Here are a few of the most interesting shots.

I first encountered some beautiful yellow flowers on a bush, which I hadn't noticed before the beauty it is able to display. I practically pass by this thing daily.

Next I just had to photograph a set of trees which I drive by practically every day saying to myself, I'm going to photograph that! So finally I have while I was walking. Do you call these cherry blossoms too?


This park actually has so many different flowers all around it, I had to photograph a few more tulips, mind you that my camera can't do more than shoot the full pic.



As I kept on walking home, I kept on noticing all of the different colours of tulips we have here in Vancouver. I'm amazed because I don't think I've seen these colours. I think one was of a purple or maroon, which was simply astonishing. Others were just so wonderful that I had to stop a minute and smile, but I didn't photograph more just because I obviously wanted to get home too.

Oh The Tide Changes

flower01
Originally uploaded by thnkfst.

I've been doing a fair amount of practice on my camera. If you'd like to take a look at some of the new stuff I did, just click on the pic to take you to my flickr uploads.

I finally found a good converter program so that I could upload less than a full meg at a time.

I've also spent some time sewing. It's a rather funny thing because I've been repairing some of P's jeans which were torn out but semi repairable.

But it got me thinking that hey, this is exactly what my mom would do for my dad. Well I'm sure she still does. The funny thing is that I don't consider myself a good sewer at all, but P obviously thinks so. It's rather funny how the tide changes.

All So Beautiful

There are just some things that make you smile at their beauty. I really enjoyed my photography practice this morning. It was a bit cloudy and gloomy outside so the flash was really needed to get the full colors of these flowers. This is definitely one of my favorite things that make me smile....

Of course, I just couldn't post one, this is another of my favorites.

I love these vibrant colors just jumping out to share with the world.

What is something that makes you glow with a smile?

All Blue

Last night, P posted all of his wonderful pics from our weekend from his camera. He has a stitching program which makes incredible photos. I've picked out my favorite but you should go check out his site to see the rest of his photos. You'll have to see the larger version on P's site.

This photo was taken on our morning walk. We noticed how blue and beautiful the scenery was from this park near our house so I asked P if he would do a panorama pic for me. I'm just in heaven. It stretches almost from the ocean, then to the Lions, and up to Grouse. So yes the area that we live in right now is absolutely to be envied when there is good weather.

In other news, I'm not finished with my worksheet for Canadian taxes so blogging is taking a back seat until I finish that today or tomorrow.

Nature and Paradise

Our weekend was full of blue skies, lots of warm sunshine and very few puffy white clouds. We ended up taking a few great shots from our many walks and hikes. The weekend was predominately spent outdoors which was just a welcomed change for P and I.

Saturday morning P took some wonderful snaps of our local mountains and stiched them together to make beautiful panoramas. I'm hoping he'll post a few of them soon!

Our first hike was a stop at the Salmon fisheries and Cleveland Dam in North Vancouver. The area is just below the entrance to Grouse Mountain and provides a vast resource of fresh drinking water to the North Shore.

lower dam at salmon fishery

The road can be easily accessed from Capilano Road which leads to the free parking lot to the salmon fisheries. Entrance is free and well worth taking in the beauty of the area. Here's a look at the salmon fishery which hosts thousands of different types of salmon until they are larger and then let go (as I understood it).

Salmon swimming

Our next stop was to go up and see the water sources and the Cleveland Dam. It was a 700m climb to the top. And the view as certainly worth it. This is the source of drinking water for many people on the North Shore. In the background you can see the famous Lions still full with snow.

view from Cleveland Dam of the Lions

Now it was time for the best part as we walked about 100 meters down the road into a view overlooking the Dam. I felt a bit like James Bond in Switzerland and managed to get a few shots despite my somewhat fear of taking pics from this vantage point.

A good 200 meter drop sets the camera and I from the bottom

Talk about one hard shot to get. I didn't really bother to take pics of our second hike to light house park but it was serene and peaceful at that. All in all, it was a great weekend of long walks and a weekend full of sun instead of that normal Vancouver rain.

Cleveland Hike

cleveland5
Originally uploaded by thnkfst.

Stay tuned to when blogger actually publishes. It explains our weekend via photos... Here's a teaser for what's in store.

Blogging Break

old
Originally uploaded by thnkfst.

