Sharing an island with the nation of Haiti, the Dominican Republic has a fascinating past, displayed in the fine colonial architecture and museums of the capital, Santo Domingo. Although there’s enough interest here for days of exploration, the majority of your time is best reserved for the country’s natural wonders, landing on a few beaches along the way.

More than 100 species of birds have made the Eastern National Park their home and visitors flock here just as eagerly. There are cave paintings and coral reefs, as well as some deserted beaches to explore. At the eastern tip of the island, Playa del Macao is the number one sunbathing spot but don’t let this put you off; the nearby fishing village and warm welcome from locals makes this beach understandably popular.

To the north in Puerto Plata lies Mount Isabel de Torres, the photo opportunity of a lifetime complete with cable car transport to the top and a Christ statue to rival Rio’s. In fact, with 80% of the country covered by mountains and the highest peak in the Caribbean – Pico Duarte – the Dominican Republic offers not only plenty of adventure, but spectacular views over the rest of its subtropical and verdant landscape.

The country owns many protected habitats like Lago Enriquillo, home to flamingos and the rare rhinoceros iguana. Marine mammals like the humpback whale are not the only attraction of the crystal waters which surround the island; kaleidoscopic underwater scenery and sealife await at key diving spots like Punta Cana and tiny Catalina Island.

Astonishing diversity is the norm on this unique island nation. From former pirate coves to dense mangrove forests, idyllic sands to towering mountain-tops, the Dominican Republic is a consistent favourite among the Caribbean islands and is one of those rare places which lives up to its own hype.

Lifecruiser Love Caribbean Islands
 

The number two birthday present for this Champagne lover was of course the Moet Chandon Grand Vintage 2004 Champagne. Makes memories pop up from our trip to the Champagne district in August, when we visited their unbelievable huge wine cellars in France and their beautiful vineyards!

©Lifecruiser Love Travel Goodies
 

This one above is just one of his old cameras, his "compact-camera" small enough to fit in the pocket – probably old times travel camera, don’t you think…?

The photo book is very scientific with lots of technical details and instructions of as well photographing as developing film – which I remember that he did by himself in our bathroom. The book was published in 1942 in the third edition – you can tell photo was a big hobby already back then!

His inscription in the Swedish book "Amatörfotografen" (The Amateur Photographer) tells me that he bought it in 1947, which makes me wonder if the camera were bought at the same time – or if it was some of his other cameras that he bought at that time.

- And don’t you just love the fact that it actually has a woman photographer on the cover of the book…? I do!!!

The camera is a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 515/16, S/N:R95250, a folding camera for 120 roll film (12 photos), 6×6-format, with folding viewfinder. Weight: 485gram. Lens:Novar-Anstigmat 1:4,5 f=7,5cm Aperture:4,5-22. Focus range: 1,2m-Endlessly. Pronto shutter B-25-50-1/200delssek.

Made in Germany, probably around 1946-1951. There are older and newer Nettar cameras than this one and with a lot of different lenses or shutters and was extremely popular, maybe even one of the most popular of all Zeiss Ikon cameras.

To be sure of the manufacturing date of the camera is almost impossible unfortunately. There is a serial number on it, but since there is no documentation of the numbers available anywhere, it’s almost impossible to know for sure. You can search on the internet and in old magazines for pictures and information about the Nettar cameras, to at least be able to tell around which years, but seldom more exactly.

Zeiss Ikon made it easier with the two red mark’s setting. There is one red mark for the aperture and another red mark to set the focus, giving the optimal setting for the lens, you just have to adjust the shutter speed after your actual light conditions. At this camera above, focus is around 8 meter and the aperture between 8 and 11, to get acceptable sharpness from around 6 meter to endlessly at normal photo sizes.

I haven’t tried to take photos with my fathers camera above (and I’m giving it away to my brother now), but it should be fully functional since I can’t see any damages on it and there still is film to buy in some photo stores that will fit those kind of cameras.

If you get a similar one in your hand I recommend to try it with black and white film first – what an authentic feeling it must give!

©Lifecruiser Love Vintage Cameras

Some other posts about Vintage Cameras by Lifecruiser:

Sexy Miss Gotland 1953 Vintage Photo
Vintage Still Photo Equipment
 

Main rule: Always, always keep several backup copies of your photos on different places. Never ever only have them in one place!

