so this is our last day in canada for this trip. during the usual check-out procedure we talked to our host about what to do here in calgary. he recommended the bass pro shop in a big mall, as it was nearby, and we could get to the airport then quick. also a mall is always a good place to spend some time. the bass pro shop we had already seen in a documentary, so we knew what to find there; a huge shop for hunting, fishing, camping, and outdoor activity that was turned into some sort of amusement shopping park. although this sounded very tempting, we still wanted to see some wildlife. and so we decided otherwise, and put our luggage into the trunk. in daylight we saw the mosquito massacre [001] from the evening before - all the cleaning from yesterday was in vain. but a mosquito graveyard like this was pretty common; a lot of cars had that, as we found out. as this was our last chance to see some wildlife, we booked the ultimate wildlife experience trip, that guaranteed a 100% chance of seeing rare and shy animals. yop, that would be a good way to end this wonderful trip to canada. and in calgary we found all this - isn't that amazing? after a 15 minutes drive we parked our car. the weather was sunny, windy, and hot. and so we started our trip exploring the wildlife of canada, at the calgary zoo[002-214]. we started with the mountain goat[003-005,007] we had not spotted on our trip; just like the big horn sheep[006]. next was a big aviary with all kinds of cute and fluffy owls[008-029]. one could really get very close to those little birds of prey. most of them were sitting around sleepy and resting. and we also got to see the woodland caribou[030] - finally we saw a real one. next came the wood bison[031-033], which would be more indigenous to the bad lands and prairie. same with the muskox[042-043], which we did not expect to find on our trip. a river otter[034-036] on the other hand, we might have spotted if we would have been lucky. and then there he was - the black bear[050-064], right next to a fake spirit bear[065-068] (which in fact was a black bear with white fur). we guessed those were the only two bears in west canada - the rest might be hidden in some other zoos. same applied to the cute and elegant cougar[069-076]. such a lovely big cat, too bad we did not spot one in the woods. next we entered the tropical section of the zoo, showing loads of plants[077-081] and butterflies[082-089] in a glass house. while it was already hot outside, inside the glass house it was even hotter, so after a while we left again to get out into the cool air again. then we saw more big cats we were so eager to spot on our hikes through the woods - the eurasian lynx[090-100] and the snow leopard[101-103]. aaaaaaaw, so cute, the both of them. we wished we could have cuddled them. while the lynx was rather awake, the snow leopard was dozing. so all we saw was tail and paws. the same level of lethargy had the two amur tigers[104-132]. in the beginning they only raised their heads when a loud motorcycle drove by. then they lay down again. after that, they raised their heads, and later they even got up and moved - just to swap places and fall asleep again. well... a cat is a cat. the red pandas[133-146] had a rather big enclosure, compared to the one in vienna zoo. they also seemed way more active and agile. but they were just as cute as the ones we know. they also got very close to the glass wall - we were not used to that, so we had troubles taking pictures of them as the red pandas got closer to us than the minimal distance of our lenses required it to focus. we went back to the snow leopard[147-148] enclosure to see if the kitty already had woken up. well, it had not, but at least it had shifted its sleeping position, so we could now see its fluffy head. another bunch of cuties were the alpacas, accompanied by a blue peafowl[149-151]. then came the rock hyrax[152-154], a rodent we have never seen before. cute little porcupines[155-156] were there too, unfortunately they were inside a big hall that housed the red river hog[157-159], with their lovely ears, and the hippopotamus[160-162] too, and it was pretty dark in there, so almost all pictures were out of focus or had motion blur - too bad, the porcupines were really super cuddly. unusually and unexpectedly active were the african lions[163-168]. surprisingly there were two male lions in the enclosure along with several females. still, they all seemed pretty relaxed and calm - maybe they were brothers. a single crowned