It's sunny and warm and a beautiful weekend in store here in Vancouver. So I'm trying to stay away from blogging for the weekend to take advantage of this rare occurance.

Took this pic last weekend while making our way to lunch. The building is now a hotel but it's just all so lovely...

Kinder Toys

Ginnie posted the pics of her Kinder Surprise toys this morning. Funny enough, I've been meaning to photograph my collection of 4 toys also. It made me laugh that she got me started buying these toys and the fact that we both have 4 so far. I'll have 3 more once I open up the rest of our eggs but still it's just to funny...


She's completely outdone me on photographing her finds but I wanted to at least give my little guys there 10 seconds of fame too.

The Kim Meme

Kim tagged me from the other kim, so I'm up for another meme. No tags this time though!

I AM: always thinking about traveling, being outdoors and seeing the world.
I WANT: to travel lots by just packing up and going.
I WISH: I could be in more than one place at once, my thoughts would turn into reality, life wasn't so complicated at times, so that I could live in Switzerland easily. And make my dreams reality.

I HATE: people who are fake, who lack common sense, and piss me off because they are just plain stupid. Yeah I should have given the lady at London Drugs last night a pack of diapers for being so pissy! And I'm pissed for not going to do it. I should have insisted on it...

I MISS: my friends and life in Switzerland. Like you didn't know that...
I FEAR: getting really sick or having ones I love be that way.
I HEAR: the tv while I work.
I WONDER: how my life would be with P and I in Europe. And in 10 years.
I REGRET: nothing, except telling that woman off yesterday.
I AM NOT: a trendy person. I like to do my own thing.
I DANCE: rarely.
I SING: only when I'm alone.
I CRY: every once in a while.
I AM NOT ALWAYS: sure what I want to do with my life.
I MAKE: people smile.
I WRITE: too much every day.
I CONFUSE: myself because I can't remember for the life of me people's names.
I NEED: to have at least one good friend by my side.
I SHOULD: be more organized, exercise more, and clean better/more often and push myself to attain higher goals. But I'm always too hard on myself.
I START: too many projects, but get bored and can't bare to finish them.
I FINISH: the dishes daily, clean way too much all the while hating it with a passion and then lye next to my P in bed before kissing him and falling to sleep.

The Good Bad and Ugly

Well yesterday it was dreary outside, but not really pouring rain. So I decided to take a few pics indoors hoping to improve my photography more.

My photo subject was absolutely beautiful and vibrant in my eyes. But I'm not so sure all of my shots were that good, making the subject uglier and less vibrant than I wanted to portray.

The good thing is that I'm learning and I am trying to figure out the lighting and set up manually. I've mastered the auto everything but that's not what I want to do. I've also found out what other lenses I'd like to buy. So here are a few the best of the shots of the bunch.

I'm well aware that getting vibrant, perfect, yet flawless pics usually require a lot of retouching. But still, I secretly want to be perfect.

With taking these photos, I want to be able to photograph a subject without putting it on an auto select style. I know it just takes practice and learning what works best for each situation.


For now, I know I've mastered auto everything. Now I'm moving on to learn the comparible of how to drive a manual car, understand? I think my shots would improve if I got myself a different lense as the one I have isn't as compatible as I'd like.

Using my tripod would have helped a lot too!

Saying Goodbye 2 Years Ago

I just realized this morning that it's been 2 years ago that I left my heart in Switzerland. I left the Zurich airport early in the morning for North America more or less against my wishes for the next journey of my life.

I say all of this because the first time I ever set foot in Switzerland, I felt an energy that brought me to life, an energy that I had never felt before. This feeling is really hard to explain unless you've really had that type of feeling yourself.

My heart was so full of life while I lived in Switzerland, my skin different, my body at ease. It's only a feeling I get while I'm in Europe and definitely not the same type of feeling I get here on the West Coast. I'm sure it's a mental thing but you know....

The entire month was lovely, sunny and provided me with a lot of last minute loose ends tied firmly in place and put to rest. I remember having to go pick up my bike and belongings in Brunnen then back over to Lenzburg to drop off said stuff. I had a quick chat with my beloved adopted family (whom I've been back to visit) and then back to Basel area over the border in France to bike with the rest of my pieces of my life to Lenzburg after dropping off the car. Okay so I'll take a breath now...

looking out from my apartment in France

Funny enough, my adopted family was on pins and needles with everything I had to do. I had to bring back my life in 8 bags. I even left 2 full bags, a few jackets and all of my biking gear behind because I just couldn't carry it. You should have seen the looks on people's faces at the airport when I checked in my bags. That was a feat in itself.

