Mountains of Greece: Karpathos

I completely neglected my >Mountains in Greece< series, so today finally another entry from our trip to the remote but beautiful island of Karpathos showing the mountain village called Olimpos.

Everglades

During our visit to Florida, we did a one day hiking and kayaking trip in the Everglades. Walking in mystical forests up to our knees in water, almost bumping into alligators and crocodiles with a kayak and seeing all kind of wildlife made this one of the best days of our stay!

Alligators

Over new year we were in Florida. Among other things, we saw many alligators, which for me was maybe the most impressive thing of our stay.
Stay tuned for the american crocodile in a future post ....

Carnival in Kastoriá

About a year ago, we went to Kastoriá, where we spent the first days of the new year. I had posted some pictures of the lakes around the city (see, e.g. here and here), but I never talked about the amazing carnival - the Ragoutsária - that is happening around the 6th of January. The whole town is filled with Balkan music, almost every taverna and bar is packed with people and musicians, and in addition there are at least a dozen bands playing in the (freezing cold) streets - loud, energetic and crazy. The reason I never posted pictures was that I hoped to be able to post some videos I had taken. While the image quality was really great, the tiny microphone in my camera couldn't cope with the large number of tubas, trumpets, horns, trombones and percussion instruments only a few meters away. So I finally gave up and decided to post some pictures instead. I hope you still get a feeling of the energy in the city during these nights!

Happy New Year!

Two moons

Winter in Potsdam