crane[169-177] was doing the mating ritual and jumped around in the big enclosure. a great performance, too bad there was no other cranes around to join the dance. we were sure they would have been impressed. a few zebra[178-183] were also there, and a little crocodile[184-186] clinging his jaws around a dead rabbit. the crocodile did not move at all, just lying there with the dead prey, staring at us, with a very intense "that's mine"-look on its face. the zoo was soon about to close, so our last stop was at the big group of gorillas[187-209]. their enclosure was partly outside and partly inside, and very big. we first spotted the group outside and took some pictures, when suddenly the eldest and biggest of them decided it is time to move indoors. so he bullied the others to do as he wanted. the big aggressive male gorilla was pretty scary to watch. we followed the group inside, where the alpha male just lay down and enjoyed being admired by the visitors. the others kept their distance to him - i would have done the same. then we headed back all the way to the exit which was on the other side of the island, where the zoo is located on. right at the exit we saw some cute little mongoose lemurs[210-212], just above our heads, within my arms reach. we returned to our car on the now empty huge parking lot of the zoo. we decided not to wash the car again because of all the dead mosquitoes on the grill and bonnet. we drove back to the airport and searched the garage where to return our car. the guy there told us that we drove about 3400 kilometres on our trip - not bad for three weeks. then we still had some time and money left on the airport, thus we decided to spend it for food, and souvenirs. we bought all kinds of maple stuff, like maple biscuits, coffee, tea, and of course syrup. the lady at the shop put it all in a plastic bag and gave it to us. we asked if it is not better to put it into one of those duty-free sealed bags for later security inspections. she said that would not be necessary. hm... but we have a transit flight via london, heathrow. no no, don't worry, that will be fine, she assured us. well, she works at the airport, so we trusted her - she should know best, right? so, a few hours later, we got on the airplane and left canada. and, of course, we should have known better, it is not okay to carry liquids in a non-sealed bag when boarding the plane in london. what a nuisance. well, at least we did not get bored in london, while arguing for a long time with security personnel whether we can take the bottle with us or not. and although this was not a very nice way to end our trip, all the stuff we have seen and experienced before was really awesome and amazing. what a great country (at least the small part that we got to see), we can really recommend going there. thanks nina for these great holidays - it was, as always, a great pleasure to travel a foreign country with you. kilometres driven with car: 3400 usable pics taken on trip: 3356 track for day 22.

the bLog entry for today will be pretty short, as we spent almost all day long in taipeh zoo[001-118], the biggest zoo in asia. the area is huge and it takes hours to see all the stuff they offer. in the end we ran out of time, but managed to see quite a lot of it. besides all the animals in the enclosures there were also other animals like huge spiders [008,049-050,087], butterflies[022-029], dragonflies[051-052]. but there was even an area where they had butterflies[032-046,079] inside. and there were also some squirrels[062]. soon there was a lovely tune played all over the zoo area, telling people the zoo will soon be closed. we spotted a sign that said the exit is over one kilometre away. and all day long it had been so very hot and humid that we decided to go by one of those touristy trains[108]. we took the metro back to taipeh main station and ended up right in the middle of the rush hour[125,127-128]. since we didn't want to join the crowd, we decided to go for a coffee and wait a little. so we went to SOGO, a big shopping mall and found the "UCC vienna café". after returning to the hostel, having a long nice shower, we went out again to go to the shilin night market[135]. the market is right around a temple, but it was already closed. unfortunately it was already late when we arrived there and as already mentioned, the metro stops at about midnight. also it had started to rain, so we drove home, but took a different route on our way from the metro station to our hostel to find some nice place to eat. this way we found out that we actually were in the middle of the so called "combat zone", the red light district. but it looks quite different from red light districts i have already seen so far. only some red lights and the names on the signs. but wandering around we soon found a nice restaurant that had awesome dumplings with a delicious sauce. nomnom, as usual. track: day 04