Amazingly everything went quite well, no luggage lost at least. But I remember not looking forward to the immigration check because I got motion sickness the last 2 hours of the flight. That was my first and only time I've ever used the lovely paper bag in the seat compartment.

Lake Lucern from Brunnen as beautiful as the day I left.

I held everything in until about 30 seconds after we unbuckled our seat belts. I was actually hoping my stomach would die down and I'd be okay, but no luck. At that point, I was sure I was green.

Not a soul noticed as I towed 2 luggage dollys, full of 8 bags, to the immigration check. The guy proceeded to tell me he needed to check all of my bags. I told him if he did, he was going to put everything back in place by himself. And I couldn't even guarantee that my bags would close again. I certainly wasn't going to help either. Somehow the story of my throwing up shut him up quickly. He simply said, just go go and covered his mouth as if he didn't want to be contaminated.

** If you ever feel the urge to evade immigration, I'm sure this line would work great too because I was out of there faster than ever!**

And the rest was we say is history as I sit here in Vancouver (missing Switzerland as usual), now married to the most wonderful man on earth. Of course, secretly inside I want to go back one day...

Cooking With The Average Guy

You absolutely have to check this out! But be careful as you might get a bit hungry! Ok so I admit it is my wonderful husband but he did take the pics with my camera! And I did all the work uploading the pics onto the computer and emailing them back to him. ;-)

Be sure to leave lots of comments to make P smile from ear to ear...

Back to Work

Well I'm running late today already and it's raining of course. Not all too fun when I need to walk somewhere. Here are two more photos from our 3 hour tour.

The above photo is for Christina, looking to the North Shore.


Second one is for Canadian Swiss because she loves racoons.

A Three Hour Tour

I've been itching to go out and enjoy the beauty of Vancouver, but I knew the weekend would consist of a lot of clouds and rain. Friday morning I woke up and planned out the day in my head while P slept in a bit more. Even if it did rain, I was determined to enjoy my time outside together with P.

We headed off about 10 minutes drive from home to Stanley Park to Prospect Point. As soon as we exited the bridge we felt like we were in a different world. We instantly paid for our parking and set off so that I could do some photo practice. My first shots were overlooking West Vancouver** at Ambleside and beyond, and to the East with the Lions Gate Bridge. Luckily we paid for our parking because the bike meter boy was ticketing by the time we walked back to the car.

We decided to tour more of the park and ended up checking out the Pitch n Put along with a spectacular walk. I took this photo of P looking more like a model in my mind. Yeah the scenary was pretty beautiful too. P thought the fence he was leaning on was pretty cool and so did I.

Our tour took us through some beautiful trees and great red flowers looking out onto a great view at the Lagoon. I started photographing a bird asleep because the reflection was all so beautiful. All of a sudden P started telling me to watch out, watch out. Wondering, what am I watching out for?

But we ended up being entertained by a mischievous devil as he started running for that duck. A didn't catch a photography of the two together but I'm sure you can piece the pics together to get the point. I haven't seen a racoon in a while so it was a riot to watch this guy dig through the dirt and eat a few tastey earth worms. Doesn't it make you want to just stop reading and get a snack?

Our meter was running out, so we headed back to the car before hitting the West End. Because we decided to leave before lunch and weren't hungry enough, we decided to walk down town sans car and enjoy our time outside. In the end, it was a three hour tour, but lovely at that.

** Be sure to click on the photos if you want to see them enlarged and not hurting your eyes.

Me meme

So Missy has taged me for another meme.

It's just a "come up with six things about yourself" meme. Here it is.

1. I generally like to keep to myself. But I guess I do have quite a friendly side to me. With that being said, I'd say I'm on the fence for being an introvert or an extrovert. Just turn on the switch and you'll get your pick.

2. I swam for 14 years of my first 23 years of my life. I was a swim coach and swim instructor for 10 years all before the age of 25. I was also certified to teach water safety and lifeguarding but never had the urge to do that.

