Hamburg

Sheila and I spent the last 10 days in Hamburg as I had to undergo some cancer surgery at the Martini Klinik here. It all went well, but I will take a few weeks to recover fully. For the anaesthesia I had to shave my beard, which is growing back nicely. From all we know, the stuff the surgeon took out is fortunately very unlikely to grow back.

The weather has been cold, grey and wet. Today it got quite windy. Both of us look forward to going back to Mallorca tomorrow to enjoy some sunshine.

Mallorca

We came to Mallorca a few days ago, with my parents and Ulrike. Andrea met us at the airport and today Jessica and her family joined us. Of course (almost) everyone had to go for a swim in the ocean. The weather is a bit cool and windy, but good enough to spend time on the beach and enjoy icecream in the evening.

Stuttgart

We continue to enjoy nice fall weather, beautiful colors on the trees. We are spending a day in Stuttgart, going out for dinner tonight.

Pfälzer Wald

We came to Siegelbach to visit my parents two days ago. The weather is very pleasant fall weather and we took a nice walk in the woods today and are enjoying the time with family.

Munich

We spent Wednesday afternoon in the warm water of the Blue Lagoon in the South of Iceland, wonderful! Then we flew to Munich yesterday and spent a nice evening in Garching. Today we are taking the train to Kaiserslautern. It is much warmer here than it was in Iceland.

Iceland

We came into Iceland yesterday morning and spent a couple of hours walking around Reykjavik. Later we drove to Nesjavellier, where we are staying in a very nice hotel. In the afternoon we hiked around the area (8 km), which has a lot of hot water gushing out. There is a thermal plant there as well. The pool at the hotel is a pleasant 38 degrees, feels good after walking a lot.

Today we drove the Golden Circle and hiked in Thingvellier (8.5 km). Wonderful landscape, and the weather was nice and sunny for most of the day. We had to scrape the ice of the car windows this morning though, and the maximum temperature today was 6 degrees Celsius. Fortunately, we have winter clothing with us.

View towards our hotel in Nesjavellier

Hot water everywhere, but cold wind

Hiking in Thingvellier was great

Toronto

We are spending a day in Toronto, not having been here for over 40 years. It was very interesting to walk around the city. The weather is quite warm and humid, but it didn’t rain.

 

The CN Tower disappeared in clouds

Back in Vancouver

I made it through the quarantine in Germany, spend some time with Sheila and my parents there (distanced until I had another negative test), and we returned to Vancouver together. We have to spend another 14 days in quarantine here (the picture is taken from the internet). We have to stay in our apartment, but have organized delivery of food, wine and internet. The weather is cold and mostly cloudy or rainy, so we should be fine. Unfortunately, it looks like it will be May or June until we can get our vaccination here, but we are glad to be back anyhow.

Armsheim

We came south again as Sheila has an appointment for follow up in Frankfurt. We are staying in a small village in the Rhenish-Hessian Hills, close to Mainz. Today we enjoyed a sunny morning and hiked for a couple of hours through vinyards and woodlands showing beautiful fall colours. Due to rising Covid infection numbers we have reduced social contacts very much, but visited my parents yesterday (sitting outside with masks on).

Hamburg

We are spending a few days in Hamburg and visited the beach in Altona today. Nice sand, but the weather prevented any Caribbean feelings.