our last day in iceland. too sad. but we had a very good start as there was a cute cat[01-03] in the hostel. it was happy to get cuddles and caresses. and we were happily providing that. then we headed towards reykjavík. the town was quite the opposite of what we expected. there were hardly any cars or people. so we walked pretty alone on the streets of the capital of iceland. we found beautiful graffiti[08-19,23], strange shops[07,22,25], strange bars[07,20-21], and a few cats[26-28,66-69,87-89]. maunz. we came by hallgrimskirkja[31-44], a quite extraordinary church, and a pretty big one too. so far we always found small, or very small churches. then we had a break to have some coffee or hot chocolate in a cafe[45] right next to the church. after a nice stroll around another part of the city we came to the town hall[70] which has a big park[51-52] and a pond[53-55] in front of it, home to a lot of poultry[56-65], like seagulls, ducks, geese, and swans. a few people were there, feeding them. and a cute black cat[66-69] was there too, also trying to get some food and attention. we - once more - provided the latter. next we decided to go the zoo, since it was sunday and all shops were closed. there we could finally see seals[71-73,83-86] from close up. the zoo actually was, like reykjavík itself, very small and did not house many animals. but they had a very cute polar fox[80-82], a reindeer[77-79], and a cat[87-89,93]. a pretty cheeky one, actually. during the feeding time of the seals, the cat climbed over the fence and waited behind the animal trainer to get a fish from the full bucket. as the trainer at first didn't notice the cat, it then began to meow. finally getting hold of the trainer's attention, the cat got some fish. nomnom. as soon as all the fish were being fed to the seals, the cat was gone too. in the meantime it had started to rain again. so we had a closer look to a house that was meant for kids we guessed. inside they had a lot of fun stuff, like a place where one could make huge soap bubbles[90], a tangram[91] game, big fish tanks with crustaceans and fish, and other cool stuff[92]. as the rain got more, we decided to go and clean our car before we have to return it the next day in the morning. gas stations there provide nice equipment like a pressure washer trigger guns with a scrub brush, for free use. also they had the usual vacuum cleaners, like they have in every country. they, of course, were coin operated. but after about half an hour the car was cleaner than ever before (in fact, i'm really not sure if it was as clean as when we got it). we also examined the car paintwork for dents and small scratches. but i guess we didn't add any new damage to the surface. good. it already got dark when we got back to njarðvík to the same hostel we have been at on the first day of our trip. it ends, where it started. again, no one was there, and again we used the telephon at the reception to book our room. funnily enough, we even got the same room number again - eight. we were pretty surprised we made a good estimation of all the stuff we needed during the trip. we didn't leave behind much stuff for other travellers (usually in each hostel there's a shelf for stuff that is not needed anymore, and thus free to use for anyone in need of the stuff available). tomorrow we have to return the car, get on the plane, fly to helsinki, to finally land in munich again several hours later, again hopping from timezone to timezone. i'm actually looking forward to the moomin shop at helsinki airport. cute trolls, maybe i buy some stuff there... let's see. iceland is still as fascinating and pretty as i remembered it. the landscapes, flora and fauna provoked a constant level of awe overload. nature's most wildest place i've ever been to i guess. always windy, sometimes even pretty stormy, bleak regions, rough mountain landscapes, and - luckily only on the last few days - heavy rain showers. pristine nature and unique sceneries. to sum it up: recommendable to a high degree, or actually... a definite must see. thanks also to my travelling companion ninsti[87]. it really was a very wonderful trip...