3. I've lived on the West Coast for 27 years of my life, travelled most of the States but never have been to Florida or New York. The other area I lived was of course in Switzerland.

4. My memory was incredible up until about 2 years ago when I guess I got older. Up until that time, I could still name every single class mate I ever had, all my teachers names and every phone number I ever had. I think I should start writing things down a bit more these days!

5. As a child, I really wanted to go to the Olympics. I found my niche in swimming but settled for being a university star without any worries of having to pay for my schooling instead of a world record holder. I also think I used to talk about my swimming career too much, now I don't say a word. Funny how times change.

6. I am a not at all musically inclined. I've always been horrible for that. But if you asked me to play any game, odds are that I'd be in the upper half of the field even if I never played before. I guess you might say that I just love sports.

Okay, soooo...I have to tag six people to do this?

Lisa
Turtle Guy
TravellerOne
Tracie B.
Andrea
Matt
And anyone else who feels the urge to participate. I could go on but I'll stop with 6. :)

Rules and Regulations:

1. Reveal six weird facts/things/habits about yourself and then tag six people.

2. Leave a "You're Tagged!" comment to let the people you have tagged know they have to reveal six things (or the entire blogosphere will explode and it will be their fault).

3. Leave me a comment letting me know that you have completed your mission (if you have chosen to accept it!)

Feel free to do the meme if you'd like. The Pic P took yesterday in Stanley Park at Pitch n Put.

Friday's Feast

Appetizer
What movie soundtracks do you own?

I don't know but I guarantee you the last soundtrack I bought was before the year 2000. I don't buy many cd's anymore. It's money I put elsewhere. I know what you're thinking, I'm not normal. If I'd buy one, it would be Curious George and Jack Johnson.

Soup
How much cash do you usually carry with you?

Enough to catch the bus down town. Even if I carried $1000, why would I tell someone else?

Salad
Are you more comfortable around men or women? Why?
Both - depends which friends I'm around. Sorry I'm not afraid of my husband if that is what you are trying to ask.

Main Course
What is the most mischievous thing you remember doing as a child?

I would crawl up onto the counters and eat sugar or brown sugar straight from the jar. It was one of my favorite past times which I could do easily without my parent's knowing. Of course I was about 6, 7, or 8 years old. And my mom definitely told me not to do it.

Dessert
Who is the funniest member of your family?
My husband because he makes me laugh and cracks me up every day.

Feel free to follow if you'd like to feast and take a break too...

Five Centime Coin Stays

I'm not sure if you've been hearing about the debate on whether or not to keep the one and five centimes coins in circulation in Switzerland, but a decision was finally made this week on what to do. Many have been wanting to take the coins out of circulation just because they aren't used all too much anymore.

After much deliberation, it was decided the one centime was only used for symbolic reasons and therefore could be taken out of circulation, while the five was still used. But there are a few odd facts about the coin that I would have never known.

1. Did you know the current five-centime coin was introduced in 1981 and has a golden finish.
2. There are an estimated 785 million five-centime coins in circulation. (None of which are in our household.)
   
3. One in five Swiss coins in circulation is a five-centime piece. (Although I don't have too many Swiss coins currently, the smallest coin I had was a 10 centime coin. So I guess I'm not those one in five.)
   
4. The one-centime coin has a weight of 1.5 g, while the five-centime coin is slightly heavier at 1.8 g. I'm also willing to guess the 10 and 50 centimes coins are lighter in weight.

So if you're wondering when that little 5 centime coin might be scraped, you'll have to wait until the coin is up for debate once again.

Mr. Mischief

Yesterday I was able to get in a bit of practice with my camera since it wasn't raining outside. I started finding new flowers everywhere to photograph which I'll post below. The funny part was that I knew a certain little buddy of mine was sleeping so I didn't bother him.

As soon as I got up to the porch to photograph a few flowers, I started hearing this pitter patter inside. It got a little stronger as it sounded like the patter was pacing up and down the hallway. I started talking to those noises and I swear I could feel a tail wag a bit too. So I caved in, opened up the door and began to melt. It's that sweet mischievous face that I just love so much.

I'm not sure if anyone else has actually gotten a dog to cooperate and look into the camera lense, but let me tell you it's a large chore. So you could imagine my excitement when this photo came out. I got a few other funny photos of mr. mischief but this by far makes me melt.