Places or ways to store backup copies:

• On several memory cards for your camera
• Flickr account/similar internet photo storage option
• Extern harddrive (Even small ones store much)
• Different harddrives on your laptop/computer
• Different fresh USB Memory Sticks
• Burn backup CD’s or DVD’s copies

The advantage of a Flickr account is that you often can upload your mobile photos directly from within your mobile camera apps during your trip. I’ve done that a lot during our trips and it’s very appreciated by our followers since they felt like they were with us on the trip.

Warning! Only upload pictures if you’re on Wifi or the hotels internet, do NOT upload if using data roaming since it could cost you BIG!

It’s easy to download your photos from Flickr and other online storage solutions, whenever you need them again. I don’t even keep them on my working computer any more – I get them from Flickr or the extern harddrive when or if I need them.

I even consider NOT burning any backup DVD’s any longer, at least not of all our photos. Maybe just the exceptional good ones.

….and if worst comes to worst and you discover that your traveling laptop has crashed, your holiday photos are still not completely gone until you have tried to rescue them with a Data Recovery Service.
(I’ve only needed to do that once time earlier at work, a recovery for exchange server data).

There are so many different reasons for why your photos (or other files) can be destroyed, not only a hard drive failure, but also because of program failures, virus, theft, Champagne spraying (yes, happened once!) – or simply by you being clumsy and deleting them by mistake…

So our final advice is: always be prepared for the worst – with proper life jacket’s on and the lifeboat located – and within reach!

©Lifecruiser Love Photo Recovery
 

Sorting and uploading all the photos from all those countries will take too long time and I know some of you are very curious of how our very long road trip went, so better to start with this summery with conclusion in the end.

10 Countries were visited by us during this Europe road trip: Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria. We have now been to at least 30 countries together since 2004.

I’ll start with the good things, so if you don’t want to know the bad and the ugly, you can skip the middle part and jump directly to the end of this post and click on the link to see our photos so far.

The Good with the European road trip

Except from the useful travel experience, which always are great to have, and lots of great times here and there, I’ll list the absolute highlights of our European road trip below, not in any particular order.

1. Meeting a lot of friends were one of the main reasons for us to go on this trip from the beginning, a meetup once again in the French Riviera at Claudie and Pierre’s house with the Norwegian blog friends, but also to meetup with several other online friends along the way. Many of them which we never had met before, but that was no problem – very pleasant meetings all of them!

2. To visit the Champagne district and especially Moet Chandon wine cellars & gorgeous vineyards is of course a must when going to France for us Dom Perignon Champagne lovers and it did not let us down as a terrific travel experience.

3. The Netherlands lovely countryside at first and then the west coast with long, gorgeous beaches and actually 2 different blogger friends meetups turning out really good despite quite windy weather conditions.

4. The French Grand Canyon recreation area with it’s marvelous Emerald green lake which we definitely will go back to some day to stay for several days or a week. Also the fantastic French Alp views is really worth exploring more even in the summertime I tell you!

5. The Austrian Alps, gorgeous even in the summertime, but maybe we will even go back there some time in the wintertime even though I normally don’t like the winter. It’s very special with the Alp tops and the people. I did miss any yodeling though… ha ha…

6. The International Sandsculpture festival with incredible sculptures, quite big ones, but actually not as many as we thought there would be, but still worth visiting. Fantastic artists involved from many countries.

7. Certain hotel’s or B&B’s we had booked were surprising us with being even better than we had thought they would be. You never know until you see them in real life!

8. Trying different beer or wines that are not even available in our home country. Every day was a party!

I’ll come back in later travel blog posts, to write more about the different highlights in separate posts and divide the different places into separate photo folders too, making it easier for you to have a look at the special travel experiences.

The Bad with the European road trip

There was too little time and a too small wallet. We spent too much time on the roads, some of the hotels did not match their description or our expectations, some places were not really worth spending time within (like the Rhine Valley in my opinion).

The promised WiFi at too many of the hotels were not working well – if at all, making us unable to keep in contact with people as well as unable to upload photos even from the iPhone many times. That was something we did not like at all and worth thinking of if going on a trip.