my trip for day 08 brought me from "central" to "sheun wan", starting at the "statue square"[02-03]. there they have huge drums (like the one they have in every temple) put up as part of the 60th anniversary of the people's republic of china, which will be celebrated on the 1st of october. then i was heading down to the harbour[06-09] where several ferry peers are located. right next is the "International Finance Center Two"[10-14] ("IFC II"), which is the second highest building in hong kong. since it was again raining all day long i tried to get through malls from sight to sight. thus i ended up in malls for staying dry rather than for cooling down as in the last few days. on an entry to a subway i found this little cat[17] that was resting on this chair while loads of people were walking by. cute kitty. i finally reached my next stop, namely the "bank of china"[23] building, which has an observatory on the 47th floor. but it was closed today. too bad, i really wanted to get an overview in a building that close to the harbour. next thing i actually found by accident was "st. paul's cathedral"[29-31] where a piano convert was just about to end when i entered the church. again, too bad. a few hundred metres away i spotted another church[32], but i don't know the name since it was not listed in the guide book. since hong kong is built on hills and islands, i had another steep way to the "HK zoological and botanical garden" ("hkzbg"). in the zoo they have lemurs, apes, turtles, two crocodiles[47] and one snake. additionally loads of plants spread all over the park. also they had a stuffed tiger[43], that was a donation from a zoo in germany, and bred two offspring. sadly the kitty died last year. since all the animals were in cages i did not take pictures of them but rather took a picture of some wooden animals[48-49] that are also spread all over the park. also they had nice benches with all kind of animals like cats[41-42] or apes[55-57]. lovely zoo in the huge city of hong kong. next stop was an old stone stair[62] and the four last gas lanterns[63] in hongkong. then the weather got really very very bad, and i was hasting to "man mo" temple. next stop was "lok ku road", via the "hollywood road"[64-70]. usually at "lok ku road" there should be the "cat street market" (meow!), but due to the really heavy rain no market stalls were opened. additionally i was soaked to the bone and decided that this is not fun anymore and was fighting my way to the next MTR station. when i arrived the station i really felt like i had just taken a bath with my clothes on. good thing about the rain: it's a little cooling down. the intensity of the rain showers is called "amber" - in formation sheets were put up in the hotel elevators. looks like the weather wont change soon...

half of my stay here is done, and still so much to see. i hope i see at least the most important things i planned for this trip. for today, day 07, there's not much written info here on the bLog, but loads of pictures, since i wanted to have a relaxing day in shops (they all have air-condition). thus i went to "ikebukuro", as my guide says there are loads of shops and malls. after getting of the JR train at "ikebukuro" station i was walking around in malls for about twenty minutes when i entered another "tokyu hands" store. on the ninth floor i found another "cats alive" store and a huge cat store called "nekobukuro"[004-007], having all kind of cat-related stuff. they even had a living cat in the shop[007]. in the next street i saw this "cat cafe"[008] sign. a coffee is always a good idea, so i thought ok, let's find out what a "cat cafe"[009-045] is. it turned out to be the same as comic/manga cafes in tokyo (though i still have to visit one). you pay for each hour you stay at the bar/cafe and then can drink as much as you want and enjoy the cats/comics/etc. it's similar to the "cats alive" store where one would pay for playing with cats. 1000YEN for the first hour (that's about 6EUR). at first i thought one hour is way too long and i will be leaving after 30mins again, but this is somehow addictive. drinking coffee, surrounded by cute cats and girls in school uniforms having fun with the kitten. really cute - all of them. though every additional hour would have been cheaper (300YEN, that's about 1.75EUR) i left the cafe. a few streets away i found a huge manga store[052] (ten floors full of manga stuff) together with several other shops[053-054] in a row. next stop was "sunshine city" with the "sunshine international aquarium"[066-201], which is located on the tenth floor in the "world import mart" building and also includes a little zoo with all kind of small animals. "sunshine city" itself is made up of several skyscrapers. another one of them is the "sunshine60" building, which houses the "sunshine observatory"[203-216], including a "naruto" exhibition (there's a new film that will be in cinemas on second of august, therefore one can see "naruto" stuff everywhere). on my way home[217-220] it seems i hit rush-hour at the train station[221]. so i bought something to drink, waited until the rush was over, and drove home. today's dinner: a collection of various fried things in a box[222]. from left to right, top to bottom: fried fish (tasted exactly like "kaept'n iglos fischstaebchen", rice, then something undefinable, but tasted like strudel. the risolle in front tasted like a spicy vegetable burger, and finally a meatball in the lower right corner. this all was served warm (at the hotel there's a public microwave oven). it tasted very very good. on the left a dessert i tried out. i think it was soya pudding with vanilla flavour and whipped cream and hazelnut cream topping. also very yummi! so all in all really an relaxing day with loads of cats. random facts about tokyo: today i saw drunk japanese people for the first time here in tokyo. as it's friday i guess many start to prepare for weekend. there's a towing service for bikes that are parked where they shouldn't be. japanese love cute characters - they are everywhere and almost used by every company, no matter what they sell or produce (this includes parcel-, telephon-, tv-, and transportation-companies and loads of other companies i do not know what their business is (since i can't read the texts next to the logos).

