german november/december

Writing from Virginia Beach, where I haven't yet taken a single photo with my big camera. Here are a few shots from Frankfurt and Nuremberg from late November/early December. Happy holidays! And yes, that is Santa playing an accordion with a dog who is also dressed as Santa. Nuremberg has not one but two sets of Accordion Santa and Dog Santa. They sit about a block apart from each other and we assume that they are bitter rivals.

barcelona III

Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria and Mom's introduction to tapas at Celler de Tapas.

barcelona II

  
El Barri Gòtic, La Catedral, Plaça Catalunya.

barcelona I

My mom came to visit me last week, and after the first day in Frankfurt we jetted over to Barcelona to see about catching some sunshine. We got poured one for two of our three days there, but the first afternoon was pretty stellar.

garmisch-partenkirchen

I went to Garmisch-Partenkirchen a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I did in Mayrhofen over New Year's 2012 because unlike last year, this time I actually went skiing (!). The first 1.5 days I was in the ski area Garmisch Classic, and the second 1.5 days I was up on the Zugspitze, which is where these pictures are from -- Garmisch Classic was nothing but fog when we were there. I also went on a little walk around town one morning pre-skiing and couldn't resist a couple of pictures of signs, as one does.

karneval

Karneval 2013: maybe not quite the insanity that was Karneval 2011, but a good time nonetheless. Roaches and crocodiles are pretty good at photobombing.

gran canaria: taurito

Like I said before, there are worse places to be in the middle of winter than at a beach resort where it's 20 degrees Celsius.

gran canaria: the interior

As built-up as Gran Canaria's coast is, the interior is still rough and beautiful. We drove up from Maspalomas (which reminded me of Florida, not in a good way), admired Tejeda, where it was frigid!, and had fantastic tapas in the late afternoon in Mogán before making our way back down to the coast at Taurito, where we discovered that we'd booked ourselves into an all-inclusive resort. Gran Canaria vacation: nothing if not surprising.