The food creation around Europe is in bad shape, it’s really too much french fries to every dish with very little variation, too little vegetables served in the meals, not creative enough if you go to normal restaurants and not the real gourmet or classy ones. I can’t call them budget restaurants since they’ve not really budget prices nowadays.

We had packed two big suitcases which really didn’t fit for the too many steep stairs in the hotels we had booked (or our disk problems), so we had to rearrange a bit, taking out clothes in advance and put in smaller bags to be able to cope during the driving around. It was quite a puzzle sometimes, ha ha!

We had not really great summer weather on this trip, making it very difficult to take photos. It was either unusually cold and gray or way too hot to be outdoors, nothing in between until we did reach Denmark in the end. (We were unusually white this summer actually…)

Both lucky and unlucky: in the end of our trip, when reaching the south of Sweden again, hubby suddenly got ill with dizziness which forced me to do some heavy things I shouldn’t which made my back crack again, which created severe problems when continuing up in Sweden.

We stopped to sleep half ways home in hubby’s childhoods summer home and went home from there the day after that, despite that we had plans to continue our journey within Sweden. It was not meant to be obviously – it has been unsteady weather since.

The Ugly at the European road trip

The highways in Switzerland were the most boring part of our road trip and I think from all our earlier road trips too. I have never seen such a boring motorway ever. I don’t know if it were the fact that we had been on the roads for so long, but the highway never seemed to end…

Our look after being exhausted made me not wanna be on the photos… ha ha… We were looking so darn worn out both of us, like 10 years older suddenly. Our photos and videos, ugly ones I tell you!

Surprisingly enough, we had hard time finding interesting things or beautiful views to capture. We do have lots of interesting photos, but also uninteresting ones and too many deleted ones to be honest. Normally we always find so many things to photograph, but not at all as many as usual on this trip, strange enough.

Conclusion of European roadtrip

If going on such a long road trip, you need at least to double the time (and your wallet!) to get a more satisfying experience. We did know this before we went, but we had no choice, this was what we could manage at this time, so we had to take it or leave it.

We’re satisfied with our experiences as we thought about it as a tour to look around and get a quick view over a lot of countries, to know where we want to go back again in the nearest future. We now know that we want to go back to The Netherlands, The French and the Austrian Alps for sure.

I would not recommend going to the French Riviera in August when it use to be too hot and crowdy and we would never have gone there at this time, if it were not for the fact that our hosts had vacation then and the meetup there with our friends from Norway.

Since all Europe’s holiday period occurs in August, there use to be lots and lots of holiday people out on the roads normally, but we were lucky this year: no severe traffic jams in the directions where we went – only in the opposite directions all the time. Maybe also the economic crises has left some traces, making people staying home more.

Continue to keep an eye on Lifecruiser Europe roadtrip 2012 Flickr Photos, there will be new photos uploaded there now and then until I’m done with them all.

©Lifecruiser Love European Roadtrips

Earlier posts about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

Ending a long Europe road-trip
Europe roadtrip: in the Alps
Europe trip: leaving the Champagne district to go to Provence
Europe Road short update
Europe Road: leaving Bruges
Europe trip: blogger meet in Wijk aan Zee and IJMuiden, The Netherlands
Europe Road Trip Day 2-3 Goodbye Germany Hello The Netherlands
Europe Road Trip Day 1-2
Europe 7500 km roadtrip start!
 

There are many different ways to see the Hawaiian Islands. Some travelers prefer to stay at a luxury villa in Maui or a hotel, while others prefer to join an island-hopping cruise. For the best of both worlds, smart travelers sometimes split their vacation time equally with a one-week cruise followed by a relaxing beachfront stay.

Wherever your cruise takes you, it’s a good idea to get up early and have a plan of what you would like to see on your day out. Here are a few of my personal favorites Hawaii daytrips.

Top Hawaii Daytrips

Go on a Hike

If you’ve made one too many trips to the cruise buffet, here’s your chance to burn a few calories! The Ioa Valley trail in Maui for example, is a beautiful hike that will provide some breathtaking views of Maui’s tropical hillsides, and is only a 15 minute drive from the popular Maui port of Kahului. This hiking trail peaks at roughly 1,200 feet and shouldn’t take more than 2 – 3 hours to fully enjoy. Some hikers will even jump into the river at the base of the hiking trail to cool off. A decently challenging hiking trail.

