Friedrichshafen and Zeppelin Museum

sea promenade

Nice pattern on Church

Zeppelin Museum

Poster

Zeppelin Museum

Zeppelin Museum

Colourful square

My father and Alessio

Water Jet

Beautiful flowers

In September when my parents were visiting we made a day trip to Friedrichshafen, I have wanted to visit this place for ages. Also for Alessio I thought the Zeppelin Museum would be something he would find interesting to visit. I drove to Romanshorn where I parked and we took the ferry over, it takes about 45mins to arrive.

Friedrichshafen is on the northern shoreline of Lake Constance (Bodensee), it is a university city and home to the Zeppelin Museum.

On the lake front there is a tower where you can get a great view it is free to climb up. We did not climb up as it was quite warm, but am sure the view would have been really nice.

The Zeppelin Museum is the main tourist attraction in Friedrichshafen, it is located right on the lake front. It is the birthplace of the zeppelin, it houses the world`s largest aviation collection and tells the history of the Zeppelin story. We all found it very interesting, lots of information and replica parts of famous zeppelin Hindenberg, which crashed on May 6th 1937.

After lunch we wondered around the town itself and came to a big square and the Buchhorn fountain where lots of people were cooling themselves off, Alessio and my father joined them.

We walked to the front again and through some lovely gardens, it was very busy as you can imagine with lots of people lying and relaxing in the sun. We sat for a while in shade and then stopped off for an ice cream, then made a made dash for the ferry to take us back to Romanshorn.

All in all a lovely day and an easy day trip from Zurich!

Photo of the Week - Tokyo Greens

Photo of the Week comes from the city of Tokyo, I think it was near Omotesando. This is the street that is famed for the architecture buildings. Not really sure what it is supposed to be but I like it anyway.

It`s mid-week and this time of year is busy with preparations for Christmas, two more weeks and then off to Scotland.

On another note I have booked the Easter weekend and will be going to Ljubljana, Slovenia. The plan was to go to Riga, Latvia but the idea fell through. Anyway I am just as excited to be going to Ljubljana and visit a new country.

November Reads

Yay! Tomorrow is the 1st of December, I really love this month and it has nothing to do with the fact that it is also my birthday at the end of this month.

I got through 4 books in November, which was my goal and as you can see one of them was quite thick.

City of Heavenly Fire is by Cassandra Clare, it is the 6th book in the series The Mortal Instruments. It finishes off the story of Clary, Jace and the world of Shadowhunters. The first book was made into a film but it did not do so well at the box-office so it doesn`t look like anymore films will be made. It is Young Adult fiction but I enjoyed them all!

A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke, I got this book at the book swap I go to once a month on Fridays. It found it quite amusing at times but am glad I did not buy this book. As you can tell for the title it tells the story of one year living and working in Paris.

Playing with the Grownups by Sophie Dahl was really a good book and I enjoyed it a lot. A coming of age book about Kitty and her mother Marina.

Finally The Winter War by Philip Teir, this book is set in Helsinki, Finland. I like books set in different countries, more the better in fact. I found this review in The Telegraph about the book. Just be aware it tells you the ending! (spolier alert)

I have my next bunch of books for December, I also joined the library in Horgen so hopefully will cut down on the number of books I buy. But I do so love to buy books though!

Good reading everyone! Any good tips for books to read are always welcome!

Photo of the Week - Peace

So this working week is finished and good riddance to it! This was taken at the Rote Fabrik, it seems a good one to put up considering all the terrible stuff that has been happening in the world.

Plans for the weekend entail a trip for the day to Stuttgart with Alessio and then on Sunday at the cinema to see the final installment of The Hunger Games. While Alessio will go and see The Good Dinosaur with a friend of mine!

Wishing everyone a great Friday!

The Harem, Istanbul

The Harem is situated in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. The Topkapi Palace was one of the residences of the Ottoman sultans for almost 400 years (1465-1865). The world harem in Arabic means "forbidden". To visit the Harem you have to pay an extra entrance fee, but it was certainly worth it.

The Harem had 400 rooms and in it lived the wives, slaves and concubines of the Sultan, also the children and servants and the only men allowed were black eunuchs. Once the women were in here they were not allowed out, there were up to 800 women imprisoned here.

As you can imagine you cannot visit all the rooms but some of the rooms you can see are the Sultan`s bedroom, the apartments of the Queen Mother and the courtyard of the Eunuchs. The place is full of amazing tiles, mosaics, fantastic furniture and doorways.

The Topkapi Palace is one of the big tourist sites in Istanbul and you really need at least half a day to take it all in.

Bits of Madrid

My sister and I usually try to have a long weekend away each year, this year we went to Madrid. I had already visited this city but about 17 years ago, so I was quite happy to go again.

We visited all the major sites, the Royal Palace, Prado Museum, Buen Retiro Park, Plaza Major, Temple of Debod, Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, Market San Miquel and a few more sites.

We also took a cable car ride to Casa de Campo park, it gives you great views of the city and the river Manzanares and some bridges too. We had a great idea of once we got to the park we could walk back to the city. This was clearly not going to happen as it looked a lot farer to walk back than we thought, so we took the cable car back. In all honestly not really sure if it is worth a trip, the views are great but not breathtaking!

I think I am safe in saying that our visit to the San Miquel Market was a hit, it was full of great food and drinks. I did a post on that so if you want to see what is on offer, have a look!

We had a great long weekend and as usual it was great to see my sister. We plan to visit Ljubljana in Slovenia for our next trip but that is not for quite a while.

Photo of the Week - Graffiti Artist

This is from last Saturday, Alessio was very interested in watching this artist busy at work. The guy even asked him if he wanted to do some drawing, Alessio politely declined!