i found out what i had eaten the day before (see here): the sweets in the background is "karinto", the stuff in the bento box is "maki", "onigiri", and the thing at the back on the right is "inarizushi" ("inari", the fox-god likes "inarizushi"!), sushi with "ikura-don", and "tamagoyaki". day 06 started at "ueno park"[092-178], a huge park with all kind of statues, temples, shrines, attractions, etc. first thing i visited was the "shinubazu pond"[006-010], a pond full of lotus flowers. in other parts of the pond there are loads of fish, turtles, ducks, and one can hire a boat. in the middle of the pond is the "benten island"[016-023] with the "bentendo temple" on it. near the pond there's also the very small "kyu-iawasaki temple" [013-014]. but i headed back to ueno park again to find the "saigo takamori" statue[027]. saigo takamori was a very famous samurai. next to it are the "shogi-tai tombstones"[029], but i forgot why they were put there. another sight nearby is the "kiyomizu-kannon temple"[030-033], and the "toki-wasureji-no-to" statue[034], which is dedicated to thousands of citizens of tokyo that died in an fire bombing in world war II. then i got lost in at least four or five temples/shrines[036-053] that are very close to each other. therefore i can not name them. to get rid of the temporary temple/shrine overload i decided to visit the "ueno zoo"[054-144], which has about 2800 specimen on an area of 14 hectares. besides all the cute animals, there's also a five storied pagoda[136-138]. then i met this little cutie[148-150] that was heading straight towards me once she heard the sound of my camera. the cat then allowed me to pet it for quite a while, but since it was very hot, i wanted to go on. i hope the cat enjoyed it as much as i did - meow. so, it was time for another shrine again! this time the "kaneiji temple"[151-173] with a beautiful cemetery included. bad thing: i really enjoy visiting the temples/shrines as i really like all this traditional japanese stuff. and the most beautiful buildings in tokyo are shrines and temples. so be warned there will be tons of other pictures of shrines during the days left. random facts for tokyo: sorry, none for today. what i've eaten today[179]: "onigiri" (the triangle wrapped in edible seaweed at the back with a "tarako" filling, which is fisheggs), "sekihan" (red beans rice), "maki", and "inarizushi" again. again very tasty, but i'm glad i was told after i have eaten the "onigiri" that it had fishegg inside.

second try for the zoo in skansen with hanna and ana-clara. we left the second little child (actually she's a baby) at home at her father and her grandmother. this time it all worked out well and we arrived skansen on a sunny and warm day. as this day was the first without rain but sunshine in stockholm, loads of people were in the city and in skansen too. skansen is a big park, consisting of an amusement park, an open-air museum, and a zoo (and probably much more we've missed). the zoo itself is pretty big with loads of scandinavian animals, like wolverines, lynxes, brown bears, moose (including two baby-moose, and all of them were alive!), seals, peacocks, and many many more. after visiting the zoo we went through the open-air museum. it's similar to maihaugen in lillehammer. so there were a lot of old houses, but this time from sweden. within the open-air museum there was a little amusement park for children too, so we went there. ana-clara had loads of fun there going with merry-go-rounds (one with a horse she could ride, and another one with an airplane she could fly). we had an ice-cream in the meantime. after that hanna and ana-clara drove to town shopping while we paid a visit to the vasa museum. the museum is about the vasa, a ship that was built in 1628 and sank on her maiden voyage in the harbour of stockholm. the ship was lifted in the 50s and was then brought to the museum. the vasa is an impressive big ship and one can walk along the ship on four floors. besides the ship there are always additional exhibitions about building the vasa, people working and dying on the vasa, etc. we both really enjoyed this museum. after that we drove to hanna's house again where we finally met my godfather. we had some barbecue in the garden. he enjoyed austrian wine we brought him, and had a lot of fun. this was a really wonderful and great day.