Take a Road Trip

Rent a convertible and take The Road to Hana, one of Hawaii’s most famous road trips. Don’t be fooled by its distance, even though your map says its only about 50 miles from Kahului to Hana, the windy road will feel much longer and will take several hours when you factor in all the stops for taking photos. Along the way you’ll experience Maui’s coastline, see natural waterfalls, take countless bridges and have a chance to buy produce from local fruit stands. Get your camera ready and budget a full day – this is one road trip you’ll never forget!

Visit the Historical Sites

Chances are your cruise ship will make its way to Honolulu at some point and this is where you’ll have the opportunity to visit one of America’s most famous landmarks, Pearl Harbor. Here you’ll find the USS Arizona and Battleship Missouri Memorials and learn about the attack that took place through an impressive 20-minute documentary video. This is Hawaii’s most popular site drawing over 1.5 million travelers annually.

There are many worthwhile sites and attractions to visit while taking a cruise in Hawaii, too many to cover in this blog post. Make the most of each stop by avoiding the usual souvenir shops and try something active, local and adventurous. You can catch up on sleep when you return to the ship so get out there and really see what the Hawaiian Islands can offer you!

About Susanne Richards: Suzanne regularly writes about Maui villa rentals and her latest travel adventures for Luxury Retreats. An active traveler, Suzanne loves to surf, hike and explore new beaches in Hawaii and the Caribbean.

This is in the rauk (Gotlandic word for sea stack) area. There is a lot of sea stack formation on the island, as we have told you many times before. It’s famous for it and many tourist buses takes tours out there.

©Lifecruiser Love Sunset Photos
 

We still have had internet connection problems – and no wonder, we did fill up the wrong mobile internet card!!! Oh, my our small pea-brains… Ha ha….

©Lifecruiser Love Cool Beach Signs
 

Photo of my camera above taken with my iPhone, it is a Canon DSLR. A Canon EOS 600D with a Sigma AF 70-300/4-5.6 DG OS lens, a new UV-filter (to protect), new lens cap with a holder (I lost the original almost at once *sigh*) plus a new extra battery too.

I almost always end up buying my camera gears at cyberphoto.se. No, I’m not paid to say that, it’s just how it is. They always have everything I’m searching for plus that I love their honest test reviews and ratings.

My camera equipment fits in a smaller Golla Generation Mobile camera bag. As little as possible to carry is my photo philosophy, because I get severe neck pain otherwise.

No extra memory card? No, because we will have our Canon Powershot S5 IS plus Canon Ixus 80 IS with several memory cards with us too – and we also have our mobile cameras, an iPhone 4S (which camera I’m very pleased with!) and a HTC Incredible S.

On top of that we plan to backup our photos to both Flickr and Lifecruiser’s new Travel Notebook PC.

If we lose any photos anyway: then we have to do this trip all over again, won’t we? Ha ha…

©Lifecruiser Love Europe Trip Preparations

Earlier post about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

Europe Trip Preparations: New Notebook PC
Another meetup for the Europe road trip
Europe Trip Preparations: Champagne Coolbox Snacks
New car for the Europe trip
Europe Trip 2012 Summery
Europe Trip Accommodations
Mapped Europe Roadtrip Route 2012 by Lifecruiser
Routes and stays booked for our Europe trip 2012
Planning our Europe trip 2012
 

See the checkered path there, leading up to some kind of door? That is what I mean with the illusionary. It’s not there in real life. Though I’m not sure what it really was. Some kind of window display built up? A painting of some kind? I’m not really sure, but it created an interesting travel photo!

Stay tuned to read the ending of our Baltic Cruise story too, what we did learn from this and what we really thought about our experience plus all the pros and cons…

©Lifecruiser Love Travel Photos

Related Baltic cruise posts by Lifecruiser:

How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 1
How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 2
Our night in Katajanokka Jail
Baltic Cruise Stop Tallinn – UNESCO Cultural Heritage
Saint Petersburg Souvenirs
The Idiots Sightseeing of Saint Petersburg