He's playing in the bushes and is in motion. Just before this shot, I caught him sneezing. I love it when dogs sneeze. It just makes me laugh. And Mr. Mischief makes me laugh daily, especially when his tail wags along with his entire back side/rear end.

A Touch of Red-White-n-Green

Here's a photo set of what I photographed yesterday. Ironically most everything was all red. There were red tulips out too. This is just a sample but possibly I'll upload a few more into flicker.

I love the vibrant reds I was able to get.

The white flowers never last all too long but they are so beautiful while they are around.


It's also good to note that there wasn't any sunlight out until this point either. I'm happy to report I took all of these photos while manually setting everything. Click on the photos to see them in larger form.

Photo Workshop Part Two

There were a few other great tips which I didn't mention in yesterday's post which I thought I'd mention since my mind is racing at a million miles a second currently. So I tried out some of the new tips I learned this morning. I'm happy to say that I was able to get a much clearer and perfect color of the wood table. Deciding which photo I liked the most was the hardest part.

I was given this free magazine called PhotoMedia, which is based out of the Seattle area. There are an asortment of great articles inside including one by Louis Psihoyos (drop the “P” and think “sequoias”) who took that crazy photo of Bill Gates dangling high above a forest with cd in hand. Since a lot of what the magazine offers is also online, I'd highly recommend reading it if you are into photography.

Another wonderful tip I learned was about the memory cards you are compelled to buy with a digital camera. I bet you didn't know the high speed, high priced cards won't give you any benefit you can't get from the cheaper more affordable cards. So when faced with the choice of getting a high speed memory card over one that's got 1.0mb or 2.0 mb, go for the higher memory rather than the higher speed. The difference can only be seen by professional photographers.

** Added ** As well, the best and only way you should upload your photos from your camera to a pc is strictly through a memory card reader. I've got a multiple reader so I can use different cameras. If you have been using your camera and importing the photos straight to your computer, you may be damaging your memory card! I'm also curious to check out this D70 book I just found.

And since I'm still dreaming of sunny weather, I'll leave you with this photo from Yvoire.



Be sure to tune in tomorrow for a set of photos!

My Photography Workshop Class

So today I made the trek into downtown Vancouver for an incredibly informational photography seminar. At first, I was quite worried that I would not get to enjoy my trek there because of rain. But the skies cooperated and the wet stuff didn't fall from the sky while I was out and about. Yeah!

What I can say for the photography workshop was that I gained a whole lot of new information which I hope I can apply into my photography. Now let me stress that this was not really a hands on "shoot and learn" workshop but rather more of an informational seminar on how to operate my Nikon D70 camera in more complex functions, the way it was meant to be used.

Now anyone who has an SLR camera or for that matter, a photoshop type editor, can try turning some color photos into black and whites. Just in case the tip changes next month, here's more of that information. See previous post for more information.

Google Picasa is also some good free software you should check out. I really was paying more attention to what was being said instead of snapping photos of the instructor and the slides on the white wall.

With that being said, I did snap a few shots of our "white balance" experiment, consisting of a white background and fresh beautiful flowers. The white balanace actually should be shown with various high's and low's if you've taken the photo correctly. I definitely need to study and practice this more but I've got a foundation to grow from. (Note the difference from the first photo which was shot in the correct mode, while the second is in auto and doesn't look nearly close to a white background.)

I came out with many different useful tips which I wouldn't have thought of before. Using the "Fine" image quality is very important because if you are using something like a normal format, then your photos can still come out grainy with much less pixel resolution than you "thought" you were using. Make sure you use a higher image quality or you won't be using your camera's full potential.

So I do hope to take a few more photos here and there as the flowers grow into full bloom. I was a bit tired after class and didn't want to take out my camera before getting back onto the bus. So P and I will just have to take a nice trek down town again to enjoy the scenary and take a few more beautiful snaps of Yaletown.

As long as I'm learning and growing, I'm happy. And I'm sure I just keep on growing.

Black And White Conversion Tips

This page is from April's tips of the Vancouver Photo Workshops. I've copied it in case you missed the tips page.

