We need to get out more. We have been planning a visit to a garden to take some shot of the flowers, but have give up the hope of getting decent weather to stroll around in. It’s been rainy and with thunderstorms for the last two weeks. Since we decided to go out.

So what to do? We decided to go and visit the Haga Butterfly House instead. It just took us about 3 hours to get ready to leave home… I have no idea why. Well, yes, one important phone call between Mr L and his daughter took half an hour. The rest is just a blur. I guess we love our home dearly. *lol*

The butterfly house is at least indoors, even if the humidity there makes you feel almost like you’ve been out in the rain. But it didn’t rain while we were there. It actually turned out to be OK. Probably because we decided that we would do something indoors. And had umbrellas that we didn’t need and had to carry around.

It’s so beautiful and peaceful with butterflies. Those amazing creatures, it’s incredible what colors and pattern they can have. But they really are difficult to take photos of. They’re flying around too much Especially the most pretty ones that you really want to catch.

Tonight, as a perfect end of our “nature day”, we saw two creatures that’s not exactly common here around this apartment block.

First something that sounded like a minor aircraft - behind me indoors - in our apartment! Even though I do appreciate to see different kind of creatures, I don’t want them in here. This was a giant mutant whasp! It’s in the middle of the night, but I certainly did wake up….

Mr Lifecruiser tried to take a shot of it, but it was difficult light so he didn’t succeed with the mission. He did however succeed with the mission to get it out from here, which I’m grateful for. I’ve never seen such a big whasp. It must have been a mutated whasp queen??!

Very strange though, since it was dark outside, I thought they don’t use to be out then? Or had it been in here since earlier this evening? I doubt that, we would have heard it’s loud noise. And I remembering that I heard the sound of it the other evening and wondering what it could be in the middle of the night, so it must have been out then too.

A confused and lost giant mutant whasp queen in the neighborhood. How great. Not.

Just 10 minutes after that, I spotted what I at first thought was a cat outside behind some bushes and wanted to see where it was going. It was no cat! It was a beautiful, prosperous and foxy red FOX!

And Mr Lifecruiser didn’t get a shot of this fox either… Sometimes photographers life is just too hard.

I saw the fox stroll around on the lawn a bit and in the meanwhile Mr L tried to get his camera to be able to focus in the dark. So the fox just strolled away without being shot at. With our cameras.

I’ve never seen a fox so close to apartment buildings around this town. I think it may be because the amount of foxes has increased over here now. The fox scabies they had in the seventies decreased them badly.

Yawning big, I think I must go to bed now [05:00 am], otherwise I’ll not look particularly foxy tomorrow

Photos from Haga Butterfly House
(The photos after the lilac flowers is the ones we shot now)

And for those who think butterflies are too girlie:
Photos of other creatures in Haga Butterfly House

Did I ever tell you about our TRIP TO NORTH HOLLAND?

I had never been to Amsterdam before and thought that would be a nice place to go in the spring. From the beginning it was all the Tulips they have in the Netherlands that I had in mind.

So I booked a trip for us to Amsterdam and Haarlem in the end of April 2005. Haarlem because of the annual flower parade they have there, which you can read about in the post below.

This was actually one of the trips when the weather was with us too. Or maybe before I had my bad weather curse… It was beautiful spring weather, a bit warmer than we have here in Sweden that time of the year, so oh, we really sucked in all the early spring sunlight!

Amsterdam is such an old beautiful city with all the water in the canals and interesting architecture. It certainly has a kind of special atmosphere.

I love all the bicycles in the city. With all the canals and the narrow streets, a bicycle is to prefer as transportation. There are a lot of bikes to rent too, together with maps of tours you can take.

I don’t know if it was the spring weather and the fact that it was a Friday afternoon we arrived - or if it’s always like that in Amsterdam - but we found the city to be a perfect city just to have some weekend fun in.

I guess we weren’t the only ones thinking that, because it was rather lively already at 6′ clock in the afternoon and we did see one man laying in his blood at the street outside a strip bar, so the ambulance came and picked him up. But we felt safe anyway, because they do have a lot of policemen over the whole city all the time.

This is a sign we saw on the door to a bar in Amsterdam. Where else can you see such a sign so openly displayed?

It’s seems to be accepted with drugs over there, you could even buy special “Lollypops” in special shops that were supposed to make you “happy”.

Though we didn’t try it, since we’re already happy, high and addicted of our own drug - LOVE

I doubt that you really get happy from using drugs… Getting temporarily high yes, but not happy. Certainly not happy in the long run, we could see a lot of really worned down drug addicts around Amsterdam’s inner core. It was quite sad actually.

Of course we did visit the Red Light district in the evening too, can’t have been to Amsterdam and not have seen it hah? It’s a strange feeling to walk there though, being a woman I mean and see all those half naked women offer their services in these windows with the lights. Made you think about how their lifes really are…

I tell you, it was quite a long lemming line with people walking these streets up and down peeping into the windows. (Sorry, no nude pictures from there There actually were one man that didn’t look were he was going, because he was looking up at some women at second floor, so he walked right into a street light - ouch! That put a lot of smiles on peoples faces…

I did found the people in Amsterdam very relaxed though, don’t know if it was because the liberal view of things or simply their life styles.

I saw more of the relaxed, “funny” fashion style there. Sometimes people were dressed a bit like in the hippie times in the sixties, the flower power.

Swedes are tall people, but the dutch’s are taller. It was the first time I haven’t feel like looking down at people when we’re abroad. So, I had to buy two pair of pants, because they were long enough!

From Amsterdam we took the train to Haarlem, a smaller, but very nice town with a lot of stores and restaurants too. There were a lot of people waiting for the flower parade, but still a little more quiet than Amsterdam.

Except that we had our room at the square where they had the tivoli. Luckily, we’re not easy disturbed. We had this arm right outside our window, swinging screaming people in the air - through the whole night!

I didn’t get to see the famous Tulip fields, but some Tulips and a lot of other flowers in the flower market. And we didn’t see any of their wellknown windmills, wooden shoes or cheese either, so I count on going there some more time to see more of what the Netherlands has to offer.

WHY hasn’t the day more hours and the week more days - so I can have the time to go around exploring the world more…?

♥ Lifecruisers photos from North Holland 2005 ♥

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I’ve always heard of all the flowers in The Netherlands, so I decided we would go there to actually see them and not only hear about it. I booked a trip for us to Amsterdam and Haarlem in the end of April 2005.

We had heard of a special flower parade we wanted to see. It’s amazing floats made of flowers, all unbelievable creations in the annual flower parade called Bollenstreek in North Holland. It starts in Noordwijk and ends in Haarlem (about 40 km long).

They said it was 1,5 million hyacinths and thousands of narcissus and other flowers used in the parade. Hundreds of volunteers are busy for months making the floats as beautiful and striking as possible.

It truly was amazing what they had done. Fantastic creations. Even people who aren’t interested in flowers are bound to be impressed and amazed over this!

There was very nice festivities around the parade too. People were out enjoying themself. Haarlem is a very nice little town - enjoyable even without the flower parade.

It was a little bit early in the spring though to actually see a lot of Tulips, which I wanted, so I guess we have to go there some time again…. *lol*

Lifecruisers photos from the flower parade 2005