after getting up at the park ground next to tromsoe we drove to the center of the town. our first stop was at the church, but it was closed at that time in the morning. so we drove on to the tromsoe museum. the streets were totally empty and as in helsinki we were the only people on the street. tomtom guided us to the tromsoe museum. we thought we were just in time, since our paper guide said the museum opens at 09:00. so we sat there and were wondering why it's still closed at 09:15, until we found out that we are in another time zone again. so we adjusted our clocks to GMT +1. oh no, we got up one hour too early - it was 06:00 when the alarm clock rang. so we got back to our camper, i took a short nap, zombiequeen was reading, and we returned to the museum at 09:00 sharp - this time it really was 09:00! when the museum had opened its gates we went in, had a look at various exhibitions, like a special exhibition on fire (one could try to make fire themselves), of course a sami exhibition (this is a must to every museum to show political correctness, i guess), a special on climate changes, about the people living in the stone age, another exhibition on the aurora borealis (another must to every museum in north scandinavia). we were the only people there, which is pretty cool and very enjoyable. afterwards we drove to the polaria, a small but very nice museum on the fauna around the northern polar areas. a highlight were the living seals that had a big aquarium there they could swim in. one could get really close to them. unfortunately the light conditions were very very bad in there and the seals were moving very fast, so no sharp pictures were taken of those lovely creatures. besides seals there were all kind of living animals like sea-stars, fish, crabs, eels, etc. additionally we saw a film (again in 125 degree viewpoint angle, by the same company and technology as the one shown at the north cape - scandinavians seem to enjoy those techniques). it was about spitsbergen, over and under the sea, filmed in either a boat or a helicopter. great pictures again. we left the camper at the parking ground of the polaria and went to the center by foot. we saw the center and the harbour. very lovely town with beautiful houses, but again not very many people there, and the once we saw were most likely tourists. seems like norwegians are having holidays and they all flee to warmer countries, or they stay at home on sunday? we are not sure. another attraction we've been visiting was the arctic cathedral. there was an entrance fee of 25NOK (that's about 2.5EUR). the church itself was ok, but we were a bit puzzled about the entrance fee, because inside it looked like an ordinary church. ok, there was a nice, big, glass-painted window but this definitely was not worth the 2.5EUR. but, for the first time in my live, i've been to a toilet in a church. that was worth the entry. additionally we've seen another member of the "world's northernmost"-attractions: a brewery. so up to now this makes: the world's northernmost point that can be reached by street (north cape), town, catholic church community, university, ice-free harbour (all in hammerfest), afterwards we left the "paris of the north", heading for the lofoten. on the way there we saw an advertisement for the polar zoo (of course the world's northernmost one). spontaneously we decided to go there since the weather was really awesome, and we hoped to finally see a moose in full view. but we were very disappointed as we read a sign saying "we are sorry, but the moose is dead.". poor moose, poor us. besides the moose there are foxes (polar and red), lynxes, brown bears, badgers, domestic animals, wolves, musk, deer, reindeer, and wolverines. this zoo has very very large enclosure with wild growing plants in there. so it often happened, that we didn't see any animal at all. either because they were hiding somewhere within their large enclosures, or in their lair, lying around in the grass or bushes, or they were dead. but in summary we saw every second animal (badger, bear, wolves, polar foxes, domestic animals, deer). after spending two hours in the zoo we drove on southwards. but since it was already late camping grounds were crowded. after two full camping grounds we finally found a very beautiful one. besides the two of us there were only three other campers and five tents there. after having our camper plugged to an electricity outlet we took a walk around the camping site.