This page contains tips, tricks and useful advise for photographers of all levels. This can be a technical hint, business advise or conceptual in nature. This month, our instructor Marc Koegel submitted the following:

Digitally Filtering Color Images for Better Black and White Conversions:

One of the most frequent questions I get asked by my students concerns the area of color to black & white conversions in Adobe Photoshop. Since most digital cameras will only allow you to photograph in color, those of us (like myself) drawn to monochrome images have to come up with an efficient way to convert color originals. The goal of this excercise is to achieve the best possible grayscale rendition of our original color photographs.
Let's start with a suitable color image that we would like to convert to greyscale...

Many (I mean a lot) of people seem to use Photoshop's Image > Mode > Grayscale method to convert RGB images into greyscale. Using this method sacrifices both control and quality, as we are eliminating (deleting) much of the original image's data.

The above image converted using Photoshop's Image > Mode > Greyscale method. The result is far from perfect and we had no means of fine-tuning the conversion process.

There are several methods we can use to improve the quality of our Color to greyscale conversions. A simple, yet effective method is using the Channel Mixer in Adobe Photoshop. This method is very quick and easy, yet allows us to have much more control over the conversion process.
Using the same color image as a starting point, this conversion method used Image > Adjust > Channel Mixer which allows us to fine-tune the amounts of Red, Green and Blue that convert to Greyscale.

Clearly, we can see how much more control over the conversion process we had using the Channel Mixer method. Even if you like the result of the first method better, you cannot argue the fact that having greater control almost always leads to a better end result. In this example, I adjusted the image to look more dramatic and contrasty, and increased the amount of seperation of the cottage to the background mountains.

When using the Channel Mixer, make sure to select the monochrome option before you fine-tune your adjustments. Some people will tell you to make your adjustments so that the sum of the individual adjustments equals 100, but from my experience this does not always hold true. My adjustment for the above image read: + 140 Red, -40 Green and + 30 Blue.

If you would like to fine-tune your conversions even more, try selecting parts of an image and converting with different color amounts using the Channel Mixer. Try to experiment!

Another great method for color to greyscale conversion can be found on Greg Gorman's site, under the "learn' navigational heading. Allthough a bit more complicated, it is very well explained and the method works great. Information is provided as a downloadable pdf document.

Another Wine Review

Friday evening P made us a fabulous broiled steak and potatoes. Along with the perfectly cooked filet we tried Yvon Mau et Fils Merlot 2004. The wine which is from the region of Aude was very smooth with a great taste. Since I'm not a wine buff, I'll leave it up to what others have reviewed about this wine, but I'd highly recommend it. The wine costs between $8.75 and $13 I'm willing to guess and well worth it.

"From one of the largest négociant firms based in Bordeaux, this wine hails from Languedoc. The nose is quite muted and from an indeterminable fruit source, but the flavours come to the fore with dried currants, black cherries and tangy acidity all wrapped up in perfect balance and a firm texture. Would be a lovely match to lamb, tenderloin or rack, grilled and served with roasted herbed potatoes."

So there you have it, the review says it all with a 4 stars rating. Now that I've left you with something to ponder, I'll laze away the rest of my morning before I jet off to my Photo Class. I'm sure I'll have something to say about that when I get back!

What European City Do You Belong In?

Hmm - I'm laughing at these results, but eh I did consider living here. However, I guess I could see myself in Paris too. I'm just wondering why they don't have choices to fit Switzerland because I must score a perfect ten on that, haha.. Ah it felt so good to sleep in this morning!

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

What European City Do You Belong In?

Spying The Beauty

One of the things I enjoy most about Spring is that I actually do want to get outdoors more. Every morning and evening, I think about getting outside for some fresh air. This morning P and I went for a nice walk down to the store while admiring some of the cherry blossoms and other flowers all which are just pure beauty to me.



I love all of the beautiful flowers which come out during the spring and summer but quite honestly I never see anything that compares to Switzerland. I might be a little biased or just have a keen eye for snooping out all of Switzerland's beauty, but still I don't know of someone who would argue otherwise.


Here's a lovely pic from Chateau Chillon's courtyard full of life with all of the beautiful flowers. If you are in the montreux area, I'd highly recommend the less than 10CHF tour of the castle. You can choose to wander about or actually go through the 43 plus exhibits inside. We did the full tour which took us at least 1.5 hours but was well worth the entire tour.

What type of beauty do you spy in the spring and summer?